Discussion Main / PortingDisaster

Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Far. Too. Negative, started by Stratadrake on Nov 19th 2010 at 7:58:34 PM

Sonic Adventure DX really should be here, it's really bad and makes the original game look bad and even introduces new bugs.

Why is this a YMMV trope again? Just about all of the examples are observable programming goofs, not "I don't think it's as cool as the other version(s)."

Is it this trope if a game is missing modes from the other versions?

In particular, I'm thinking of the Nintendo Switch version of Lethal League Blaze. It is still very much playable, but it's missing the 1-on-1 and ranked online modes, and it has a number of framerate issues, but it otherwise plays just fine. They're also working on these issues currently and intend to have them fixed up.

I'm not convinced that the smartphone versions of Final Fantasy V and VI belong here. I haven't seen too many complaints about the mobile version of V aside from people disliking the new graphical style (which doesn't affect playability) and the bugs and typos in VI have since been fixed and I was able to beat it with no problems.

Edit: I think VI should still be listed as a former example due to the game-crashing bug it used to have, but it's been fixed. However, as I said, the main problem anyone has with V is the graphical style. If anything, it's done better than VI's mobile version; for example, it completely dropped the grid-based movement of previous versions instead of just adding the ability to move diagonally.

About the SNES version of Street Fighter Alpha 2... I guess it's more of a nice technical achievement (although a pretty worthless one) than a porting disaster with the unresponsive controls and slow framerate. Well, it has loading times due to how about seventeen megs of data is crunched into one cartridge, but I don't think that makes the SNES version a bad, I mean, really bad port.

So, do I need to edit it or delete its' entry?

I think the Multi-Platform section needs a clean-up.

I get the impression that it's meant for games which were developed as Multi-Platform titles, but on release one of the versions ended up as a disaster.

Multi-Platform development means you work on all the versions you're going to have for the initial release at the same time.

A large chunk of the examples in this section are about later versions which weren't part of the initial development. I think those should be moved to other sections and an explanation added at the start to make it clear that entries in this section need to be part of that initial development and still end up disastrous.

What's the part about Final Fantasy VII's video codec not being on the install CD? There definitely was one, so unless one means two different codecs were used for FMVs (which wouldn't be that surprising since they also use different character models)... Or worse, it could also mean the codec on the CD was the wrong one... Does anyone have more info on this?

How about the PC Port of Star Wars the Force Unleashed 2? It runs much better than the first game, yes, but it has a massive memory leak problem that the team tried, and failed to fix twice. (It fixed it for some machines, but most machines still have the problem.)

The Sega Master System version of Thunder Blade was cited because the console "couldn't handle the scaling" of the Arcade Game, but that doesn't really prove it's a bad port. (It actually removed some of the arcade version's scaling.) The ZX Spectrum port of Chase H.Q. was a more extreme hardware downgrade of another Arcade Game designed for powerful scaling hardware, but it nevertheless was rated highly by the system's fans, to the point where it topped the Your Sinclair readers' list of top 100 Spectrum games of all time. The example's only real complaint about Thunder Blade for the Sega Master System was that it was a "bland top-down and confusing over-the-shoulder helicopter shooter," yet it actually won an award in its day.

Do the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 releases of Sonic Adventure have the same problems as the PC port? I've been informed that they don't support widescreen either, but do they have the other problems listed on this page?

Re: Castelian/Nebulus/Tower Toppler: I played the NES version, and an emulated version of the Commodore 64 game on one of those multi-game pack-in joysticks (I never owned a C64 myself), and from my personal experience, the C64 version has many of the same issues that the NES version had.

I would like to know if I should cut this.

