Porting Disasters Thread

[hybridial]

My only personal experience with a port that I thought was outright pathetic was the PS3 port of The Evil Within.

 

It's okay for the first hour or so for the game but then the performance just tanked completely and I would say the result was an unreleasable mess that got released anyway. I'm sure the PS4/XB1/PC versions were fine but I could never get myself interested in the game after that lousy experience. 

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Hydlide on NES, a near unplayable port with horrendous collision detection and a useless save system consisting of passwords on every square tile.

[Maes]

25 minutes ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Hydlide on NES, a near unplayable port with horrendous collision detection and a useless save system consisting of passwords on every square tile.

Wait, that was a port from something else, and that something else was really much better?

[Wadmodder Shalton]

31 minutes ago, Maes said:

Wait, that was a port from something else, and that something else was really much better?

Yep, Hydlide was originally released on Japanese home computers.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Samurai Showdown on Sega CD, an infamous port that contained a game-breaking bug where the game will crash before the final fight against Amakusa, making the game Unwinnable.

 

There wasn't a bug fixed version of the Sega CD port of Samurai Showdown ever released, and sadly nobody has made a fan-made fixed version of this Sega CD port of Samurai Showdown either.

 

A few other Atari 2600 ports I can think of are as follows:

 

Double Dragon: released by Activision during the Atari 2600's late cycle, the controls are awful with a one-button joystick, with very few people having beaten the first few stages on YouTube.

 

Defender: has horrible flicker, blocky cityscape graphics, a game-breaking invisibility glitch when you fire, and the player has to go off-screen to use hyperspace or the Smart Bomb. The Atari 2600 port of Defender II (back then called Stargate) was superior to the first one.

Edited July 4, 2021 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Murdoch]

 

Appropriately timed release...

[Maes]

12 hours ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Yep, Hydlide was originally released on Japanese home computers.

 

Yeah, now that you mentioned it I remember the AVGN mentioning that it was originally released on the MSX, among others. I'm too lazy to cross-check, but I doubt the original could have been much better, apart from the lack of console-isms. After all, the original release was in 1984, and the NES version seems a straight-up port of that (but in 1989, plus console interfacing limitations, and Zelda to compare -unfavorably- to.

Edited July 5, 2021 by Maes

[Wadmodder Shalton]

I wouldn't actually call it a porting disaster for the Atari 2600, but the version of Space Invaders that Atari developed for their 2600 system was reskinned to become Pepsi Invaders, where five out of the six alien sprites were replaced with letters spelling "PEPSI".

 

This was some marketing gimmick that Atari produced for Coca-Cola. The main difference between this and Atari's Space Invaders on the same system is that there's a three-minute time limit at the bottom and you can't run even out of lives, basically it's get a number of points until time runs out.

 

The game itself wasn't actually officially released at retail, instead it was given to 125 sales executives at a sales convention in 1983. This game is very rare today, costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars on eBay.

The game cartridge label is unique because guess what, "it's nothing on it", which makes it feel like your buying a bootleg Atari 2600 game on an unlabeled cartridge. Here's an image of the game's packaging and cartridge to give you an idea:

Looks pretty neat for an Atari 2600 game, right? Even though this technically isn't an Atari 2600 porting disaster, I just wanted to mention it here.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Dark Pulse]

On 7/2/2021 at 8:20 PM, roadworx said:

saints row 2 for the pc was absolutely atrocious. sometimes it worked okayish, albeit at a fairly low framerate cuz it wasn't optimized whatsoever, and other times it was just...sped up? it was weird, for whatever reason sometimes the game would play at a faster speed, and it made it practically unplayable. i've heard that the xbox 360 only being limited to a certain amount of cores was the culprit (because the port barely had jack shit done for optimization), but my memory is really foggy cuz it was years ago.

 

that's not to mention how buggy it was and how often it crashed, which it did a fuckload.

This at least has a happy ending: They did eventually find the source code, and they are (slowly) working on a version that will fix the bugs and add in the console DLC as well.

 

No ETA for that though, last I heard.

Edited July 5, 2021 by Dark Pulse

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Elf Bowling 1 & 2 for the Game Boy Advance & Nintendo DS were crappy ports of two freeware game crammed onto a single cartridge. Awful graphics, bad controls & unappealing sound & music. This was developed by Black Lantern Studios published by Ignition Entertainment, and wasn't produced by NStorm & was released without permission of the Copyright & Trademark owner Matthew Lichtenwalter, and the Nintendo DS version of both games were pulled from stores only a week after it was released.

 

The Klax/Marble Madness compilation for Game Boy Advance, well at least on the Marble Madness port with unresponsive controls, buggy gameplay & repeating after level 3. At least the port of Klax is good despite also repeating after level 3.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Carmageddon 64 - a terrible Nintendo 64 port of Carmageddon II developed by Software Creations & published by Titus Interactive (yes that Titus of Superman 64 fame) with bad graphics, awful physics & car handling, unresponsive controls, & Comic Sans as the font.

