Home Games You Like Over the Arcade

[VectorGamer]

Been playing a lot of ColecoVision Galaxian lately.

 

Also like ColecoVision Donkey Kong better than the arcade because it's easier although missing the pie factory.

 

ColecoVision Mario Bros. but I don't have that one anymore unless they want to sell the ROM.

 

Battlezone and Scramble on the 2600 have been getting a lot of play lately too.

[4300]

Contra comes to mind. I find the NES version to be better all around. 

[Keatah]

Space Invaders on the VCS:

I hated the arcade version. Played it exactly one time. Too hard. Colors were harsh. Waste of quarters. The VCS version was all the opposite of that. And it added extra features and variations. Runners up would be Space Invaders on the 5200 and 400/800, all 3 iterations. Points for those for colorful invader palette and super smooth gameplay.

 

Pac-Man on almost any home platform:

It was a waste of time for me to play this in the arcade. As usual the difficulty was way too much for my infantile skills. Might as well give money away than to play this shit.

 

Missile Command on the VCS and 400/800:

While I didn't totally dislike Missile Command in the arcade, I never sought it out or played it much. I had to have had extra quarters and have gotten "played on" on all the other games first. But the VCS version was so much more palatable to a kid. Game options. Colors. Simple base control - 1 vs 3. In fact I more or less learned of (and first played) MC on the VCS before tackling the arcade. The 400/800 version felt like a sequel when I got it months after the VCS version.

 

Asteroids on the VCS and play-alike clones on the Apple II:

For much the same reasons I've been stating, difficulty. I hated the controls too. Too many buttons. I also didn't go much for the monochromatic look either. And the bright dots - lots of scary radiation. Didn't like it. But again, the VCS had color and was easier and had variations. Play & control was so much more pleasant with the joystick. When it came to the Apple II, Asteroids never had an official port, but had many spoofs. Apple-Oids, The Asteroid Field, Planetoids, and more. They were all in "vector" graphics and looked good on my 5" Trinitron monitor. Vector at home was still somewhat of a novelty.

 

Defender on the Atari 800:

This was so much better at home, by lightyears even! The arcade's controls were incredibly cumbersome and un-natural. I played the arcade version exactly 2 times. Then no more. Leave that to the one-trick savants of the time. The smoothly progressing difficulty and gameplay on the 800 was a boon to me. And at home, with the PointMaster joystick I was practically a circus monkey gyrating in every imaginable position on those then popular beanbags and the rest of the furniture.

 

Gyruss on the C64:

It's not that I actually truly like Gyruss on the C64 more than the arcade version, no. They were about equal - considering it was a home port. But it was the only viable version of Gyruss I could play. I didn't learn of Gyruss on the 400/800 till way later and therefore didn't really play it much. The 400/800 version sucked because its palette was too different. And it was too monochromatic. The player indicator, spare ships, score, stage count, all the same. And I didn't like that. Music is important in Gyruss, and here the 400/800's Pokey chip did a better job than the c64's SID. C64 Gyruss gets points because it existed, had a good palette and didn't look cheap.

 

In broad terms I could possibly say all of them because:

1- free forever once you purchased/acquired the game, infinite resets & replay

2- play and trade and borrow with your buddies

3- sometimes the ability to pause (moreso nowadays with emulation)

4- convenience play anytime anywhere, always available

5- more comfortable home setting

6- traditional vintage cartridges were not designed to steal your quarters

7- and likely other reasons I can't recall at this instant

8- mame and emulation

 

This last point, mame & emulation, nullifies and equalizes all arcade games. It controls their tempers by doing savestates and cheats, eliminates quarters, allows access to cheats and even the official difficulty switches on the circuit boards.

 

There's other games, too, but I'll stop listing because they all center around the same things, difficulty, convenience, and "at home".

 

[VectorGamer]

Yes Missile Command on the 2600 and 5200 is a good one. I owned a Missile Command cabinet at one time but I can't say that either is better than the other.

