What's the worst version of your favorite game?

[+jgkspsx]

I've been thinking about a rather strange subject: versions you hate of games you love.

 

I love Joust. I love Joust clones. I love almost any game that features a flap button. But not every game.

 

I picked up the Majesco Midway/Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits for the Game Boy Advance for cheap recently as part of a bundle. I was wondering why I didn't have it, given that I really love Joust.

 

Well, I remembered.

 

It is really, really, REALLY REALLY bad. Get a load of this:

 

 

THE BIRD EVEN WALKS BACKWARDS. I can get used to some pretty wide parameters of gravity, flap speed, motion, the hitboxes, what have you. But this is bad, bad, bad in every conceivable way. Sound, graphics, control, game feel, animation. EVERYTHING IS BAD.

 

Versions/clones/spinoffs of Joust I love:

- Joust (Arcade)

- Joust (Atari ST)

- Joust (Atari 5200... I think, my 5200 got lost in a move and I don't really remember it)

- Joust (Atari 7800)

- Joust (Atari Lynx)

- Joust (Pinball)
- Buzzard Bait (CoCo)

- Pegasus and the Phantom Riders (CoCo)

- Balloon Fight (NES)

- KnightEx (Vectrex)

- Sportsball (Wii U)

- FlapPing (Atari 2600)

 

Versions of Joust I'm okay with:

- Joust (Atari 2600)

- Joust (NES)

- Joust (Board game)

- Joust 2 (Arcade)

- Justice Duel (NES)

 

Versions of Joust I despise:

- The game.com version (which is 100% better than the following two)

- This GBA one

- This LCD game (which is amazingly impressive although it is still trash - it seems like they modeled an actual game of Joust with physics and all, with the sound to match, and then had an LCD display for it)

 

 

(If this thread turns into people recommending Joust clones I don't know about I'm okay with that too.)

[The Usotsuki]

Re Joust, I have the carts with the SNES and Genesis ports which are pretty good, and I play the Apple ][ version now and then (a file crack that I did).

 

I don't really have any one favorite game.  But I remember the GB version of Mortal Kombat 3 was a flaming pile, which was disappointing after the port of Mortal Kombat II was actually pretty good for what it was. Had they given it a bit more ROM space they prolly could've rammed the whole game into that little cart.

[bluejay]

Every console port of Doom (1993). Doom needs to be played on a keyboard, and no one will change my mind.

[Pixelboy]

Mega Man on PC. Mega Man III on PC was a tiny bit better, but not by much.

 

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

I'm a pretty big fan of the mario kart series, but lately I can't go back to some of them because I can't stand baby sounds.  It's like nails on a chalkboard to me, and I find that Mario Kart Double Dash to be the worst offender (i think).  I also hate how you can't turn off the noises characters makes in many nintendo games, and over the years their voices and baby sounds got increasingly more grating to my ears to the point of making them unplayable.  Don't get me started on mario world 2 on snes, holy crap.

 

[+Dutch Colecovision Fan]

Donkey Kong and Pac Man are one of my favorite games (the cause of my addiction which started in the early eighties).

 

To my opinion the worst clone of Donkey Kong is Tigervision's King Kong for the Atari 2600.

 

And now the oppositie, Tigervision made one of the best Pac Man clones with Jawbreaker for the Atari 2600. I still remember the moment when I demonstrated it to a few friends. They all fell of the couch when the toothbrush showed up!

 

[Tanooki]

I'll throw the big gorilla in the room here.  Almost all the conversions of popular arcade and Nintendo games of the 80s and earlier 90s to the Tiger original handheld, Game.com, and even R-Zone format.

 

There are exceptions, strange anomalies that oddly work when they shouldn't like Daytona USA, or the wii like light gun game of Virtua Cop.  But most range from good at a generic level, but then rapidly downwards towards a range of what the hell, to this is straight f'ing awful depending on the game it's supposedly trying to play homage to.

