Fun Club The Tragedy of No More Fucked Up Ports

[ILikeFeet]

I think a big tragedy of consoles getting closer in power and controllers being homogenized is that we don’t get absolutely fucked up ports like these anymore.

Like yeah MK1 on switch looks like shit but it still plays just like MK1 on everything else. Ports like these come out seemingly just because the company felt like it and not out of obligation to make everything multi platform, like who the fuck is playing GGX on Gameboy Advance.

not gonna lie, I feel this. there was a real charm in seeing total conversions rather than just trimming games till they fit

Mortal Kombat 2


Need for Speed?


Call of fuckin Duty??



shit hit different, mayne

 

[Twohearts]

Sometimes the ds version is good like ds Lego batman

 

[Dekuman]

These technically aren't ports, but 'conversions' because the games are being built from the ground up with very little shared with the big brother versions.
There's a whole youtube niche that explores these sort of games.

 

[9-Volt]

Heey, who's calling Street Fighter Alpa 3 port "fucked up"? The most "miracle" miracle port ever, imo. Sure, lack of two more buttons complicated things but damn, the exact game was there with very minimal sacrifices. Not only that, it even had extras! Yun from Street Fighter 3, Eagle from SF1, Maki from Final Fight 3! Yes that Final Fight 3, released only on SNES.

 

[Hailinel]

I have Metal Gear Solid 3D. It is a very goddamn weird version of that game.

 

[BlackthornOrion]

I was just thinking the other day how it's a little bittersweet that the days of "2 or 3 versions of most multi-plat games had to be made, with each version often being made by completely separate developers and at least one version typically needing to be translated from 3D into 2D" are in the rearview mirror. I know the concept goes back further, but it always sticks out to me as one more thing that made the mid-to-late 2000s such an interesting time in video games

Like, I had Spider-Man 2 for Gamecube and GBA and they were totally different (even ignoring the obvious changes they had to make from a gameplay perspective, iirc even most of the levels/story beats/secondary villains were wildly out of sync with each other) and both kinda ruled in their own way

 

[Hailinel]

Something I didn't know until very recently was that Sega had (very bad) versions of a number of their games made for the Famicom in Japan, but went unlicensed outside of Japan and Tengen released a few of then internationally.

There exist absolute trash versions of games like Fantasy Zone and Altered Beast for the Famicom for seemingly no reason when logically Sega should have pushed people toward exclusives on the Master System.

 

[JazzyFuture]

Guilty Gear X Advance Edition is so fucked up because Instant Kills win you the entire match. I love when devs are just like "yeah, just add some wild shit to this handheld version, why not?"

 

[chocolate_supra]

NFS Underground on GBA??? That is some MAGIC right there, holy hell

 

[ILovethegameAC]

I thought this was gonna be a reminder of those bad No More Heroes PC ports because of the title.

 

[Mekanos]

I didn't think the MGS3D port was that weird. Outside of a couple of boss battles (I swear the Fury runs at single FPS) it runs and plays pretty well. I guess it's weird that it exists. It did add crouch walk though which was great.

 

[Hailinel]

I didn't think the MGS3D port was that weird. Outside of a couple of boss battles (I swear the Fury runs at single FPS) it runs and plays pretty well. I guess it's weird that it exists. It did add crouch walk though which was great.

Yeah, it's really more that. It's a very competent port, but one of the odder choices for Konami to release on 3DS.

 

[edamame]

I had the Game Boy version of World Heroes 2 Jet and it was actually a pretty solid, fun little fighting game. I think all of Takara's SNK fighting game ports on Game Boy were well regarded for what they were.

 

[Ozeiyo]

One of the first videogames I played in my life was Mortal Kombat 2 on my uncle's OG Game Boy. It played like a powerpoint presentation on Windows 95. I loved it to death.

 

[Ripfeld89]

The fucked ports not so much, but I really mourn the loss of "handheld versions" of games that are actually just straight up a different game in a different genre. A franchise could evolve into the future of 3D on consoles, but for fans of the older 2D entries there would often be a little treat secretly hiding in the handheld game which was advertised alongside the main game with the same box art as if they were totally equivalent.