[Zoyous]

On 7/18/2021 at 6:33 PM, Keatah said:

Space Invaders on the VCS:

I hated the arcade version. Played it exactly one time. Too hard. Colors were harsh. Waste of quarters. The VCS version was all the opposite of that. And it added extra features and variations. Runners up would be Space Invaders on the 5200 and 400/800, all 3 iterations. Points for those for colorful invader palette and super smooth gameplay.

 

Defender on the Atari 800:

This was so much better at home, by lightyears even! The arcade's controls were incredibly cumbersome and un-natural. I played the arcade version exactly 2 times. Then no more. Leave that to the one-trick savants of the time. The smoothly progressing difficulty and gameplay on the 800 was a boon to me. And at home, with the PointMaster joystick I was practically a circus monkey gyrating in every imaginable position on those then popular beanbags and the rest of the furniture.

I will second these selections! Although for me it would be Defender on the 2600 rather than the Atari 800. Really a fine re-creation of the arcade game with a much more elegant control scheme. I mean, all due respect to Eugene Jarvis, but even he might have had second thoughts about the crazy button array on Defender which resulted in a much more intuitive control scheme for Robotron. Just looking at Defender's control panel as a kid, I was like "nope!"

 

As for Space Invaders, as much as I appreciate the historical importance of the arcade game, to me it has very little "fun factor." But the 2600 version had a lot of interesting variations and I played it a lot.

 

Night Driver - you could say the 2600 version is better as it's in color, whereas the arcade version is black & white. Both are silky smooth minimalist masterpieces!

 

Altered Beast (MD/Gen) - I mentioned this recently in another thread, but the home version adds some nice depth with parallax backgrounds that the arcade version lacks.

 

Ghouls 'n Ghosts (Master System) - this version is interesting because it adds some light strategy elements with a magic gauge, a life gauge, and a shop where you can choose to equip different items. Overall it eases up on the sadistic difficulty of the original.

 

[Cynicaster]

I must say, for me, preferring a port over an arcade original is exceedingly rare relative to the number of ports I have played in my lifetime.  But there are a few worth mentioning.    

 

NES Contra is the most conspicuous one I can think of.  I think part of it has to do with the fact that the NES version's proportions are nicer to look at - the size of the character sprites makes you feel more nimble, the wider 4:3 screen is less cramped than the arcade vertical monitor, etc.  

 

NES (Mike Tyson's) Punch Out! - probably gets an asterisk because it's not a direct port, but the NES game is an all-time favorite of mine while I could never get into the arcade game at all (and not for lack of trying).  

 

Lynx Klax - my favorite of many ports of this game; basically the same as the arcade but with slightly less of a brick-wall difficulty curve, which makes it more enjoyable for me.

 

Game Boy / NES Tetris 

 

Atari 7800 Food Fight

 

 

 

 

 

[VectorGamer]

Been playing DK on the NES for the HSC for the last couple of weeks. Seems to have a better level of difficulty than the arcade. i.e. it isn't insanely difficult but still challenging.

[Place Logo Here]

Seconding the 7800 Food Fight.

 

The homebrew DK Arcade for Intellivision is my fave version of Kong, and by quite a margin.  The same developer's DK II is also stunning.

[VectorGamer]

2 hours ago, Place Logo Here said:

The homebrew DK Arcade for Intellivision is my fave version of Kong, and by quite a margin.  The same developer's DK II is also stunning.

Yes had them both and they were very good.

[+x=usr(1536)]

Cosmic Chasm on the Vectrex, which I believe may have been the first home-to-arcade port rather than vice-versa.

 

The arcade game was good, but I always preferred the Vectrex' joystick to the arcade cabinet's spinner.  Screen real estate being what it was on the Vectrex, it felt a little more closed-in, too, which helped to give it a greater sense of urgency IMHO.