This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Port Decay: From YKTTW
Working Title: Consolitis: Other YKTTW
Removed Batman Animated Series example, they were actually two completely different games from different companies.
Lord Seth: Regarding:
- Most home ports of the original R-Type compare unfavorably to the arcade original, with only the Amiga, Sharp X68000 and Turbographix versions avoiding issues with slowdown and flickering.
Some Guy: Removed:
- The SNES port of R-Type II, Super R-Type, suffered from terrible slowdown issues and was infamous for Fake Difficulty since it removed all of the mid-stage continue points from the levels.
Super R-Type isn't a port as much as it's a completely new game that happen to have two stages taken from R-Type II
Arutema: Removed: It also used software rendering, which required manual coding of graphical effects. It did accidentally cause the system to be incompatible with texture compression, but otherwise, just about everything else could be programmed in. It just took a while for developers used to having effect handled automatically.
The PS 2 did do hardware rendering, but used a bizarre proprietary graphics language for it.
Gloating Swine: Edited PS 3 architecture stuff to reflect why it's different and fiddly when compared with PC/Xbox architecture, (also, the PS 3 cell has 7 SP Es active, of which one is reserved for the OS, so six can be used by developers)
Furry Kef: Regarding this:
- Oh, it gets worse. Three words: Final. Fantasy. Seven. In its entirety. (Well, the end of the game is drawn somewhere between disc 2 and disc 3 in the original, but that's still far larger than any official NES game). Saying that it suffered from adaptation decay is probably unnecessary, but just to be clear: no limit breaks, no summons, no sidequests, and no Yuffie or Vincent. It's actually an amazing technical accomplishment, though: 2 megabytes of game data (the NES has exactly 8 kilobytes of addressable ROM space), no CHR-ROM at all (sprite and background data is loaded directly into the PRG-ROM, which is normally reserved for map data, text data, and code), and the complete Chinese alphabet stored in NES sprite format. That takes talent. Too bad, you know, it's still an impressive pile of crap.
arromdee: Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is not ported to the Wii due to originally being on Wii-based hardware. http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=905 lists it as Taito Type X2, which is PC-based hardware.
arromdee: Apparently this is a little controversial and System-16 seems to be wrong here, despite usually being reliable. Googling gives me http://arcadeheroes.com/2008/12/27/exclusive-pics-of-the-tatsuonok-vs-capcom-hardware-wii-it-is/ . So I'm changing it back...
Ray Ayanami: Removing this quip:
- Speaking of which, using a SNES emulator for the PSP (even the non-slim PSP) and playing Gradius is much easier than the actual PSP Gradius Collection.
Nirual: Removed this part:
- Starcraft 64. RTS games never did work very well on the consoles of the day, though...
- ...as is also proven with the Nintendo 64, Playstation, and Saturn versions of Command & Conquer.
- Actually, the Playstation version was great for discovering the game. But once you bought the the Gold Windows version, you could never play it again on a console (or play the non-gold DOS version).
Neither example was a porting disaster, it's just that the controllers on those systems don't mesh too well with a unchanged PC RTS. They were still playable, no crashes or anything. The N64 versions obviously lacked the FM Vs but I wouldn't say that counts for this trope.
Medinoc: No FMV for Command And Conquer? Now I would call this a disaster. Especially since they were present in the (much earlier!) Playstation version.
Excel-2009. Someone please explain to me how the Wii port of Dead Rising is a Porting Disaster like everyone would have me believe. I've played both and ignoring the obvious differences (less zombies, different objective, etc.), they're the same game.
Dragon Quest Z: For one thing, they all passed judgment well before the game was released, based on low quality trailers, making them think the graphics would be horrible, and looking at shots of few zombies making them sure the game has almost no zombies (they still think the final release does). For another, they still think the game should be as detailed as Resident Evil 4, despite the fact that even on the 360, the game isn't much more detailed than RE4. Finally, they think ports cost nothing to make, which is flat out wrong, especially when all the assets had to be remade from the ground up with this game.