Edited July 19, 2021 by Wadmodder Shalton

[lazygecko]

On 7/1/2021 at 10:09 PM, Murdoch said:

Mortal Kombat on the original gameboy. Never played it but the idea anyone thought it would possibly not be a complete dumpster fire makes my brain hurt.

 

I'm pretty sure that even the original Game Boy ports of Mortal Kombat 1 through 3 all play better than Mortal Kombat Advance at the end of the day. That's how bad of a port it is. Their worst sins are having really janky update rates and poor visuals, but they at least retain some degree of familiarity with the fundamentals of MK gameplay. MKA on the other hand feels like some mateur rookie's first ever attempt at creating a fighting game engine in Click & Play or some shit using MK sprite rips found online.

 

 

[Maes]

@lazygecko: dunno...the moves and feel all seem to be there IMO. But for some reason they really screwed up the frame timings, delays and hitboxes, so in a sense it plays like a shadow of its former self. The AI doesn't seem to be putitng in much effort either., but perhaps it's just hindered by how awkward the controls are.

Edited July 8, 2021 by Maes

[Arrowhead]

The PS2 port of the little known RTS Conflict Zone is pretty terrible. It was the first bad port experience I had. I remember being 8 years old and immensely disappointed.

[HavoX]

On 7/4/2021 at 10:48 AM, Mattfrie1 said:

- Hexen (PSX): I've already gone in-depth into this one in the past, the long loading times and choppy framerate kill this one.

AT least they didn't fuck up the N64 version. It was very enjoyable to me AND the music was, as a couple of Youtube users mentioned many years ago, very tasteful. (IMHO, it sounded MUCH better than the PC's MIDI.)

One problem I have with the N64 port though (And forgive me, it's been a long, long time since I've played it.) ... the Ettin didn't sound ANYTHING like the PC counterpart.

[Maes]

On 7/2/2021 at 1:46 PM, Maes said:

The story in the media went that the arcade's source code had been lost, and that the gameplay was recreated by observing an arcade machine. Dunno to what extent this was actually true, fact is, it played incredibly stiff. Basic mechanics and physics were wrong, monster behavior was wrong, a lot of advanced arcade techniques didn't work (even "riding" bubbles was harder, and you could not use them to emerge from the bottom of the screen), scoring was wrong, power-ups didn't work like they were supposed to, etc.

 

OK, quoting myself here, but with some critical thinking that story, even if partially or even entirely true (the Great Lost Source Code, the Lost Ancient Knowledge...) for what regards the arcade game itself, does not hold any water whatsoever. At least not for justifying the Akklaim port's crappiness.

 

There were far more recent (and decent) ports of the game to look up to for inspiration, including -gasp- contemporary Bubble Bobble arcade games by TAITO (Bubble Memories (1994), Bubble Symphony (1996) as well as console ports like Bubble Bobble 2 on the NES), which got the player, bubble, power-up and monster mechanics down to a tee. They were updated and different games ofc, but they played and felt like Bubble Bobble in every way. Was their source code lost too? Was none of the involved developers reachable?

 

Hell, they could have used the old Firebird/Novalogic PC/Amiga/Atari ST version as a base and still they wouldn't have made such a porting disaster. And, all things considered, that version was actually pretty well done...

 

Of course, with the above I'm assuming that TAITO themselves gave a damn about how the project would turn up, but other than licensing the trademark (and maybe providing a functional arcade machine "for close study", as the story went), that seems to be where their involvement ended. Yet another corporate fuckup, how original. Can't go back and explain that to my 16-yo self though...

Edited July 9, 2021 by Maes

[Wavy]

Ark Survival Evolved on the Nintendo Switch.

Everything is a horrible smudged mess that runs at a poor framerate.

 

 

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Duke Nukem 3D on Sega Mega Drive (or otherwise known as the Sega Genesis), a weird port of just the second episode of the game released in 1998 exclusively in South America by Tec Toy that 3D Realms had nothing to do with. Awful graphics, bad framerate, stiff controls, weak soundtrack & lame presentation.

 

[Noiser]

4 hours ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Duke Nukem 3D on Sega Mega Drive (or otherwise known as the Sega Genesis), a weird port of just the second episode of the game released in 1998 exclusively in South America by Tec Toy that 3D Realms had nothing to do with. Awful graphics, bad framerate, stiff controls, weak soundtrack & lame presentation.

I think you are being a bit unfair on this one. The game was considered a huge achievement for such limited hardware and I think the framerate is quite good if you take the size of the screen into account. Graphics could be better I guess, but they are not "as bad" if you play on a CRT+composite monitor. It uses a lot of dithering to increase the number of colors, a technique that doesn't work on LCD screens.

