What's the worst version of your favorite game?

[Tempest]

On 4/28/2021 at 2:02 PM, Lord Mushroom said:

Bubble Bobble (Apple II):

 

Aww... The Apple II is really trying hard there, but yeah it's not a great version.  I'm amazed the Apple II got it all to be honest.  Still, until I got the NES version it was all I had.

[Tanooki]

UGH I still wish I had my Game & Watch collection, some of it at least, Balloon Fight was one of the best.  A strongly(for segmented LCD play) cloned copy of Balloon Trip mode of the NES cart and it's just so much fun.

[+GoldLeader]

On 4/28/2021 at 10:42 AM, jgkspsx said:

I have recently spent time with the original Nintendo-developed Game Boy Joust/Defender release, the game.com version on Williams Arcade Classics, and the Game Boy/Color Midway Arcade Hits version. And you know what...

 

The Nintendo-developed Game Boy one is really, really bad. Really bad. Down with the GBA one bad. Videos do not capture how bad and unfun it is, but they come close.

 

Not only are the physics awful and the flapping painful and the screen claustrophobic, it also, unforgivably, stops the game when you die and makes you press a button to continue. I am convinced that this was ported by somebody who worked on Balloon Fight and wanted Joust to look worse in comparison.

 

I have to say, now that I have a game.com with a working screen again, Joust is actually pretty good. It is definitely better than despicable. And pretty much the only game on the Williams cart worth playing. I think it’s better than the 2600 and NES versions at least. If you have really good lighting.

 

 

And, finally, I got the Game Boy Color cart, and it’s actually good. It looks, sounds, and plays like Joust. Since it is a black cartridge, it works fine on an OG Game Boy. If you want to play Joust on a Game Boy of any kind, this is your only acceptable option.

 

It’s a lot of fun and plays perfectly well. Given the choice I’m always going to play the Lynx one, but this is definitely in the “good port” pile.

 

 

Cheesy though it is with those bigass sprites bouncing around the screen,  That Game Boy version still looks more fun and playable than what (admittedly little) I remember of the NES version,  which as I recall was like a Joust themed random event,  whereby you hit the flap button a couple of times and then your bird bounces around the screen like a pinball and you have almost no control over it...

 

I even have it on cart but consider it unplayable....

[Guest]

On 4/29/2021 at 9:00 PM, Tempest said:

Aww... The Apple II is really trying hard there, but yeah it's not a great version.  I'm amazed the Apple II got it all to be honest.  Still, until I got the NES version it was all I had.

The NES version is RIGHT up there. My favourite game of all time is BB.

I love the C64 version of all the conversions. It loads in fairly quick time and is all in one load.

Some bits are missing due to Ste Ruddy the coder, not knowing all the secrets, rather than not having the capacity or wherewithall to put them all in.

I think that is a project for someone there.

 

There are some odd versions on handhelds, but they're all pretty playable. The CPC remake is astonishing!! If you've not seen it, check it out. Now

that version the original for the CPC was crap.

 

______

 

I had a laugh the other day, looking at Klax on the 2600. But... It plays pretty good, but has to be the worst version.

[Guest]

 

 

This CPC Rodland does not look too bad, now does it ?

But it is soooooooooooooooo slow and badly done.

The Speccy, C64 and Amiga versions are really excellent. I am sure, having seen the excellent job done on the BB remake that this could be done properly. You have to watch the video, possibly a Lets Compare to see how bad it is. Only side by side does the true horror reveal itself.

[Lord Mushroom]

21 minutes ago, ∞ Vince ∞ said:

The NES version is RIGHT up there. My favourite game of all time is BB.

I love the C64 version of all the conversions. It loads in fairly quick time and is all in one load.

My favourite conversion (besides those offering 4-player play) is Amiga´s. I think it has the best soundtrack. The playlist of my 130 favourite songs/tunes has the in-game theme in it.

[Lord Mushroom]

19 minutes ago, ∞ Vince ∞ said:

 

 

This CPC Rodland does not look too bad, now does it ?

But it is soooooooooooooooo slow and badly done.

It has the same problem as the Amstrad version of Bubble Bobble. Reduced graphics, slow play and missing the great music. But I would imagine that they are still amongst the better games for the Amstrad.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

It has the same problem as the Amstrad version of Bubble Bobble. Reduced graphics, slow play and missing the great music. But I would imagine that they are still amongst the better games for the Amstrad.

have you played it ? Too slow to be playable.
BB on CPC was ok, not great. The remake of BB on CPC is classy.

[Lord Mushroom]

4 hours ago, ∞ Vince ∞ said:

have you played it ? Too slow to be playable.
BB on CPC was ok, not great. The remake of BB on CPC is classy.

No, I have played neither of them. They just seemed decent for such a weak computer.

[Guest]

21 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

No, I have played neither of them. They just seemed decent for such a weak computer.

