Good game, bad port

[RageBurner]

(Bump!)

Unfortunately the PS1 port of X-Men vs Street Fighter was quite rough; animations were cut from the game, and the tag system was removed unless both players used the same two characters.

You can apply that to pretty much an 2D fighting game on the PS1 due to lack of RAM. Saturn will always beat it there (yes, it needs the RAM carts, but Sega deserves credit for realizing they were needed in the first place and planning for it).

 

[LaserMoose]

You can apply that to pretty much an 2D fighting game on the PS1 due to lack of RAM. Saturn will always beat it there (yes, it needs the RAM carts, but Sega deserves credit for realizing they were needed in the first place and planning for it).

I was very surprised that they ported the game on PS1 without its central mechanic working as intended. But as you said, lack of RAM is a killer.

The Saturn has indeed fared much better in terms of fighters for sure - X-Men vs Street Fighter and Vampire Savior both play like a dream on Saturn compared to their PS1 counterparts.

Another port I can think of that is noticeably worse would be the GameCube port of Majora's Mask via the Collector's Edition release. Runs worse than the N64 original, and is prone to crashing when saving.

 

[RageBurner]

Another port I can think of that is noticeably worse would be the GameCube port of Majora's Mask via the Collector's Edition release. Runs worse than the N64 original, and is prone to crashing when saving.

Crashing when saving? wow, that's probably the worst time it could crash at.

 

[LaserMoose]

Crashing when saving? wow, that's probably the worst time it could crash at.

Unfortunately, yes. From what I recall the game had difficulty being ported due to its reliance on the Expansion Pak on N64, so it was a more unstable version of the game. I do remember a crash or two on my end trying to play the Song of Time to save.

 

[RageBurner]

Unfortunately, yes. From what I recall the game had difficulty being ported due to its reliance on the Expansion Pak on N64, so it was a more unstable version of the game. I do remember a crash or two on my end trying to play the Song of Time to save.

Hm... probably the N64 had a pretty exotic RAM setup and they couldn't replicate it exactly. Honestly though, considering it is a flagship title, you'd think they'd do a deep rewrite instead of a slapdash port like that. It's almost as if N hired a third party to work on it.

 

[LaserMoose]

Hm... probably the N64 had a pretty exotic RAM setup and they couldn't replicate it exactly. Honestly though, considering it is a flagship title, you'd think they'd do a deep rewrite instead of a slapdash port like that. It's almost as if N hired a third party to work on it.

I'd be curious about them doing so as well. The release was a pack-in with the system later in its life, and the primary draw was to have all Zelda games up to that point to be playable on GameCube, either as a GC game or through the GB Player. The pack-in also had Ocarina and the first two Zeldas on the disc as well, and those ran with little to no issues.

 

[RageBurner]

I'd be curious about them doing so as well. The release was a pack-in with the system later in its life, and the primary draw was to have all Zelda games up to that point to be playable on GameCube, either as a GC game or through the GB Player. The pack-in also had Ocarina and the first two Zeldas on the disc as well, and those ran with little to no issues.

Yeah, see, they really marred what they were trying to do there by delivering a lesser Majora experience. The Gamecube was incredibly powerful and for the most part that incredible potential was very underutilized. Running N64 games better than OG hardware should have been a cinch.

 

[AkiraSO4]

You can apply that to pretty much an 2D fighting game on the PS1 due to lack of RAM. Saturn will always beat it there (yes, it needs the RAM carts, but Sega deserves credit for realizing they were needed in the first place and planning for it).

I always grew with the PS1 and the fighting games within it, so when it came to ports, I just had to work with what was given.

That being said, the vs. games (X-Men vs SF, MSH vs SF, MVC1) were definitely lacking. They tried to make things interesting with the ability to cancel hyper combos onto other hyper combos, but it was still not enough. Also, there was the Cross Over mode which did enable the tag system back, with some conditions. Your first character would be the opponent's second character and vice versa. (EX: Ryu/Venom vs Venom/Ryu).

While there are cases of acceptable ports out there (PS1 KOF 97 fixing a lot of slowdowns and even giving Orochi an actual full moveset, Alpha 3 bringing in new characters, Alpha 2 Gold with the arranged soundtrack), there would be stuff like Mortal Kombat 2 which needed to load the announcer say voice lines, Samurai Shodown 3 which just looked downright ugly, KOF 96 with those awful load times, so on and so forth.

Yeah, the load times suck, but that's PS1 for you. We wouldn't get true arcade quality until the Dreamcast at the very least.

 

[ArkenDev]

For the longest time, before the release of the Switch/PC port. The only reliable way to play No More Heroes 1 without being forced to use the Wiimote's motion controls was through this PS3/XBOX360 port which was laggy (especially the ps3 version), bugged and changed the game's art style by removing the harsh shadows while making it all muddy and brown.
There is some extra fun stuff that it added but I would NOT recommend playing this version on your first time playthrough. Just grab the "recent" Switch/PC port or if you got a Wii you could just wack-it Wiimote Sports Style.

 

[rugal]

beyond good and evil on switch since it slower it do 30 to 45 fps
and the original on ps2 camecube and xbox all do 60 fps

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24]

We don’t talk about X-Men: Children of the Atom on the PlayStation.

It looks the part, but do not be fooled.

 

[AkiraSO4]

We don’t talk about X-Men: Children of the Atom on the PlayStation.