 

[Gingerbread Man]

The fucked ports not so much, but I really mourn the loss of "handheld versions" of games that are actually just straight up a different game in a different genre. A franchise could evolve into the future of 3D on consoles, but for fans of the older 2D entries there would often be a little treat secretly hiding in the handheld game which was advertised alongside the main game with the same box art as if they were totally equivalent.

Davide Soliani of MarioRabbids fame worked on some of those "downports" back in the late GBC era. The GBC versions of Rayman 1 and Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers were cute little games. Rayman 1 even received praise from Mario Club in Japan.

 

[Aether]

Heey, who's calling Street Fighter Alpa 3 port "fucked up"? The most "miracle" miracle port ever, imo. Sure, lack of two more buttons complicated things but damn, the exact game was there with very minimal sacrifices. Not only that, it even had extras! Yun from Street Fighter 3, Eagle from SF1, Maki from Final Fight 3! Yes that Final Fight 3, released only on SNES.

Yeah, it was a fun game (until it got stolen from me while I was in the hospital (I was a teen and I guess the parent thought the stuff in the drawer belonged to her son...))

Fucked up to me means it was bad or baffling.

 

[Irene]

Since we're discussing future of Nintendo on mobile in another thread, the question needs to be brought forth.

Tears of the Kingdom for iPhone when?

 

[ILikeFeet]

Fucked up to me means it was bad or baffling.

Less bad, more "strange interpretations of higher complexity games on low complexity devices". As the tweet says, MK1 butchered the graphics to make it work, but it's still MK1.

Then you got stuff like Medal of Honor Underground




The era of "make a whole new game" is over now that we can just port shit. No more "oh boy two cakes" for us

Since we're discussing future of Nintendo on mobile in another thread, the question needs to be brought forth.

Tears of the Kingdom for iPhone when?

That wouldn't even count. It'd just literally be Tears of the Kingdom on iphone

 

[Aether]

Less bad, more "strange interpretations of higher complexity games on low complexity devices". As the tweet says, MK1 butchered the graphics to make it work, but it's still MK1.

I would still argue that the GBA port scratches the same itch, while other examples play like different experiences.

But that's probably subjective

 

[Beanstar40]

I miss hand held games actually feeling like a separate thing from console games

 

[PixelKnight]

It was really common to get completely different games under the same name on different platforms back in the 8-bit days- to the point where, for games on the 8-bit home computers, they’d use the best-looking screenshots from the Amiga or C64 to advertise the worst looking versions on Amstrad or Spectrum. The kinda misleading stuff they wouldn’t be able to get away with even a few years later for, say, the GB version of Street Fighter 2.

I remember the DS got some great ones though- like how Spider-man: Web of Shadows is a fun Metroidvania on DS but a 3D action game on everything else.

Mega Man DOS still makes me laugh

 

[Razgriz]

Yeah same here. I miss these kinds of ports too. There's a whole bunch of games running on Unreal Engine that have Switch ports that just run like absolute ass both graphically and framerate wise. I'd rather the developers try and do a "demake" game instead of trying to get Unreal working on the switch.

Plus some of these non-faithful ports could sometimes be really fun games in their own right. Sonic Colors DS is pretty much Sonic Rush 3 (and by far the best Sonic Rush game) for example, even if the only thing it shares with the console version of the game is the same broad strokes setting.

 

[Razgriz]

Guilty Gear X Advance Edition is so fucked up because Instant Kills win you the entire match. I love when devs are just like "yeah, just add some wild shit to this handheld version, why not?"

I'm pretty sure that's in the Missing Link (first game in the franchise on the PS1), not X Advance Edition.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

I agree, though I won't accept the derogatory term of "fucked up ports". These were meticulously crafted for handhelds, often made in an intense crunch development period, and sometimes more effort are put there than the console version on adapting things, reinterpreting things and studios like Crawfish Interactive were wizards on the field (and they closed down right after SF Alpha 3 Upper on GBA, so let's give them a little more respect).

The Making Of: Street Fighter Alpha 3: Upper, The GBA's Best Fighter

"We were a casualty of our own success"

www.timeextension.com

These handheld ports are usually even more interesting than their console counterparts.

