Best and Worst Arcade Conversion

[Atari-Jess]

Best, Star Wars: the arcade game (a good job)

Worst, Tempest prototype (its just sad.)

 

what do you think, whats your best and worst?

[King Atari]

HMMMMM...The best: "Xenophobe" (my personal favorite game), the worst: "Pac-Man", of course. "Berzerk" was probably the best port graphically along with "Stargate/Defender II".

 

[ 11-15-2001: Message edited by: King Atari ]

[liquid_sky]

best: berzerk

 

worse : burgertime (what a pitiful freakin translation)

[Ze_ro]

Best: Stargate/Defender II (Especially considering the original Defender)

 

Runners up for best: Video Olympics (Pong. Hey, it's pretty damn accurate I'd say ), Battlezone, and Crystal Castles.

 

Worst: Zaxxon.

 

--Zero

[ubersaurus]

I think the best was Gravitar. Wonderful job!

The worst was either Pac-man or Space War. Though at least you can play Space War and have it not be too dissimilar.

[MattG/Snyper2099]

Best arcade game ported to VCS was the Starpath Frogger for the supercharger!

Some terrible one's: Pac-man, Mr. Do's Castle, and Spy Hunter.

[Atari-Jess]

but you guys HAVE seen the 2600 tempest right??

[NE146]

2600 Berzerk was a good translation. However the fact that the Robots couldn't shoot diagonally kind of made it a lot easier than it should have been.

 

So practicing Berzerk on the 2600 didn't really prepare you well to play the coin-op game (as I found out long ago when I confidentally thought I was the "Berzerk God" then got blasted to smithereens attempting to play the coin-op)

[Atari-Jess]

same here, same here.

[Junie]

I would say the worst is Donkey Kong. It is just sad.

 

The Arcade version of Donkey Kong is my favorite game of all time, I remember pumping quarters into it as a kid at the grocery store. The more I think of a Arcade game at the grocery store, at the end of the bread isle, it's just weird.

 

They use to have 3, originally by the frozen food isle (The other side of the bread isle)

 

Then it went down to just one, Donkey Kong, I swear I still had something to do with them keeping it-- All the money I put in that thing

[moycon]

Best: I'll agree with the Starpath Frogger, Wizard of Wor was a decent port also.

 

Worst: Comeon the worst is Pac-Man face it. Mr Do's pretty dismal. And Zaxxon?? Why bother even releasing it under that title? Didnt hardly resemble the actual game.

[JL]

Best - I agree with Starpath's Frogger, it was a near perfect port. Space Invaders and Asteroids (damn good for a raster version of a vector game) were respectable ports even if they did not look exactly like the original.

 

Worst - Tie Donkey Kong and Zaxxon with Pacman a close second.

[Rhindle The Red]

quote:

---

Originally posted by JL:

Worst - Tie Donkey Kong and Zaxxon with Pacman a close second.

---

 

Donkey Kong is actually pretty good considering the hardware limitations. It certainly much better than Donkey Kong Jr.

 

It's not really fair to include Tempest. It was unfinished and unreleased. It's not like they tried to sell that thing, like they did with Pac-Man.

 

The best arcade conversion IMO, is Mario Bros., despite the poor graphics. Of course, you can always play Return of Mario Bros. instead.

[metalkeir]

Obviously, this isn't the worst (I'll agree with both DK and Pac-Man) but I was really disappointed with Dig Dug. Maybe that's just because the 7800 version is so good?

[ATARIPITBULL]

I think Venture, Berzerk and Asteroids were pretty good games that were turned into 2600 games, but as far as the worst, I would have to agree with the others and say Pac-Man sucked. When Pac-man was going to come out on Atari 2600, when I was little, I got excited, but when I got it I was mad as hell.

[Spector]

For me, there are three great mysteries in the twentieth century:

The Bermuda Triangle, The Loch Ness Monster, and the negative reaction to Pac-Man.