Yeah, but you can only really judge it from playing. The CPC *is capable of good games and the Plus range very much so.

There are a handful of corking exclusive games too.

 

The main issue is that games just got knockdown ports from the Speccy as they were bot Z80 machines. But that's a reflection of the market share being much much smaller for Amstrad.

When people write games from scratch for them you get much better smoother more colourful and playful games.

[Cynicaster]

Just thought of another one - Miner 2049er on Game Boy.  I know there are several very old/shitty versions of this game (Atari 2600, Apple II, etc.) but I feel like the Game Boy should be held to a higher standard because it had the benefit of several more years' worth of lessons learned in game design.  

 

 

[BassGuitari]

Tetris - Commodore 64: With its bizarre Gigeresque art style and strange music, this version is so odd and distinct from every other official version of Tetris I've seen that it's hard to believe it was actually an official port. In a way I actually respect that about it, but the plain, undetailed block graphics look like a perfunctory BASIC game superimposed against the sci-fi artwork, and I'm not a fan of "insta-drop" control styles (which IIRC this one uses). Additionally, it lacks many of the options and features found in other ports of the game, and control becomes problematic as the game speeds up. The C64 version is still fun--it's still Tetris, after all--but of all the versions of Tetris I could play, I would choose the Commodore version only by virtue of my Commodore being the system I had handy at the moment. (Or if I was just in the mood for something funky.)

 

Defender - IBM/PC: A few different versions of Defender came to mind when I tried to consider the "worst." The Game Boy Color version is a fairly faithful adaptation of the arcade original, but is hard to play on account of its tiny sprites. The Intellivision port is an admirable and distinctly Intellivision effort that is somewhat undercut by its difficult control (the disc always gets me killed; a rare instance of the Intellivision controller being an actual impediment to gameplay for me). For a moment I even considered the Atari 2600 version, with its primitive graphics, flicker-related idiosyncrasies, and lack of independent smart bomb and hyperspace controls, before I immediately remembered that it's one of my most-played 2600 games. ? But the PC version takes the cake for me as the ultimate balance of ugly audiovisuals, janky physics, and bad control. (I don't hear much good about the Game.com version, but I've never played it.)

 

Galaga - SG-1000: I have to start by saying this isn't actually a bad game. It's actually pretty good, considering (not great, but good). But it's a very weird port of Galaga. Licensed, adapted, and re-titled Sega-Galaga by Sega, the SG-1000 port feels very different from other home versions (of which this was actually the very first, for what that's worth!). To wit: the aliens can only move in eight directions; the Galagas can deploy tractor beams irrespective of how many aliens are still left; there are no Challenging Stages; the aliens are generally less aggressive and can be quickly obliterated before they can even settle into formation (a tedious but necessary tactic, as they become very fast and hard to track in later stages if allowed to attack); the sprites are sharp and well-defined but only single-colored; sound is chirpy and lacking polyphony. You can breeze through this game in a zen-like trance until around Stage 34 or 35, when the game decides it's had enough of your shit. ? (I've heard the version included on Arcade Classics for CD-i is pretty bad, but I haven't played it.)

 

One of my all-time favorites is the original Resident Evil 2 for PS1, and while I haven't had the opportunity(?) to play them, there are some pretty...uh...questionable interpretations for the Game.com and 99X handheld formats. ?

[+jgkspsx]

2 hours ago, BassGuitari said:

Defender - IBM/PC: <...>
 

(I don't hear much good about the Game.com version, but I've never played it.)

As the resident game.com obsessive, it’s not particularly bad. The screen cannot keep up with it, but the same is true for the original Game Boy Nintendo port. Sinistar is the only absolutely unplayable game on the Williams Arcade Classics cart.

Quote

One of my all-time favorites is the original Resident Evil 2 for PS1, and while I haven't had the opportunity(?) to play them, there are some pretty...uh...questionable interpretations for the Game.com and 99X handheld formats. 

I would recommend trying the game.com version in an emulator. It’s the most impressive game on the game.com and honestly not bad. It’s very similar in execution to the Game Boy Color prototype of the first Resident Evil.

 

I suspect the 99X is very similar to the game.com version, but that screen is a lower resolution than the game.com, so it’s not exactly the same.

[+wongojack]

23 hours ago, BassGuitari said:

Defender - IBM/PC: A few different versions of Defender came to mind when I tried to consider the "worst." The Game Boy Color version is a fairly faithful adaptation of the arcade original, but is hard to play on account of its tiny sprites. The Intellivision port is an admirable and distinctly Intellivision effort that is somewhat undercut by its difficult control (the disc always gets me killed; a rare instance of the Intellivision controller being an actual impediment to gameplay for me). For a moment I even considered the Atari 2600 version, with its primitive graphics, flicker-related idiosyncrasies, and lack of independent smart bomb and hyperspace controls, before I immediately remembered that it's one of my most-played 2600 games. ? But the PC version takes the cake for me as the ultimate balance of ugly audiovisuals, janky physics, and bad control. (I don't hear much good about the Game.com version, but I've never played it.)