 

I recently got some R-Zone games, and strangely I have to give a nod for the game being the worst version, but also an accurate enough to still be passably good game of Panzer Dragoon.  You can shoot all over, use all 4 view angles, has the bosses it's strange because it works.  Daytona is the same on there, despite being segmented, if you see the bend in the road and hold the d-pad the direction of it, you stay on course and it works, while not will smash a wall or into another car.  Then you get stuff like MK Trilogy and it's like what the hell man?!

[+jgkspsx]

Hahaha, I spent a LOT of hours on Panzer Dragoon and Daytona on my R-Zone. I agree, they play bizarrely well. Fighters Megamix and Primal Rage, on the other hand...

 

EDIT: I think I enjoy the R-Zone Panzer Dragoon more than the Game Gear one ?

[Jinroh]

15 hours ago, Pixelboy said:

Mega Man on PC. Mega Man III on PC was a tiny bit better, but not by much.

 

The first Mega Man PC, that was the first game I bought with my own money for my old Tandy 1000. x3

Edited February 26, 2021 by Jinroh

[DragonGrafx-16]

6 minutes ago, Jinroh said:

The first Mega Man PC, that was the first game I bought with my own money for my old Tandy 1000. x3

I'm so sorry. XD

 

Anyway mine is the NES version of Road Blasters which many consider to be the worst version of the game but that version IS my favorite version and the only one I've beaten.

 

But it's not my favorite game as that is Soldier Blade and there's only two versions the original and the Special version.

Edited February 26, 2021 by DragonGrafx-16

[bluejay]

Apple II Tetris was awful. I like it less than I like the PC version, because at least that one looks okay, and even the Commodore PET version, because that one has decent controls. Apple II Tetris was an abomination that was the combination of horrible graphics, horrible sound, and horrible controls.

tl;dr It's not fun.

[Tanooki]

22 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

Hahaha, I spent a LOT of hours on Panzer Dragoon and Daytona on my R-Zone. I agree, they play bizarrely well. Fighters Megamix and Primal Rage, on the other hand...

 

EDIT: I think I enjoy the R-Zone Panzer Dragoon more than the Game Gear one ?

Seriously?  I have the PD Mini game on a multicart I've got for my GBA that has like the 100 best GG/SMS games on it.  I've never really given it a lot of attention so now I'm curious.

 

When I got my r-zone over a year ago it had that average tiger fair jedi game, shortly after daytona which on starting mode I've been able to win first.  I bought this lot for $125 which had the same XPG and 2 games, but 7 more I didn't, and the 2 I didn't are in nicer shape and all had the dust clips.  I've yet to dig into them largely, but I did add PD, MKT, Batman & Robin, Battle Arena Toshinden, Indy 500, and the other 2 Star Wars (MF and Rebel Forces) to play.  I get it, I truly do dumping on Tiger.  MOre than 1/2 their segmented og games are utter crap, strangely some of their better ones shouldn't be, or are the generic junk like baseball and pinball.  The XPG is much the same, nothing truly rotten, some mediocrity, and strangely a few games that shouldn't by any rights be engaging but are.  Most people rail on the RZone due to that atrocious headset and it ends there, probably never tried the other two improved variations which make it all the more better.

[+jgkspsx]

Panzer Dragoon Mini is not terrible but it's very slow and very easy and very clearly aimed at kids. At least the R-Zone version isn't a battle of attrition with my attention span.

[+jgkspsx]

16 hours ago, Pixelboy said:

Mega Man on PC. Mega Man III on PC was a tiny bit better, but not by much.

When I was a kid there was a sketchy local store that rented CD-ROM games. This was one of the first CDs I ever rented, along with FMV "racing" classic Mega Race:

 

 

It was the first time I ever played "Mega Man", and the first home port of Street Fighter II I ever played. 

 

 

Every one of the four games is a shameful parody of the source material. The Mega Man games aren't even ports, they're just junk games developed by some poor schlub after a paycheck:

 

 

The first time I played ACTUAL Mega Man 1 I was so confused. I had no idea that this piece of crap I sucked at was not the real thing. I couldn't understand why people liked it.