I had never played the arcade version. I saw it for the first time on someone else's Atari, and that's how I got it for Christmas, and I played it to death (highest score 110,000).

The collision detection is good, the ghosts are always visible even though they flicker- it's still playable, because if it wasn't, I would never have played it so much.

I played a Commodore 16 port of it, and it was inferior by a mile. Also, the scoring in Pac-Man is better than Ms Pac-Man: You eat a dot- 1 point. In Ms Pac-Man, you eat a dot and it's 10 points. What's the need for the 0 on the end? It's superflous. I say that Pac-Man is a disappointing but still playable conversion. Strangely enough, when I played it on an emulator, the ghosts were flickering really bad, and I couldn't see them at times and was bumping into them by accident, which was really annoying. But the original PAL game was not like that.

Anyway, that's my point. Defender is a poorer arcade conversion in my opinion.

[Ze_ro]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Atari-Jess:

but you guys HAVE seen the 2600 tempest right??

---

 

C'mon, what do you expect? This is the Atari we're talking about here. I think the fact that they did Tempest for it at all is pretty damn good... vector games don't translate well onto home systems (except the Vectrex I suppose), let alone one as complicated as Tempest.

 

And whoever mentioned Starpath's Frogger, I totally agree... I almost forgot about this one.

 

--Zero

[moycon]

Too bad no one has gone back and done the classic vector games on the vectrex. That would be awesome!!! I mean V had web-wars which was similar to Tempest but wouldnt it rock to have the real thing? Of course you would need to make a special controller. I can't stand playing Tempest with a joystick!

[PeeknPoke]

Best:Missle Command, I feel this is better than the arcade game, just so playable.

Also recommended:Kangaroo (Underated platform fun), Battlezone (A VCS "version". they couldnt do the vectors so they made a playable 2600 compatable game! Fun), Joust (Cause it is also i have a passion for playing Dig Dug too. oh and that lovely Crystal Castles. and Ms Pacman...ohh this is hard

 

 

Worst:Galaxian didnt feel right, Road runner, brave conversion but...Asteroids although playable was a bit too easy...These are minor niggles are i loved many of the ports

 

Lee

[PeeknPoke]

BTW Tempest:

Its a hard one to judge, I mean it didnt look too bad and remember this is rough code not a finished game. I could see what the programmer was doing and was sad it was not complete. Id love someone to finished that code or do another from scratch.

 

 

Lee

[MagMax667]

BEST: Asteroids: The Vector Edition.

WORST: Double Dragon.(They made it WAY too hard.)

[The Night Phantom]

BEST: I'd have to add my voice to the Supercharger Frogger chorus. If we restrict our choices to just cartridges, it gets tougher. Perhaps Jr. Pac-Man deserves the nod; despite some differences (notably the scrolling direction), it captures the frenetic feel of the arcade original quite faithfully. (Too bad I'm so lousy at both versions!) Another frenetic choice worth mentioning is Millipede, which keeps me too busy to notice its slightly lower resolution. Special mention is owed to Space Invaders: this cart actually improved on the arcade original, with its fun, (quasi-)colorful graphics and numerous gameplay variations.

 

WORST: While the disappointment of VCS Pac-Man was enormous (especially since I paid for it with my own money when it was new—$40 was a lot in kid money!), it doesn't hold a candle to Amidar in gutting the personality of a fun, cute arcade game.

[liveinabin]

centipede was great - VERY fast.

worst one - pac man or double dragon.

 

I actually liked the original defender. not much like the arcade game, but it played pretty well in its own right.

berzerk wasn't much good, but that wasn't the atari's fault. it needs speech.

[PatrickDBowlingo]

Are there pictures of the Super Charger version of Frogger?

 

I would love to see it.

 

Was the Super Charger ever emulated?

[ubersaurus]

I've always been kinda tempted to someday go about finishing prototypes for various systems, even though I doubt I'll ever get far enough along to finish Star Fox 2. Shame, as that game rules so much already. But I think a finished Tempest, or Sinistar, or Elevator Action would all be strong contenders.