- Excel-2009. Good enough. I don't care too much for graphics anyway and I won't miss what they took out. They can enjoy their 360 version while those of us without a television with both audio ports will just have to make do with this one.
Davide Mascolo: I was wondering if Akumajou Dracula XX (aka Castlevania: Vampire's Kiss) for the SNES can really be considered a Porting Disaster. They didn't try to fit Rondo of Blood into a cartridge - the levels were completely redesigned, for example. The resulting game was surely much inferior than the original, but it didn't have particular graphical, aural or controlling issues.
Cambdoranononononono: Removed PS 3 Bioshock. Having owned it from close to the release, I have not encountered significant enough problems to really justify calling it a disaster or an Obvious Beta.
Nate The Great: Could someone who knows more about it write an entry on the Gamecube version of Majora's Mask?
- Schrau: From what I gather, it wasn't really a disaster; just crippled somewhat by Game Breaking Bugs. None of the N64 Zelda games were "ported" to the Gamecube, just emulated (Folk have extracted the ROM dumps of each game, and they're exactly the same as the original N64 dumps, though we'd only be assuming this for Master Quest). For the interested, MM is perfectly playable using the Gamecube disc on the Wii: It seems that the Wii's Gamecube mode is somewhat technically different from the actual original Gamecube that prevents certain critical bugs (Not just in Majora's Mask) from happening. Of course, the Wii also has the superior VC versions too, though not for MQ.
Yet.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here for now. We need to keep standards up on Porting Disasters because this is where the So Bad It's Horrible Videogames page wants future examples that qualify here dumped. You don't get incredible disasters, do you?
- The Wii port of Okami has had mixed reactions with the fanbase.
- The graphic style had the 'paper filter' significantly toned down, changing the look from being an old canvas to being flowing colors.
- However, some prerendered FM Vs weren't redone, keeping the traditional look. The graphics were also given a 16:9 mode, and cutscenes were given skip buttons.
- The credits, and an after-credits epilogue were lost. The cover art infamously had an IGN watermark on it, as they had used the website to gather materials. This is because the original developer had been abandoned by Capcom, and most of the raw materials had been lost. They did, however, send out free cover art replacements, as well as offering downloadable versions intended for printing for those who missed the shipment.
- The controls were changed from a traditional PS 2 gamepad to the Wiimote, which ranges far more depending on who's using it. For some, the Wii Brush is hugely better, while for others it is nigh-unusable.
- Even with the flaws, it's still debatable which version is best; although inarguably the game is incredible on both platforms.
Shrikesnest: Changed this:
- The PC port of Grandia II, while having cutscene encoding problems similar to the PS 2 version (needlessly duplicated frames, creating the illusion of 'hanging' attack cutscenes), badly downsampled and compressed cutscenes (resolution somewhere around 256x192 or similar, with countless artefacts) and on top of that requiring an obscure codec to play them (word of mouth, this trooper never encountered this problem), has little to no other problems, although after applying the no-cd patch (involving moving voice and other files onto the hdd, eliminating delays), the cutscenes delay can be fixed with simple file edits and the resolution can be changed to much greater values than the console versions. Obviously, it also suffers no atrocious texture blurring from the PS 2 version, and can be used in conjunction with driver-set anti-aliasing, making the game look really gorgeous. Now if only someone would re-encode the cutscenes from the Dreamcast version for this release... Contrary to what some people say, this trooper encountered not even a single time when the game crashed on him.
To this:
- The PC port of Grandia II has cutscene encoding problems similar to the PS 2 version (needlessly duplicated frames, creating the illusion of 'hanging' attack cutscenes), badly downsampled and compressed cutscenes (resolution somewhere around 256x192 or similar, with countless artefacts) and on top of that requires an obscure codec to play them.
Sorry, but "You can hack into and modify the game to not suck" isn't a good justification for a game that runs a resolution that would have been an embarrassment ten years ago. Also, the fact that the game never crashed on you doesn't mean it didn't happen, and frequently, to others. Being in the lucky 12% doesn't make the port not atrocious.
Shini: Added the Rhapsody after having bought the DS version, and looking around to see if other people had the same problems/complaints that I did.
