5 Bad Arcade Ports To Consoles You Need to See to Believe
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- Опубликовано: 6 авг 2024
- While there were several great arcade ports to home consoles, some of them were truly terrible. In this video, I take a look at some of these less than stellar ports and give you my opinions on why I think they are bad. Did you play any of these ports? What are your picks for terrible arcade ports?
Comment below and thanks for watching!
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Games shown in this order
Double Dragon(2600)
Donkey Kong(Intellivision)
Centipede(Game Boy)
Golden Axe(Master System)
Altered Beast(NES)
#BadGames #BadVideoGames #BadArcadePorts 
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I can’t believe they even attempted Double Dragon on the Atari 2600.
I had that game back in the day I was so pumped when I got it I remember looking at the box in awe in the back of the car on our way home. What a let down
I mean, what do you expect when you get Double Dragon for the 2600? I mean if your a kid back then, I get it. It probably was really exciting, but it’s the 2600.
In its heyday, Atari tried everything for the 2600. There are playable prototypes and demos on websites like Atariage that are quite fun. Many of them required you to use your imagination and the box art and manual to make sense of what you were looking at.
When I saw Altered Beast, I thought the Master System was version was coming up. Never even knew about the Famicom version.
Golden Axe on the Master System wasn't meant to be even possible, it was a real technical achievement for its time. The reason for things like the lack of 2 player was down to resources and they did the best they could.
Master System's Golden Axe was amazing for what it was able to do. Nice big sprites and playable. A little slow but it worked if you couldn't afford a Genesis quite yet.
We want two player dammit!!
I enjoyed it very much, it was too easy and too short, but it was a very good game being a sms game.
It may have been a technical achievement at the time but a technical achievement doesn't equal a good port. Fatal Fury Special on the Game Gear is a technical achievement. Not only did they get it on the handheld, albeit with certain omissions, but the gameplay, graphics controls and sound are still pretty damn top notch and was a great port overall. Resident Evil 2 On the N64 is another port that was a real technical achievement that sacrificed EXTREMELY little to get 2 CD's worth of content onto a cart and still looks and plays fantastically.
They still could’ve made it more like the Master System port of Streets of Rage!
Loved the Master System version of Golden Axe, when it was all that you could get it was excellent, love the intro/ending stills too. Not bad imo, great at the time - real bad, PC Engine CD version!
Came here to say the same. PCE version looks and sounds like a Master System game.
This versión has good graphics but The control was some bad. But for master system was a good game
Agreed, also loved a few other ms ports, Shinobi and Double Dragon were both great too
I agree. Back in the day, I could tell this didn't quite live up to the arcade, but for me it still worked and I had a ball. And trust me, I didn't accept any old crap. E.g. Back to the Future 3 on Sega Master System.
Golden axe made me feel like I had an arcade in my room back in the day. Lol
Donkey Kong and Pac-Man on Atari 2600 were SO BAD!! LOL But I guess now they are so bad, they're good ...or at least a curiosity.
MetalJesusRocks while Pac-man looked bad, as a kid I remember playing it a lot. There are now some great homebrew ports of both that correct many of the shortcomings.
Could not agree more! I could only imagine the disappointment of the kids who got these game expecting the arcade in the home.
@@johnhancockretro I got a pac-man copy for the 2600 on my birthday back in the day, and I loved it; but, as I was a little kid, I had no idea what dud it was compared to the arcade version! 😁
I learned to appreciate the Intellivision version of Donkey Kong when it was one of only a handful of games I had for the system when I first started out retro collecting. Since most of the other games required two players (typical of early Intellivision titles), DK got a lot of play. I still like to fire it up to burn 10 or 15 minutes. Just yesterday I hit almost 100,000 points on level 4! 😁
I had the Master System version of Golden Axe and loved it. If you were stuck on a Master System it was solid
It was the first iteration of Golden Axe I played and for that reason I was crazy about it.
Yeah I loved that game too
Master system was so cool
Agreed
*I was happy with it!*
It looks like when you die in the 2600 DD game that you turn into a dog? lol!!
Although its not a very good game to begin with, Revolution X never got a proper home conversion. Every single home version was bad in some type of way between looking bad, or sounding bad..and generally not having light gun options for control. I played the Genesis version and it was just terrible. I bought the PC version a few years later thinking it would match the arcade and it also was bad.
