Worst ports ever.

[kirin jensen]

Mr. Do! for the 2600 and Q*bert for the Odyssey 2.

Really? I thought Mr. Do! wasn't too bad for the 2600.

 

And O2's Q-bert may not look as purty as other Q-bert ports, but it plays exceptionally well.

[Nukey Shay]

Just about any of Coleco's Atari 2600 efforts - You know if Atari had Quality Control they never would've let that happen.

Atari's quality control had nothing to do with what 3rd parties did -- anybody could release any game they wanted to. There was no licensing, permission, or communication of any kind with Atari required.

 

Which is a great thing. 3rd party clones were sometimes better than Atari's ports (i.e. RoboTank vs. Battlezone), and 3rd parties produced many ports or developed ideas that Atari had no interest in.

 

As seen with the NES and their "Seal of Quality", such corporate control is not always a good thing.

With some titles, it's meaningless beyond absurdity.

[+kisrael]

Which is a great thing. 3rd party clones were sometimes better than Atari's ports (i.e. RoboTank vs. Battlezone), and 3rd parties produced many ports or developed ideas that Atari had no interest in.

Just to nitpick, I don't think Battlezone vs Robot Tank is a good example of a 3rd party clone being better. Certainly some people think so, but a lot of people think otherwise. (It's a fair argument, one has fast, almost skitterish action and different weather and damage effects, the other models a 3D environment, has up to two enemies of three different types at once, and has multicolor enemies and a neat tread visual.) So it's not a clearcut example to hold up.

As seen with the NES and their "Seal of Quality", such corporate control is not always a good thing.

With some titles, it's meaningless beyond absurdity.

Hmm. It might've helped the NES avoid a flood of truly horrendous games. Overall the NES library was fairly large and strong. (Also it was getting to the stage where porno games were becoming feasible, and i know there are some examples that made it despite the seal of quality.) Nintendo also got really greedy, but I don't think it was entirely a negative... I'd say the worst of the Atari library is worse than the worst of the NES.

[Dr. Morbis]

Hmm. It might've helped the NES avoid a flood of truly horrendous games. Overall the NES library was fairly large and strong. (Also it was getting to the stage where porno games were becoming feasible, and i know there are some examples that made it despite the seal of quality.) Nintendo also got really greedy, but I don't think it was entirely a negative... I'd say the worst of the Atari library is worse than the worst of the NES.

I thinnk you're right. If you look at the worst of the NES licensed games versus the worst of the NES unlicensed games, you'll see that the difference is staggering. NOA may have let some bad games slip through with the seal, but some of those Color Dreams, Bunch, etc games are truly appalling. Without any controls in place, their would've been a *lot* more titles out there like Cheetahmen II. As great as the ol' VCS was, being so unregulated led to a much larger percentage of unplayable crap.

[8bitgamer]

Galaxian for the 5200 (on the other hand, the ColecoVision version was near arcade-perfect)

Time Pilot for ColecoVision (a real disappointment, missing a level, sluggish gameplay)

BurgerTime for PlayStation (it was on the Arcade's Greatest Hits Midway Collection 2 and had terrible controls)

Frogger for the SNES and Genesis (missing music)

 

http://brettweisswords.blogspot.com/

[briza]

Not all the games were bad ports. Some games for the Coco3 that could be classed as excellent. would be Sinistarr, Those Darn Marbles(Based on the Marble Madness game on the Amiga), Rampage, Rad Warrior, Gold Runner 2000(1 of the best 8 bit Lode runner versions I have played). just to name a few.

 

 

But there is 2 games officially licensed by Tandy that are really crap, lousy graphics, over rated to play.

 

Predator and Robocop for the coco3. Glad I never paid for these 2.

 

I didn't mind Robocop myself, though I could never get into Predator either. Wanted to like it but just couldn't get into it. Same with Super Pitfall.

 

If the programmer for Robocop had did a better job with the graphics I would rate it a classic. The graphics were to blocky. And the colors used were not the best. I would blame Tandy for the way Robocop was done. Tandy gave the programmers a certain time period to get games done in. If say Greg had 6 months to design the game I think he would have made the graphics more detailed and used a better color scheme. This also goes for Predator as well.

 

If you want to play Super pitfall. Then play the version that was cracked to use the 6309 chip. This did wonders to the game play overall. The 6809 chip the game play was too slow. 6309 made the game play speed up just perfectly.

 

3 licensed ports I thought were great was Rad Warrior and Rampage and Mind Roll. At least the programmers put a lot of effort into the graphics. A game sells better if the Game play, Graphics and sound are good. and that's what these 3 ports had.

 

laters

 

Briza

[STICH666]

[fdurso224]

Hi guys,

 

Whoa, I actually subscribed to this thread? Its been 2 freakin years! 8^)

 

Anthony....

Edited July 13, 2009 by fdurso224

[carmel_andrews]

I can think of one on the A8....Rampage (Activision)

 

Outrun...c64

 

Great Giana sisters.....ST

[Polybius]

Rampage for the 2600 sucked bad.

[VectorGamer]

I guess I'll put on my Captain Obvious cap on:

 

Pac-Man, Defender and Donkey Kong for the VCS

[Reaperman]

since the thread's back.

 

there was no excuse for GBA's Marble Madness to be the worst port ever of that title. Maybe they should have just licensed the NES emulator and sold that version on GBA...

 

also ballblazer famicom was pretty bad

Edited July 14, 2009 by Reaperman

[brojamfootball]

Galaxian for the 5200 (on the other hand, the ColecoVision version was near arcade-perfect)

Time Pilot for ColecoVision (a real disappointment, missing a level, sluggish gameplay)

BurgerTime for PlayStation (it was on the Arcade's Greatest Hits Midway Collection 2 and had terrible controls)

Frogger for the SNES and Genesis (missing music)

 

http://brettweisswords.blogspot.com/

Frogger for the Genesis was arguably pixel perfect. Lack of music hardly makes it one of the 'worst ports ever.'

[BrianC]

Frogger for the SNES and Genesis (missing music)

 

Most ports of Frogger have missing or altered music, including recent ones like the XBLA and GBA versions. The Genesis one had more of the arcade music than many other ports. The original game played fast and loose with copyrights, so it's very likely that missing music will stay missing in most newer ports.

Edited July 14, 2009 by BrianC

[kirin jensen]

If anyone ever played it, they'd add Springer for the 2600.

 

Q*bert for the O2 plays amazingly well. Popeye would be a better candidate for worst port on the O2.