 

[fiendcode]

SFA3U GBA is a remarkable port, wtf?

 

[Shoulder]

Less bad, more "strange interpretations of higher complexity games on low complexity devices". As the tweet says, MK1 butchered the graphics to make it work, but it's still MK1.

Then you got stuff like Medal of Honor Underground




The era of "make a whole new game" is over now that we can just port shit. No more "oh boy two cakes" for us

Agreed, and there's a couple other things too. The technological gap in hardware between Handheld devices, and Consoles has shrunken over the last several years, partly due to the advancements in ARM-based mobile hardware. But equally important, graphics engines and APIs are a lot more scalable than ever before, so the days of recreating a whole new game from the ground up on separate hardware is mostly a thing of the past.

I'll use Doom Eternal since it's the de facto benchmark, but the fact I can play it at 8k resolution at 60-120fps on an RTX 4090 with a Intel Core i9 with maxxed out details including Ray-Tracing, as well as a Switch Lite, and have the EXACT same experience yet with a reduction in details, frame rate, and resolution is astounding. We go from a device that has over 73 TeraFLOPS of power, all the way down to a system that in handheld mode has ~256GFLOPs. Again, same exact gameplay experience, same levels, same weapons, enemies, same everything except fidelity. That's a massive 285 times difference in raw horsepower.

It shows how far mobile tech has advanced since 2015, and how scalable today's graphics engines are. Not to mention we have to give massive kudos to the developers, and their immense talent in finding unique ways of optimization that wouldn't have been possible even 10-15 years ago. Imagine if Doom 3 was somehow possible on the Game Boy Advance. That's the kind of advancements we're seeing now, or at least how I see that gap shrinking.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

SFA3U GBA is a remarkable port, wtf?

I'll say something out of my chest, but the FGC usually are very elitist and have no clue of what's about video games outside their bubble. They will keep yapping about how terrible PS1 ports of Capcom fighting games are, like if everyone in the planet was playing these games on the SEGA Saturn or Dreamcast. Importing no less, a luxury that very few people could even afford.

The ports they disdain so much are more than serviceable and are usually much more popular than the so called Arcade Perfect convertions of the time.

 

[Razgriz]

I'll say something out of my chest, but the FGC usually are very elitist and have no clue of what's about video games outside their bubble. They will keep yapping about how terrible PS1 ports of Capcom fighting games are, like if everyone in the planet was playing these games on the SEGA Saturn or Dreamcast. Importing no less, a luxury that very few people could even afford.

The ports they disdain so much are more than serviceable and are usually much more popular than the so called Arcade Perfect convertions of the time.

I wouldn't quite call it elitism, moreso just the product of age making these ports obsolete. Generally, older fighting game playing lands in 3 camps:

• Casual play, which these ports would work with easily. Unfortunately due to the nature of fighting games, with few exceptions, casual play always gravitates towards the most recent entry in the franchise. This is entirely because fighting games are one of the few genres where mechanical complexity and accessibility is a mostly straightforward line going up. There's little need to play the original BlazBlue when you can play Centralfiction for example. Unless there's a hard mechanical break like the complete rehaul of everything in Strive, older entries just aren't played much casually.
• Competitive. Here, arcade perfect is necessary mainly for historical reasons - you weren't playing the FGC tournament on a GBA or an SNES, you were playing it on an arcade cabinet. As for why this matters... read ahead.
• Historical looking back at games. Here these ports kinda fall to the wayside as little more than curiosities - most of them had to severely compromise on visuals, audio, graphics and sometimes even mechanics just so they're playable on handhelds. This also affected early console ports, which is why they're looked down on. There's also some weird NOA censorship bureau going on with the SNES era which affected Mortal Kombat in specific.

Finally, from just a practical perspective, most of the original versions of these fighting games are readily available these days, whether that's by official release or something like MAME.

It just leaves these ports in a weird position where there was an audience for them at release (kids wanting to play MK or Street Fighter on the go), but said audience just doesn't exist anymore and people looking for a nostalgia "fix" on their old games will probably prefer the arcade accurate version since it's closer to the version they remember in their head vs. the one they actually played.