MAME never really ran the revx romset properly until 2002ish...so that was a long we we all had to wait until being able to play it at home. Now we take it for granted and it runs accurately and flawlessly in MAME.
The SNES port of Pit Fighter was god awful lol. It was the 1st SNES game I rented as a kid. It was bad lol!
Great video! I believe one of the BIGGEST challenges for ports to consoles and home computers (apart from hardware) was the fact that most arcades were designed with the monitor on its vertical position. This was an ingenious way to get more pixels available for platform games... so games like donkey Kong suffered... you could only fit 4 or 5 platforms on a horizontal monitor.
The only Double Dragon port I like is the Gameboy Advance version. A phenomenal remaster!
ShaolinGamer totally agree
The original arcade game has not held up well. The GBA version is much better.
Master System can have two options, for games like Golden Axe the characters can be big but move to the char, the other option is like Alien Storm, with small sprites, moves smooth but it does not resemble the arcade. I always thought that the problem with the Master System version was the memory/rom size (512k) but Megadrive version is 512k as well.
Love your awesome channel !! You are the absolute best !! Another great video !!
Great video overall! Thank you man for you great work with this channel.
You went to the Goldmine in Redding too!? Dude! I used go there after football practice every day when I was playing at Shasta College. My laundry was funky, but I got my initials on several high scores!
I grew up with a C64, and as much as I love it -- and I do! -- we got some crappy arcade ports. While Double Dragon for the system was pretty bad, Vigilante and Ikari 3 are so bad they have to be seen to be believed.
i wonder if there are enough examples to do a video of skewed arcade ports. Donkey Kong (1992) on game boy is a great example of an updated port. Has 4 levels but then turns into a completely different game.
Double dragon for the commodore 64 was pretty god awful as well. Good luck finding even a working copy of that these days.
Donkey Kong looks almost like Godzilla in the intellivision version
Cool video John! Zaxxon and Congo Bongo were both pretty bad on Atari 2600. I totally get the limitations but almost wonder why they even tried lol
My mum used to work in a small restaurant cafe called Tasty Take here in Lowestoft, just past where you would order food, they had arcade machines, three usually as not much space, I remember how good it would be to go in there and find a new one, Golden axe was one of my favourites, they also had the following ones at different times, qix, hyper sports, track and field, hunchback, teenage mutant hero turtles. I used to ask mum if she could let me have a few chips when the boss wasn't around, sorry mum.
I was an Amiga kid and unlike the C64 we got a lot of terrible arcade ports. At least we had the incredible Marble Madness. :)
chibisf4 yeah c64 > Amiga
The 2600 Millipede port is SO good
Chase McClure agreed
I love the black and white Centipede/Millipede. One of my favorites.
Pretty rough. Pac Man for the 2600 has been covered a good bit (although I didn’t mind it growing up). Gold Mine...now that brings back some memories. Safety and good health to you, John.
I knew the Atari and Intellivision were horrendous even as a kid. How can one see Pacman for Atari 2600 and think you even got an acceptable port. You had to really use your imagination as a kid with the Atari.
The NES was better by far but I still knew they weren't gonna replicate the arcade experience to a tee. They just had to make an acceptable port like Double Dragon. Double Dragon wasn't gonna be exactly like the arcade but it's still a good single player game. We might not have gotten the co-op we expected but at least Jimmy was the boss after Wily. But Altered Beast and Shinobi for example on the NES were seriously horrendous. Lol
Great video bro. Keep em coming. ❤
I agree with some of the sentiments expressed below that SMS Golden Axe isn't that bad. Knowing the capabilities of the hardware I think they did a decent job, not an amazing conversion, but not a terrible one. I mainly played as Ax Battler so I personally didn't mind so much he was the only character, but I could definitely see it being disappointing for people that preferred Tyris or Gillius. I also second that the PC Engine CD version of Golden Axe is an awful mess that was way more of a let down than the SMS version.
I agree with you about Intellivision Donkey Kong. Out of the early consoles I play the ColecoVision port is far ahead in first followed by the 2600 port and finally Intellivision. And one bad port of a great arcade game that I'd like to mention is Mr. Do for Atari 2600.
That's best Donkey Kong ever made is on the Intellivision
Agree that the original Donkey Kong for Intellivision is terrible. However, as John Hancock mentions, there are homebrew versions of Donkey Kong for Intellivision that excellent.