 

There are A LOT of versions of this game, and if you consider unofficial versions, you get even more.  Here are two threads on this topic

Best Defender home conversion - Classic Console Discussion - AtariAge Forums

Best Home Version of Defender? - Classic Console Discussion - AtariAge Forums

 

Somewhere in there is the worst version, but I think you might be the first person in any of these threads to mention a PC/DOS version as the worst.  No one else even mentions it which means you've probably nailed it.

 

As for worst unofficial version.  I vote for this game that ended up on a disk in my C64 collection when I was a kid:  GB64.COM - Defend

 

Honestly it is quite tempting to say the 2600 version is the worst, but unlike some other arcade games on the 2600, there is a compelling game in there.  You can play it, improve, beat your high score and have fun doing it.  It is way better than Pac-Man and especially Donkey Kong which was mentioned earlier.

 

 

[Guest]

I was watching Ikari Warriors Let's Play yesterday.

God help the poor sod who was given the A2600. But he made a commendable effort considering.

It's utter crap, but he still manages to shoehorn the Tank and the Bridge in there, and he has both Music and Sound FX going at the same time.

That kind of skilled coder could probably have done something wonderful with a system with better hardware.

[Guest]

I think it's a bit harsh us going on about systems that are underpowered.

Essentially cash-ins on the popularity of the coin op arcade original, the quality home system version or a movie or whatever.

What I mean is, these versions, they knew would be shit from the off.

 

So they just banged them out, giving some poor sod the job of wacking them together in weeks. Weeks!

We are talking fully machine code games here. Weeks!

They had to be good just to make a shit game go, and on under powered systems the got shafted royally.

Just hope some of them were on pay for the job and not royalties.

[BawesomeBurf]

Well my favorite game is Xenogears, but there aren't any re-releases for that. So we'll down the list until we get to Symphony of the Night. You could really call any version outside of the original the 'worst release', since people always whine about something with each release. I guess if I had to pick one, I would go with the Saturn port because of the slowdown that makes it 'unplayable'.

[+GoldenWheels]

The worst version of my favorite game (Joust) that I own is the tiny LCD arcade version. Perhaps most insulting (because when you buy these things, it isn't REALLY to play it) it is also UGLY, so doesn't even look good on a shelf.

 

It should be burned, and the ashes should be buried. If, at that point, my bladder was willing, I would pee on the grave. Sorry JGKSPSX!

[+jgkspsx]

Ha, that was my pick too! But I swear that the GBA version is worse.

[Steven Pendleton]

So, several months later, I've remembered that my tied-for-#1-favourite game, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, has a somewhat awkward rerelease on the DS, which I always seem to forget about. The emulation is not great, some of the music and sounds are weird, and there is no button to pause the game (just a button on the touchscreen to pause the emulator itself), making some of the fun cheats unusable. These things all apply to the other games on the collection, as well.

[+jgkspsx]

I was just playing that compilation the other day, @Steven Pendleton, and thinking how underwhelming it was.

[Tanooki]

8 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

So, several months later, I've remembered that my tied-for-#1-favourite game, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, has a somewhat awkward rerelease on the DS, which I always seem to forget about. The emulation is not great, some of the music and sounds are weird, and there is no button to pause the game (just a button on the touchscreen to pause the emulator itself), making some of the fun cheats unusable. These things all apply to the other games on the collection, as well.

Actually it's only partly bad emulation.  I know what you're talking about, the hellish speed inconsistencies and overall slowdown.  They secretly left their emulator open ended as did dozens of DS games, so if you pop it into a DSI it will use the 2x CPU and 2X RAM and the game runs smooth.

[Cebus Capucinis]

This one almost seems TOO easy but since it's my favorite arcade game...

 

1942 on the NES. Janky, flickery, slow, unplayable mess.

[+jgkspsx]

41 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Actually it's only partly bad emulation.  I know what you're talking about, the hellish speed inconsistencies and overall slowdown.  They secretly left their emulator open ended as did dozens of DS games, so if you pop it into a DSI it will use the 2x CPU and 2X RAM and the game runs smooth.

Facsinating! [sic] I’ll have to give that a try. Come to think of it I mostly played it on my DSiXL back when, and I played it on a DSLite last week.

[Tanooki]

Yeah google it I'm serious.  The coders didn't speed throttle the game based on the hardware, so it's open ended to use the extra oomph of the DSi to allow the frame rate to come up to where it should be which due to the lack of lagging and clipping helps across the board.

 

There is a list maybe on wikipedia or something spinoff-ish that lists the games on DSi (physical and download) that use the added power, but Sonic is a stand out given how meh it ran on a non 'i' system.  It's like how technically 3DS Hyrule Warriors works on the non 'new' model but it's barely generous calling it serviceable while on the 'New' model it works perfectly as intended.