 

But hey sure, it also have a lot of flaws. The game is insanely hard - unfortunately they don't had enough time to test it as intended (three guys made the game, two created the engine and one made the levels). If you know portuguese, you can watch an in-depth interview about the development here. It's pretty cool!

Edited July 10, 2021 by Noiser

[Egg Boy]

Dead space on PC.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Duke Nukem 3D on the Tiger Game Com, a port where you can't turn, only strafe and with three fire buttons. Features three episodes with four levels each, and at least four weapons. I've seen very few people play this game on YouTube and nobody has done a full walkthrough of this version.

 

What makes this port interesting is that it has centered sprites of the Pistol, Shotgun & RPG, something that hasn't been recreated by anyone for Doom or Duke 3D for that matter.

Edited July 19, 2021 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Maes]

Well, technically, you can "turn" whenever there's an intersection that requires/allows you to do so. They even animated the "turning" with a sort of "camera blur". But not during actual combat, yeah. That occurs strictly in one plane.As far as game.com games go however, this is easily the most impressive and perhaps the "best" of them all. Whether it's a true Wolf3D-like FPS, a rail-shooter, or a Dungeon Master clone, is debatable. Perhaps a bit of everything.

 

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by Maes

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Coleco's ports of their games on the Intellivision, these were Carnival, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, Lady Bug, Mouse Trap, Turbo, Venture & Zaxxon. They suffered for unresponsive controls, missing stages, and hard to see graphics.

[Murdoch]

On 7/11/2021 at 3:22 AM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Duke Nukem 3D on Sega Mega Drive (or otherwise known as the Sega Genesis), a weird port of just the second episode of the game released in 1998 exclusively in South America by Tec Toy that 3D Realms had nothing to do with. Awful graphics, bad framerate, stiff controls, weak soundtrack & lame presentation.

 

Honestly this is objective quite awful and likely plays like ass. But watching the video it's still oddly impressive that it did not cause the Genesis to simply burst into flames.

[Li'l devil]

Console ports of Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive got no updates whatsoever since release, and both TF2 and CSGO are so popular in part because they're still updated to this day on PC, so console players got completely screwed with these. Not that I complain, since console players got what they deserved. PC master race! But at least the console versions of these games are kind of like time capsules as they represent the most vanilla experience you can get. Another examples I know are Wii ports of earlier CoD games because Wii was more like a handheld in terms of power compared to other consoles, as well as last gen ports of CoD: Black Ops 3 (these in particular are infamously bad for their quality).

 

What does make me upset about bad ports is... why do them when you don't care about the platform you port them onto in the first place? I guess because the publishers want to get a cash grab from these platforms in addition to the main platforms, which is shitty, but what else can you expect from a big publisher? :)

[Teo Slayer]

On 7/4/2021 at 10:53 PM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Hydlide on NES, a near unplayable port with horrendous collision detection and a useless save system consisting of passwords on every square tile.

I can really agree with the save system, it's messed up. Also that music repeating all over and over and over gives me headaches. The worse is that if you enter a dark room without a lattern, you die of all sudden. After you get the lattern, you can see that you were killed by NOTHING.

[Maes]

30 minutes ago, Teo Slayer said:

I can really agree with the save system, it's messed up. Also that music repeating all over and over and over gives me headaches. The worse is that if you enter a dark room without a lattern, you die of all sudden. After you get the lattern, you can see that you were killed by NOTHING.

 

You know, that reminds me of how old games tended to be unforgiving, petty, obscure, and absolutely non-negotiable/fixable with updates. They exuded that "life ain't fair kiddo, suck it up" vibe. E.g. that non-explainable death in Hydlide? Well, it could be a bug, it could be a "ghost monster", you were eaten by a grue, who knows? Either way, there was nothing you could do to fix it. Just learn it the hard way and stay the fuck out of there, if you can. 'Suck it up" all the way.

 

If you were lucky, you could find a walkthrough in a magazine or coerce a couple of tips from self-proclaimed "masters" of the game, but that was it.

Edited July 23, 2021 by Maes

[Wadmodder Shalton]

There's rarely any porting disasters for the Arcade, aside from a few bizarre Japanese exclusive ports, such as Counter-Strike Neo, Half-Life 2 Survivor & Left 4 Dead Survivors.

 

However, unless it technically counts as a porting disaster, very few of you don't talk about it that much, it's that weird Galaxian Hardware port of Pac-Man. This port contains an awful color choice & bad sound effects.

 

Edited May 15, 2022 by Wadmodder Shalton

[ICID]

The PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight was so broken that WB was forced to pull it from Steam and offer refunds. Imagine how many glitches a game has to have for a modern AAA studio to pull it.

[Egg Boy]

9 minutes ago, ICID said:

The PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight was so broken that WB was forced to pull it from Steam and offer refunds. Imagine how many glitches a game has to have for a modern AAA studio to pull it.

Honestly wasn’t nearly as bad as cyberpunk, and they ended up fixing it, not trying to defend WB games, notably shitty company