That werewolf on the famicom Altered Beast was throwing hadoukens 😂😂😂
Actually, the animation in the arcade game is closer to the one in the NES game than that of the Genesis, which just reused the punch animation frames. The same holds true with the special blow animation of the werewolf, which looks like a flying kick in the arcade version, while in the Genesis version, programmers just recycled the jumping frame with the addition of flames to make it look different.
Wow that Famicom Altered Beast port is so tiny! (Gets out a magnifying glass!) What were they thinking!?
Obviously the Famicom couldn't handle larger sprites at the time
I just Love to Play Double Dragon at a local pub call "The museum"
Love that place....!!
You best take those Intellevision words back or face the wrath of Tommy :-P
Great video!
I got a laundry list of them, WORLD HEROES on Sega Genesis in all caps Art of my fighting on genesis (USA), burger time Atari vcs, and that's just the tip of the iceberg my friend
The NES port of Athena was just bloody awful.
Nes port is the best game ever made
The original Mortal Kombat on SNES should top the list. It has *no blood* and *censored Fatalities.*
The gameplay wasn't butchered, that's not bad enough for this lol.
Check out ports of Street Fighter 2 and Final Fight for the Commodore 64... :)
DataHombre I recently saw those...yikes.
Two of the best games
Abominations
5:00 - Game Boys back then suffered from ghosting issues on screen which made fast gameplay quite tricky to see. Maybe that’s why they slowed it down?
The control system you describe for Double Dragon here reminded me of the Last Ninja series on the C64. Holding down the button, as the joystick movement then was used for punching kicking, jumping. With the otherwise undisputed classic trilogy of "Last Ninja" games being from an isometric viewpoint, you had to be absolute spot on when positioning yerself facing enemies and especially jumping.
I had Double Dragon on the Commodore64- and even then, I thought it was one of the worst things Id ever seen!😅 Great video!
When I was a kid, I didn't understand how "ports" worked. I begged and begged for "Side Arms: Hyper Dyne" for Christmas not realizing the Commodore 64 port of the arcade game was going to be a fraction of the original game. It didn't help that the advertisements for the C64 game were screen shots of the arcade machine. Anyhow, when I loaded that game on my Commodore 64 on Christmas day, I got a harsh lesson in how ports really worked.
Keeping in mind that there really was no Nintendo or Sega to rival Atari during it's 2800 era, no port of arcade should be put onto either three eras of Atari. It would look just too embarrassing from it's arcade counterpart.
Great video. I found the 2600 port of millipede pretty boring graphically. Add to that PacMan for the 2600. I did enjoy the 2600 version of Galaxian and Ms. PacMan. Mind blown on the Famicom Altered Beast port, didn’t realize it existed.
donald Smith 2600 millipede very playable tho
Not really relevant but i was so sad when i couldn't get the contra code to work in the arcade.
About the Master System Golden Axe... Was there a difference in Ax Battler's power and speed depending on the magic you chose at the beginning? Because if it wasn't it wouldn't have make sense to choose a magic other tha Fire, that allowed to take more potions.
The millipede port was made by accolade, the same guys who made bubsy
"What could possibly go wrong?"
Double Dragon in the arcade was SICK, had no idea they released it for the 2600... AWFUL!!! 😂😂😂
Few comments about these games
Double Dragon: This was also awful in C64(Bad controls) and Amstrad(The first version. They had to release another version because of complaints. Re-release is same crappy first version of that game)
Millipede: It was like someone coded that in basic. I'm sorry but I laughed when I saw that
Altered Beast: This was cream of the crap. Truly awful. This was rock bottom :'D
Dragons Lair stands out to me. Most of the ports were not so hot. I used to have it on nes and was happy to part with it. Picked it up on steam and am much happier.
Dudly Djarbum NES port of DL is legendarily bad..... not even really an attempt to port the actual game
I never heard of a Famicom Altered Beast port, and in my country we only had famiclone games.
Thanks, take care you too John.
im floored. !! im 1:13 seconds into the video and tears are in my eyes... thank you. !! i used to visit the Gold Mine in Redding as well some summers when i would stay with my aunt and grandma. i lay in bed at night and still hear the arcade cacophony of sounds all combined. ! sigh, those were the days.
