Best & Worst Video Game Ports

[Shin FireyPaperMario]

We all know the process of how a video game port is made (And before y'all ask, retro games on the Wii, WiiU, 3DS, and Nintendo Switch NES doesn't count!). 

So let's all discuss about the best & worse ports ever made in our (the members of the VG resource community) in this thread! 

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Best ports imo:

• Any of the 3-D (for Nintendo 3DS) & SEGA AGES (For Nintendo Switch) ports of the classical SEGA games from the late 80's to I think the early 90's.
  
•  The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the 3DS (Only because Master Quest was so much fun! )
  
• Street Fighter Alpha on the Gameboy Color
  

Okay ports imo:

• Donkey Kong Country on Gameboy Color
  

Worst Ports imo:

•  Mega Man II on the SEGA Master System (It looks too much like the NES version, except with FM sounds and music)
  

[Barack Obama]

Xbox 360 ports of Mass Effect and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.

The unstable framerates are not enjoyable and I highly suggest the PC version instead.

[Yawackhary]

Good Ports
OutRun 2 - Even though the arcade version ran on Xbox hardware, it had more memory. Not only is the original Xbox version is very close to the arcade but also adds a mission mode as well as the ability to play courses based on Scud Race/Daytona 2 and has the original game but has emulation issues.
Soul Calibur (Dreamcast) - Considered the poster port of the console. Not only that it has everything from the arcade but has an extra mode too.
Virtua Tennis (Dreamcast) - Ditto and has more courts as well.
Point Blank (PS1) - Not only is the game nearly arcade perfect outside of extra loading but also has a RPG mode as well.
Daytona USA (PS3/360) - One of those that blur the lines between a port and emulation. Not only that it is best port of the game but also has the optional arranged Saturn soundtrack and a bonus karaoke mode on top.

Bad Ports
Many of the home computer ports from the arcade that existed in the 1980s/1990s that are more like remakes that someone recreated from playing in the arcade, there are quite a lot but going from memory...
* Most ports of Out Run before the Mega Drive and PC Engine versions. These include the Spectrum version and its MSX port, the Amiga/Atari ST versions and the Amstrad CPC version. The Commodore 64 and Master System versions weren't bad for the hardware but not in this topic.
* Nearly all ports of the original Street Fighter. The only good one was on the PC Engine but then again the game isn't really good.
* Nearly all ports of Strider outside of the Mega Drive, X68000 and the PS1 versions (and emulated). The game is meant to be a fast paced action platformer but the Tiertex ports that appeared on the Amiga/Atari ST/Amstrad CPC/Spectrum/Master System made it into a slower paced, tightly timed slog that isn't exactly pretty. Neither is the PC Engine version that was in development hell by NEC and it needed a special card for it to be run on. The NES version doesn't count because it is a different game.
* Alien Syndrome on the Amstrad CPC. No wonder the developers only made one game and it was this port. Barely like the game, both in graphics and gameplay.

* Saints Row 2 on the PC. This was infamous to the point where people had to install Gentlemen of the Row mod just to make it work (and even then it isn't guaranteed) with some extras on top. This might change in the future because the source code that was lost has been found, there were hints that a fixed or a new port is going to happen.
* Cruis'n on the Wii. A port of the arcade Fast & the Furious game sounds like a good idea but the forced Wii Remote controls, glitches and performance problems ruined that idea.

Also Mega Man II was not on the Master System...

[shadowman44]

Here's some good ports I can name off the top of my head
Rainbow Islands - Genesis, NES, and Master System. Rainbow Islands is a game you'd have to try hard to fuck up, the Spectrum version if I remember wasn't very good but my god the NES version? Total gem, it shouldn't be hard to find on eBay either.

Samurai Shodown 2 - NGPC. It's a port of Samurai Shodown 64 if I recall correctly, everything about it is absolutely superb. An NGPC is totally worth getting just for this game alone, if not most of the fighters for that system.

Samurai Shodown - GB. A fighting game on the gameboy sounds like a terrible idea, but this is one of the few times where it sounded bad on paper, but it turned out much better than expected. I swear SNK back in that day had a super high quality control that made sure even the lowest functioning systems got good ports.

Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure - GBC. Bootleg ports are always terrible, but not this one. I guess the bootleggers really loved Dragon Ball, because it plays so damn nicely, even the sprites look exactly like they would have if this was an official game.

Tower of Druaga - PC Engine. The original ToD wasn't very good, the console ports were inferior ports of the arcade game. It wasn't until this remake came along that we got a decent version of what was one of the pioneers in video games. We wouldn't have gotten Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Earthbound, or even Undertale if it hadn't been for ToD! Sad it didn't come out to the west though, like most of the other games in that series (yes, this game spawned a series of it's own).

Bad ports?

Double Dragon - Sega Genesis. One of the first consoles that could produce graphics that were similar to the arcade, and they managed to screw it all up. 

Battletoads in Battlemaniacs - SMS. Why the SMS got a port of an SNES game is baffling to me, it's like a reversed scenario of the Genesis getting a port of the NES Battletoads! It was said to be incomplete by the time it had to be published, and it shows. There's tons of graphical issues, music is in the wrong places, everything.

Castlevania - Amiga. The only Amiga game I've ripped sprites from so far, and I gotta say I might be in for some real shit with the Amiga if there's games like this. The music is again in the wrong places, like why did they use wicked child for the first stage? Why is vampire killer the title screen theme?

Pac-Mania - MSX2. Pac-Mania shouldn't be hard to make a port of, yet they managed to fuck it up. Jumping feels very stiff, turning is also an issue, and overall while the graphics are nice it doesn't really help the game any.