 

To be honest, I have never had very warm feelings towards either series since. (With the exception of Mega Man Legends and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo.)

[Steven Pendleton]

Fortunately for me, there is no worst version of Super Metroid. They're all the same. I guess you could say the worst version is the Switch release since it requires a subscription fee to play it and I hate subscription fees, so I'll go with that.

[IntelliMission]

In my case it's The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. It's a perfect example of an "if it works, don' touch it" situation that, of course, was touched. I rather play the monochrome or CGA versions and, of course, I prefer the EGA version (my favorite) to the Special Edition. I'll add some screenshots in a spoiler:

 

Spoiler

 

Things turn bad from the start

 

Why?

 

The magic is gone

 

What was the point?

 

 

Edited February 26, 2021 by IntelliMission

[+jgkspsx]

Uggggh. I just played through SoMI on Sega CD the other week. It was really good. I know the Xbox version let you play classic mode, but did it keep the horrible artwork in the cutscenes?

[Tanooki]

Wow @jgkspsxthat's rough.  Hell of a start on those capcom franchises.  SF2 on DOS is serviceable at best, and that's kind of generous.  Despite that I've been thinking bout buying a boxed copy just for fun because later last year I found the original DOS Street Fighter 1 in this VHS like puffy box case I've kept just to display.  It's not the best either, but you could do worse from things I've seen as the game itself was already kind of a pain.

Mega Man though that one there's a big interesting story you must see bout that and the sequel.  Gaming Historian has this amazing clip on youtube about it.  He found the actual designer and interviewed the dude and got all the details of why it is what it is.  I remember in my oldwarezy days o the 90s trying the first, but not the third (which still not good, sucks less) and man that game is just weird and not a good weird.

 

I've been slowly over the last couple years picking off preferably complete boxed up copies of the old earlier 90s very late 80s DOS games I actually paid for as a kid back in the day and I've picked off some nasty ones (worst being Simpsons Arcade Game which is fun at least) right now I'm looking at Speed Racer, but SF2 is on my radar.

[Keatah]

Gyruss on the NES. The ships look nothing like the Arcade. And they don't even have rotational capability. It's a reimagined rewrite at best.

[Keatah]

On 2/24/2021 at 11:26 PM, bluejay said:

Every console port of Doom (1993). Doom needs to be played on a keyboard, and no one will change my mind.

I have to second this. And not just the keyboard. There's so many other aspects that make original Doom "Doom".

 

OPL-3 FM synthesizer sounds.

Disk-access icon.

Additional wads and mods.

VGA'ish graphics.

Not forgetting the freshness of a new genre of games.

 

[DragonGrafx-16]

.

Edited February 27, 2021 by DragonGrafx-16
.

[DragonGrafx-16]

5 hours ago, Keatah said:

Gyruss on the NES. The ships look nothing like the Arcade. And they don't even have rotational capability. It's a reimagined rewrite at best.

 

But I love that game... the NES version way more than the arcade version. 

[Tanooki]

I don't agree on Doom.  The game was early enough like Wolfenstein 3D it was specifically made to work as well on a controller as a keyboard.  The concept of the mouse while there wasn't the best and really wasn't thoughtfully implemented until polygon 3D of Quake hit.  I can comfortably play Doom on a controller or keyboard just fine, seems more like a personal issue.

 

 

As far as Gyruss goes, the NES game is a remake and remix of the arcade, they don't handle the same in many ways.  I do too enjoy the NES one a bit more, do have access to both as Gyruss is on that icade 60in1 board.

[bluejay]

I mean, I suppose Doom could be fun on modern Dualshocks and Xbox controllers, but it’s absolute hell on older controllers that exclusively use D-pads, especially non-Nintendo ones. Regardless, Doom is most fun when played on a keyboard.

 

 

[Keatah]

Do you play ZDoom?

https://www.zdoom.org/index