I love the cute little cat faces in the famicom Altered Beast HUD
Thought you would've got the NES Shinobi for sure
Lee Fischer I almost chose it.
I used to think the NES version of TMNT was OK but lame compared to the arcade version. But then I saw all the PC ports and thought maybe it wasn't so bad. lol
I like the Amiga port. It comes the closest to the arcade version.
I love Golden Axe on the SMS!!!
NARC on NES??
I do like Altered Beast on SMS. It was when it hit my life , I was like 6 or 7, and I was blown away. That and Rastan bewildered me.
Rastan was a good one. I go back and play that version.
In the gameplay of Millipede there were no spiders but I have the NES version and on that version there’s like a spider like every few seconds and yet not one in the game play shot shown in the video
if i close my eyes and listen to your voice i hear John C Reilly
When I look at his face I see John C Reilly.
Don't forget when Capcom excluded Guy on the Super Nintendo version. They made it just a one player game, skipped the industrial stage, and replaced Roxy and Poison with Billy and Sid. Might not have been their fault.
Great content Immortal One. Enjoy ur vids.
I bought Double Dragon in 1993 w/high expectations, and I was majorly disappointed. I still have the game, but I find the game more useful as a conversation piece. LOL!
Huh, I didn't remember the SMS version of Golden Age being that crappy. :(
Pit-Fighter on the SNES and Thunder Fox for the Genesis. Half the game was missing, h*ll maybe even 80% of the arcade is not there.
Dragons Lair. I was so sad when I played it on the SNES. I was just a kid when I assumed it would have looked the same as the arcade
quarters were the early days of micro transactions:)
I always wondered why Mario Bros was ported to Atari consoles but not other systems such as Coleco and Intellivision. Would have love to see Arkanoind and Bubble Bobble on Coleco too!
Great video John.. I always enjoy your upbeat attitude
I was so disappointed with Centipede/Millipede for gameboy. I loved the other volumes like Asteroids/Missile Command and Galahad/Galaxian. How did they mess that up so bad?
ordo nekro the asteroids port is pretty solid
*the 2600 is just as fast and just as frantic amazingly*
I finally got my 10 year old into retro gaming, and had some trouble getting him to understand the difference between arcade games and home console ports. The way it finally clicked was:
Me: Do you remember that fancy Bumblebee Transformers you got for Christmas a while back?
Him: Yes, it was awesome!
Me: Now, do you remember that Bumblebee toy you got in a Happy Meal before Christmas?
Him: Yeah, it sucked.
Me: The one you got for Christmas is the arcade version, the one you got at McDonalds is the NES version.
Him: (mind blown)
I feel like the Atari 2600 Pac-Man should have been at the top of the list. Unless it already got a lifetime achievement award.
Hey John what company produced Altered Beast for the famicom? I know if it came to America it would have been Tengen
Altered Beast (獣王記 Jūōki) came out on the NES (Famicom) in 1990 only in Japan. It was developed by Interlink and Published by Asmik Corporation.
🤔 aw never heard of that company
@@travismcdowell8352 that's for good reasons I guess.
The genesis ports of golden axe and altered beast are nearly identical to their arcade versions. It was at that time, I realized the days of arcades were largely numbered.
Sure, there are still some arcades here and there but, that's mostly in large cities where there's a large enough population that can keep those places profitable.
And there aren't any new arcade machines being released. Dead industry.
Athena and Ikari Warriors for the NES.
Two of the best games ever made
Apparently I'm not the only one to like Golden Axe for SMS, but I also had a lot of DOS ports of these classics too. I remember the DOS version not being entirely awful but played worse than the SMS version.
San Francisco Rush on the PS1 is terrible. I remember buying it when I was a kid cuz I loved the arcade version and also played the N64 version at a friend's house. I was so disappointed. Bad graphics, long load times, less tracks. The N64 version is so much better in every way.
It's amazing that the Intellivision Donkey Kong is worse than the VCS version.
Double Dragon was one of my early disappointments (Pac-Man 2600) being the first. But as much as everyone seems to have a special place for NES Double Dragon, I hated that port with all my being.
The Master System port was actually 2 player! But that had so much flicker it was unplayable at some points
@@Miakel My friend had the SMS with Double Dragon. I think that was a good port given the consoles limitations
The first version of Golden Axe I was introduced to was the Master System one, and boy I loved it!