• Final Fantasy Tactics - The PSP version suffers from slowdown of something like 50% (that's half-speed animation) whenever a three-dimensional effect is processed. This renders almost anything except basic attacks twice as slow as the PS version. While the heavy script rewrite from the original (and from the Japanese version) is a debatable aesthetic issue, the slowdown makes long missions nearly unplayable.
  • The slowdown is especially infuriating because it's a PS game ported to a hardware as powerful as the PS2!
  • You can now download the original PS 1 game from the PSN store and play it on your PSP, at full speed. (And for less than half the price of the PSP version, no less!) They Just Didn't Care. The only reason to play War Of The Lions now is the somewhat-improved translation, if you can wait around for it.
  • The remake is headed to the iPhone, which is nearly as powerful as the PSP, so perhaps there's some hope for salvation...
  • The slowdown isn't a 'bug' it's a 'feature'. They mucked with the display times of the frames of animation for certain attacks to reduce general slowdown during said attacks but ended up making the general case infuriating slow to fix a specific case problem. As another poster mentioned the PSONE version runs fine on the PSP.
  • Eventually fixed with a fan patch that removes the slowdown when the game is run through custom firmware. Now why Square-Enix couldn't be bothered to fix it, either before release or through an official patch...

First, the slow down is a minor bug, or as a troper put it, a feature. Its not game breaking and unplayable.

Second, its a SRPG! Slow down doesn't matter in a game like this. Its not like the slow down is noticeable anyway. I played War Of The Lions 3 times, and I never notice any slowdown.

Finally, I don't think it was possible to update PSP games. I could be wrong, but I had my PSP for years and had it online only a couple of times, yet none of my PSP game never been updated. Only the PSP itself ever been update.

Something that's been confusing me regarding the Silent Hill HD Collection. I have not played any of the Silent Hill games, but it says that the Xbox 360 version has the same problems as the PS 3 version and Konami is not going to fix the 360 version...yet with the PS 3 version, it says that Konami is working on making patches that will fix the problems to "make it more like the stable 360 version". If the 360 version is NOT being patched while the PS 3 version is, then wouldn't that make the 360 version the LESS stable version?

I don't understand why this page is discussing emulation problems. Playing an original Xbox on your Xbox 360 is not the same as a port.

Due to what some others pointed out last year, and that I myself had not witnessed such errors, I removed it and put it here:

• The arcade version of Guitar Hero III (simply called "Guitar Hero Arcade") would be a Adaptation Distillation if it weren't for the fact that the hardware's display suffers from crippling visual and audio lag, making the game nearly unresponsive. And this is on a Rhythm game!

As another guy pointed out, porting has absolutely nothing to do with these issues. Some people forgetting calibration and whatnot to HD Tvs have more to do with those issues than anything.

Can someone help me add a TurboGrafx 16 folder? I tried to add one but it unintentionally consumed the SNES folder. Any help here?

Cut this and put it here for now. This is very different, but it just doesn't seem disastrous enough. Maybe it was just modified to work on the Sega Genesis?

• TSR's XX Vc Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday RPG is significantly different from what computer gamers got. While the original was a "gold box" D&D-style RPG with 3D mazes the player has to map themselves and characters have a several pages of skills to choose among for different situations. The genesis port has been largely dumbed down with areas becoming top-down maps, the amount of skills reduced to a dozen core abilities and content relying on these altered or missing. Luckily the plot survived more or less intact and since some find the "gold box" games to be overly complex, some consider this a more fun version to play.

The Pacman "Arcade" screenshot is obviously not from the original arcade version, but rather some kind of a flash game or something...

I've played Guitar Hero Arcade a few times at my local arcade and never noticed "crippling visual and audio lag", in my experience it works just fine. Does the machine at my arcade just run better than usual or does the one the troper who added it to this trope has played run worse than it should?

Cut this and put it here for now because of uncertainty of whether this is a port. There was an arcade vs. of Dragon's Lair, yes; the question is whether this is close enough to that to be a port at all, or just happens to be a different game with the same name and some shared characters.

• Though it can't really be considered a "port", the NES version of Dragon's Lair is dismal on many levels. Just to name a few, awful controls, terrible jumping physics, and copious amounts of Fake Difficulty abound in this game. Just watch the Angry Video Game Nerd review it here.

Who the fuck re added this?