It looks the part, but do not be fooled.

I mean do we even need to commment on the performance when you gotta enter a cheat to activate free play?

Hell, at least it HAS free play. MK2 didn't have it on PS1.

 

[GardeniaSky]

Spyro remakes. Something about it made us physically ill. We turned off motion blur and we still got nauseous and headaches.

And no there wasn't a gas leak.

 

[Gorse]

Something about it made us physically ill.

Could it be that the updated art style was ugly as shit? That was a big problem with the Crash remakes, too.

 

[Bakuma1997]

The Mother 2 half of Mother 1+2, trying to fit a whole butt game on a GBA cartridge, while ambitious, they never bothered to either upscale like the ALTTP port or add new stuff to compensate like the Country Trilogy, the compression is awful, music took a beating and performance while not notably bad suffers a stroke at times, the Mother 1 half, while not bad, you are still playing the 25 Anniversary Patch or the Oficcial Begginings port

 

[GardeniaSky]

Could it be that the updated art style was ugly as shit? That was a big problem with the Crash remakes, too.

Yeah probably. Our brains couldn't handle it.

 

[cjl8336]

didn't have a dreamcast for marvel vs capcom, so I got the ps1 version
it was a great disappointment

 

[Beepmoo]

I'm REALLY cheating here but just about any fps console port pre Halo 1 kinda sucked. Namely, controls always sucked HARD in them especially in regards to aim sensitivity, most games had it so if you moved the stick to left even slightly you would do a 360 it would move so fast. To compensate for this, they would have what is essentially auto aim. Crosshair would just lock onto an enemy, and you just fire away removing any and all skill in playing the game or making it frustrating because you want to aim at a guy with a rocket launcher on a catwalk, but the game decides to aim at the guy 3 feet away with a pistol. Granted, this is mainly for 3D fps games, it was even worse for the 2.5d ones like Doom or Wolfenstein. Because those released on consoles that didn't have a 2nd stick, you would have tank controls and a button dedicated to strafing or you would have to use the shoulder pads to do so, not a very intuitive controller scheme compared to the PC where you would just press a/d to strafe while using the mouse to aim.
To use an example, here is a playthrough of Red Faction on ps2. Notice how he's doing things like moving to put the crosshair on an enemy and how slow and sluggish the movement is, compare that to the PC version and notice how its a lot more intuitive, fast paced and smooth the gameplay is. Also, here's gameplay of a guy playing the recently updated Doom ports on console, compare that to the SNES version.

 

[RageBurner]

@Beepmoo Yeah those are good examples! I do think Perfect Dark aged well considering it is pre-Halo, though.

 

[Beepmoo]

@Beepmoo Yeah those are good examples! I do think Perfect Dark aged well considering it is pre-Halo, though.

Perfect Dark aged well for the same reason Halo did: It was built from the ground up for consoles. Part of the reason fps games were so bad on console was that they were pc games first, pc has a lot more buttons and power etc compared to a console which might have like, 20 buttons tops compared to the pcs... idk, a lot more. You had to have two buttons set aside for switch weapon (forwards) and switch weapon (backwards) as you gotta remember, fps games used to have arsenals that you just carried in your back pocket and they also didnt let you bind multiple inputs on the same button. Compare to Halo where to switch weapons, you pressed Y once because you have a two weapon limit. If you wanna switch out, just hold x which is well within range as that's also your reload button. There's a lot of reasons why Halo was so innovative in the console fps sphere, and it all has to do with the fact that it was made for consoles and only consoles.

 

[starseeker300]

Another port I can think of that is noticeably worse would be the GameCube port of Majora's Mask via the Collector's Edition release. Runs worse than the N64 original, and is prone to crashing when saving.

bro that would make me crash out if that happened

 

[RageBurner]

Yeah, I think I would be instantly deflated too, @starseeker300

 

[LaserMoose]

bro that would make me crash out if that happened

You and me both. Thankfully the times it happened to me was fairly early in the game (before the Second dungeon, I believe?) And not long after, I switched over to the N64 release to finish the game.

 

[starseeker300]

i played the 3ds version

 

[happymasksalesman]

While this is less prevalent these days, during the 4th and 5th console generations we'd see a great disparity of quality spread among machines. Companies often had a target platform and put most of its efforts into said target platform, ports playing second fiddle and sometimes suffering for lack of quality and/or content.

One case that comes to mind quite vividly is Sunset Riders - one of the most venerable classic run and gun games bar none, an artifact of a time when Konami meant something good, rather than something forgettable. Speaking of forgettable, this can quite nicely define the port the good old Mega Drive got saddled with for this game. Cut and simplified stages, poor color usage, missing playable characters... really a textbook example on how to not port something.

By contrast, the SNES got a port that for all intents and purposes was perfect by standards of the time: it had great palettes and all the content was present. I don't know if Sega is partially to blame for forcing Konami to use a cartridge with very little ROM space (likely, considering how Sega is famous for bad decisions) or if Konami got paid extra to make sure the SNES port were the superior product (also likely, Nintendo being Nintendo).

My hope is that the fan made port will finally do the venerable Mega Drive justice.

So there you go, that's my entry, feel free to add more examples and discuss.

View attachment 28769View attachment 28773

Mega Drive on the left, SNES on the right.

Games on gamecube wasn't bad but because of CD system and storage a lot of them ignored.
One tragic fall of king of video game Nintendo from the top of mountain.