Mega Man - Game Gear. They were trying to make their own version of the Game Boy games (which were their own thing rather than ports of the NES games) by taking the exact level layouts and throwing them in there, not realizing how bad the screen crunch would be. MegaMan's sprites are really weird too, the helmet got messed up in the graphics conversion I suppose, but they couldn't have just gone back and fixed it? StarMan's portrait being green is also another oddity, but that turned out to be a genuine mistake from the developers. The Game Gear (and Master System)'s sound engine doesn't sound that good, so the music can be excused.

Altered Beast - SMS. I inherited my older siblings' Sega Genesis, Altered Beast was one of the games that was with it. It played fine, even with those crusty voice samples. But the Master System version? It makes the Famicom version look amazing by comparison! For one thing, the graphics look like they were all sloppily resized and recolored to fit the graphical limitation. The music is once again in all the wrong places too, what is it with bad ports and music being misaligned? Oh and the controls are pretty much terrible as one might assume.

Golden Axe - GBA. The music and sounds sound like they've been possessed by a demon, there's nothing else on the GBA that sounds as bad as this!

Ghosts 'N Goblins - NES. Yeah this is one of those "classic" NES games that are notoriously hard, but you see a lot of the reasons why it's hard is because of the bad controls. The jumping is stiff, there are times where you can't get up from ducking when you need to which is how you end up dying. I was going to put Ghouls 'N Ghosts for the SMS here but after extensively playing the NES version, it's so much worse.

There are so many other bad ports I could talk about, but this post would reach it's character limit by the time I'm done.

[psykonaut]

Xbox 360 ports of Mass Effect and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.

The unstable framerates are not enjoyable and I highly suggest the PC version instead.

I beg to differ. I sank over 300 hours into Oblivion on 360 but I could never come to enjoy it on PC. I'd have to say the worst port to 360 was probably Fallout New Vegas. That game is shit on 360 but at least with PC you can install a fan update that makes it so that it's not so buggy (AKA the game crashes every ~30 minutes on 360)

[DogToon64]

Good port: Sonic 3D Blast for the SEGA Genesis:

The music is much much better, the sounds are better, and the game play seems better


Bad port: Sonic 3D Blast for the SEGA Saturn:

The music is terrible and makes me want to rage quit when I die in the game (don't ask), the sounds aren't as good, and the game isn't as good

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Good port: Sonic 1 and 2 for the Genesis

Sonic 1 is better than Sonic 2, but they're both better than the 8 bit versions

Bad port: Sonic 1 and 2 for the Game Gear and Master System

They're both dumbed down versions of the Genesis versions

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Good port: Sonic R for PC

Graphics and models are better, and it's much more multiplayer friendly

Bad port: (well this one isn't bad, but it's not as good) Sonic R for the SEGA Saturn

The graphics and models aren't as good, and the floor in multiplayer mode moves on player 2's side and doesn't make it fun for player 2 to enjoy

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And that's all for now...

[Yawackhary]

Thinking about it, noticed that quite a fair few games on the Wii are bad ports from other consoles on the grounds of not adapting the controls. A game can literally become unplayable and an unplayable game is not worth playing especially if the motion controls don't work (this applies to original games too).

If a game supports the Classic Controller than it isn't as bad but for like the first couple of years, it was just Wii Remote and Nunchuk. Some are just Wii Remote only. It seems the only arguably good ports are ones that are light gun shooters and a few others that can't remember right now.

Good port: Sonic 3D Blast for the SEGA Genesis:

The music is much much better, the sounds are better, and the game play seems better


Bad port: Sonic 3D Blast for the SEGA Saturn:

The music is terrible and makes me want to rage quit when I die in the game (don't ask), the sounds aren't as good, and the game isn't as good

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Good port: Sonic 1 and 2 for the Genesis

Sonic 1 is better than Sonic 2, but they're both better than the 8 bit versions

Bad port: Sonic 1 and 2 for the Game Gear and Master System

They're both dumbed down versions of the Genesis versions

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Good port: Sonic R for PC

Graphics and models are better, and it's much more multiplayer friendly

Bad port: (well this one isn't bad, but it's not as good) Sonic R for the SEGA Saturn

The graphics and models aren't as good, and the floor in multiplayer mode moves on player 2's side and doesn't make it fun for player 2 to enjoy

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And that's all for now...

Don't think that you understand the topic very well (but it's okay since in this day and age, the word port is getting more phased out for remaster and it's hard to know what version of a game is the original).

Sonic R on the Saturn and Sonic 3D (Genesis) are the original versions so they can't be ports. The Saturn version of Sonic 3D I would say isn't a bad port for a game that wasn't meant to happen and the soundtrack replacement is a personal preference. Some people prefer this version due to the Special stages and the graphic upgrade, the only arguably downside are the extra loading times.

The comparison between Sonic 1 & 2 between the Mega Drive and Master System/Game Gear versions is the case of same name, different game. Basically apples to oranges. Sonic 1 on the Master System would have been a port but too much got changed and became its own game. Sonic 2 are virtually different games to the point that the only connection are a few sprites are used between the two for the title cards but that's it. Now Sonic 2 on the Game Gear could be a bad port of the Master System due to the screen crush and a change to the first boss making a harder game even harder.

[yellowpearl64]

Good port: Hexen for Nintendo 64

The soundtrack and the graphics in this version are amazing and the Nintendo 64 version looks like a PC version

Bad port: R-Type III: The Third Lightning for Game Boy Advance

Oh god... this version looks bad! the music and the graphics in this version are horrible, the Super Nintendo version is much better