• The Wii Ware port of Cave Story. The game itself, barring the occasional glitch. runs perfectly, and the graphics were given a makeover. The music, sadly, was a disaster. The game offered two soundtracks - the original PC game's, and a new soundtrack composed of remixes. However...
  • A programming glitch removed many instruments (including all the drums) from the new soundtrack, as well as changed the mixing of what instruments were left. The soundtrack you hear in the game sounds little like what the developers intended.
  • As for the classic soundtrack, instead of porting the obscure  ^*
    ^{As in, it was made by Pixel's friend and hasn't been updated in years}
    ORG music synthesizer to the Wii, the developers chose to convert the entire soundtrack to the OGG (a format similar to MP 3) format. This created serious problems with looping - the intro of every song repeated even though they aren't supposed to, and the transition between the end of one song and the beginning of the next was often jarring.
  • The developers have promised to fix this for the European version, but there is little to no chance of North American players receiving a patch. Nintendo will only pay Wii Ware developers if they sell above a certain threshold, and if you patch the game after it's released the number resets.

The remixed music is not ported, and the original music sounds fine.

To quote Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Soundtrack alone should neither alleviate a Porting Disaster nor define one.

At the time he was getting it backwards (where he thought that the Sega Saturn Doom was added because of its soundtrack, even though the soundtrack was the only part that was not a train wreck), but it is still a good quote.

Okay, it is indicated that there is a good version of Mortal Kombat for the original Gameboy. In that case, we'd better make clearer what makes the Horrible Game Boy and Gameboy Color versions Horrible. Is it the same for them as for the Game Boy Advance one?

Carmageddon 64 is listed here and on the Horrible videogame page. I don't doubt it's Horrible and a Porting Disaster, but neither entry says why.

"The SNES version of Mortal Kombat is an arguable case. The biggest outcry was the lack of blood and fatalities that ultimately killed any chance of it selling well. Aside from this, however, it's actually a much better port than the Genesis version, being superior in all other aspects."

The graphics maybe, but I've heard many times that the physics in the SNES port are not accurate to the Arcade versions, which screws up some combos. Any MK expert can weigh on this?

Removed the Final Fantasy XIII example. Slightly prettier graphics (and yes, I've looked at the comparison screenshots - the differences are more nickpicky than anything else. It's still a very nice looking game) and having to swap disks are not enough to call it this trope. Besides, the PS 3 version ( or at least early copies) supposedly has game crashing issues (which can permanently damage the PS 3) bad enough to justify suing the company over. If that's true, than if anything, the PS 3 version is the porting disaster.

Can somebody fix the "Final Fight snes" part. The Super Nintendo did not have a "horribly weak" cpu. The internet made that lie up. Trust me, I'm a homebrewer, I know what I'm talking about. I don't want to get into technical details you wouldn't understand. Just leave this phoney technical information out of this artical please.

Didn't we have the PSX Mega Man 8 here before?

I must object to the Cave Story example. It is perfectly playable, and has none of the symptoms listed in the article (unless you count the music problems as "sound glitches"). The only issues with the port are the new music (which can be turned off), about 10 typos in the translation, and about 2 freezing glitches. Otherwise it is perfectly fine, and it gets very positive ratings from pretty much everywhere.

May I ask why the Sega Saturn Doom entry has been removed? Maybe I'm missing something, but the game is a mess, and nearly every source I've checked on it agrees. Totally inexplicable slowdown at random times, terrible control scheme with jerky, unresponsive controls, muddy low-quality sound effects, no multiplayer. The only saving grace is new CD-Audio music, but it's apparently a case of Your Mileage May Vary as to whether it's any good, or just better sound quality for worse music.

Is the PS 3 Orange Box really supposed to be "nearly unplayable"? While based on everything I've seen and heard it's an obvious entry into this trope, it still seems to be mostly very playable outside of a framerate drops at certain sections, even if it is much worse than other versions.

Um, this page is on Pages Needing Example Sorting. I am having trouble sorting examples to the effect of "almost all the ports are bad," especially when no specific ports are named. (Though I did separate a generic R-Type entry from specific R-Type entries.)

On another note, which system is the (currently unsorted) Midway Treasures thing on? Is it a standalone, or does it have a console?

I don't own it, but Modern Warfare 2 is one because of anti-cheating systems? What the FUCK?