Recently bought Heavy Barrel for the Switch. Wasn't as good as I remembered 😔
Choco Loco James I didn’t know about this one until recently.. I thought it played just fine tbh
I was sure you were going to bash 2600 Donkey Kong, with its gingerbread-man Kong. But 2600 DK has gameplay that is not bad, if simplified from the original. DK doesn't look like himself but Mario looks enough like Mario.
Matt McIrvin there’s a hack where DK is a true Gingerbread man, it’s Christmas themed it’s great
One of the WORST arcade to console ports was a cutesy game called Athena. The arcade version was totally awesome but the NES version was a buggy glitchy mess.
Just look up Athena Arcade and then Athena NES and behold the horror! This port was so bad it honestly makes you say 'what the hell were they thinking???'
Thanks John brings back some great memories. And helps pass the time during this crazy situation we are in. Keep the vids coming please.
Golden Axe on Master System didn't utilize sprites to the characters and enemies, that duo the limitation of sprite sizes and simultaneous quantity on screen. Instead, it utilizes tiles to fake (simulate) these sprites, and that is the reason of the sluggish movements (the tiles can only move 12 pixel per frame, so it can't be smooth). But overall, IMO, is a good port, I had a lot of fun with it.
Oh man, I remember I played Altered Beast Nes version on the Famiclone console very long time ago.
I didn't know that was not as good as the arcade/Sega Mega Drive versions.
I enjoyed that NES version of Altered Beast, I had spent much time to learn the jumping and the special powers of beast forms. :)
Wow! A boxed Atari XL. I wanted one of those so badly when I was in junior high.
Not sure if non-laserdisc ports of Space Ace and Dragon's Lair count (I think for SNES) but they were horrid.
oh man that millipede game looked so bad lol
Don't forget the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man. The Atari 5200 version was great.
One of my all-time favorite arcade games was Captain America and the Avengers. My brother got it for his NES, and it wasn't even really a port. It was a one-player side-scroller that seems to have been merely inspired by the arcade game. I tried the SNES version, and while it was a port of the arcade and it had two player capability, it had the most dreadful controller response and blank screen pauses between levels that seemed to last forever. I was really glad I didn't buy it.
The Atari 2600 version of Double Dragon should have never existed.
The INTV version of Donkey Kong was pretty laughable. I'd re-sell my copy, but there isn't much demand for Intellivision games. Not even when they are Complete-in-Box.
Lord Publius yeah it was a real niche console
Golden Ax on the Sega Master System is very good for what it is on such limited hardware. Oh and btw the barbarian is the best character hands down.
Wow I thought the ZX spectrum port of Double Dragon was bad. Although the Golden Axe port for the spectrum is quite a good port considering it's abilities. The best port on the Master System has got to be New Zealand Story for sure?
I weren't that often at arcades when I was a kid so I don't really know any personally...
Coleco, which was handling the ports of Donkey Kong, purposely made the game crap since they had their own Colecovision they were promoting. Even though Colecovision had better specs the intellivision version still could of had more levels and more refinement.
Retro Puffer this is a myth.....
Then why is the VCS version better than the Intellivision version?
I thought attempting Double Dragon on the 7800 was reaching, surprised they even tried it on the 2600. But hell, I don't know why Atari bothered doing the 2600 Jr in the late '80s when the 7800 was backwards compatible.
Street Fighter 2 for the commodore 64. Biggest disapointment in my life so far
The Game Boy port of Mortal Kombat is abysmal. It runs at like a quarter of the original speed, the move and fatality combos were changed, and they removed characters even though there’s only 7 in the original game. Not to mention it’s of course censored like many ports of it. The only upside is you can play as Goro if you beat the game but that’s literally it.
Save a direct emulation of the original arcade game, the Genesis port was the go to with snappy gameplay and controls as well as the blood and other cheat codes
I remember getting Donkey Kong for the Intellivision at Christmas 1982. I was so disappointed 😭 It truly was awful. To me, I thought Mario looked like Porky Pig. My thumb was so sore from clicking on the jump button, which was so difficult on the controller.
How you missed the Odyssey2 port of Popeye is beyond me.
Honestly, you could make a whole video just on Double Dragon alone, the 2600 isn't even the worst.
Also, Bernstein Bears Vs The Executioner, I like it!