 

[Justin_Bailey]

It was really common to get completely different games under the same name on different platforms back in the 8-bit days- to the point where, for games on the 8-bit home computers, they’d use the best-looking screenshots from the Amiga or C64 to advertise the worst looking versions on Amstrad or Spectrum. The kinda misleading stuff they wouldn’t be able to get away with even a few years later for, say, the GB version of Street Fighter 2.

I remember the DS got some great ones though- like how Spider-man: Web of Shadows is a fun Metroidvania on DS but a 3D action game on everything else.

Mega Man DOS still makes me laugh

Mega Man is a bit of a chonker.

 

[9-Volt]

SFA3U GBA is a remarkable port, wtf?

I think the tweet is trying to point out the lack of buttons in these games, as MGS3D also there, another good conversion. Both Vita and 3DS got MGS3 but the lack of second set of shoulder buttons made them hard to play.

 

[JazzyFuture]

I'm pretty sure that's in the Missing Link (first game in the franchise on the PS1), not X Advance Edition.

It's in both

 

[omniryu]

The era of "make a whole new game" is over now that we can just port shit. No more "oh boy two cakes" for us

Kinda bittersweet. I miss it, but at the same time... kinda don't?

 

[Derachi]

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 on GBA is, in my humble opinion, a better game than THPS2 on any other console. And I think THPS2 is a brilliant masterpiece.

 

[Weiss]

Facts my sibling, spit your truth.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

I wouldn't quite call it elitism, moreso just the product of age making these ports obsolete. Generally, older fighting game playing lands in 3 camps:

• Casual play, which these ports would work with easily. Unfortunately due to the nature of fighting games, with few exceptions, casual play always gravitates towards the most recent entry in the franchise. This is entirely because fighting games are one of the few genres where mechanical complexity and accessibility is a mostly straightforward line going up. There's little need to play the original BlazBlue when you can play Centralfiction for example. Unless there's a hard mechanical break like the complete rehaul of everything in Strive, older entries just aren't played much casually.
• Competitive. Here, arcade perfect is necessary mainly for historical reasons - you weren't playing the FGC tournament on a GBA or an SNES, you were playing it on an arcade cabinet. As for why this matters... read ahead.
• Historical looking back at games. Here these ports kinda fall to the wayside as little more than curiosities - most of them had to severely compromise on visuals, audio, graphics and sometimes even mechanics just so they're playable on handhelds. This also affected early console ports, which is why they're looked down on. There's also some weird NOA censorship bureau going on with the SNES era which affected Mortal Kombat in specific.

Finally, from just a practical perspective, most of the original versions of these fighting games are readily available these days, whether that's by official release or something like MAME.

It just leaves these ports in a weird position where there was an audience for them at release (kids wanting to play MK or Street Fighter on the go), but said audience just doesn't exist anymore and people looking for a nostalgia "fix" on their old games will probably prefer the arcade accurate version since it's closer to the version they remember in their head vs. the one they actually played.

I'm fine with the perspective of a competitive standard version, but there's undeniably a tone of elitism on the FGC when they look down to anyone even trying to justify playing the not as perfect ports. This goes back when these handheld ports were even new and relevant..

Why it's any different to say you had the Street Fighter Alpha 3 experience on GBA? Or the super impressive Super Street Fighter IV on 3DS?

The Sony vs. SEGA consoles situation is even more drastic, because the "hardcore players" were undoubtedly in the minority side of people that played and enjoyed those games.

I personally always go back to Marvel vs. Capcom 1 and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter on PS1, because they are distinct from the Arcade/SEGA console versions. They made some new and unique mechanics to compasate the lack of Tag Team gameplay, and for my memories, these are also legit MvC experiences. But you will always see people trashing on these ports as if they are not of any value for anyone.

 

[totofogo]

I have Metal Gear Solid 3D. It is a very goddamn weird version of that game.

even if technically not the kind of port OP is describing I believe, I adore that it has yoshi

 

[totofogo]

Similar to NFS underground, one of my favorites was DRIV3R, a fully open world game on GBA

 

[MP!]

I have Metal Gear Solid 3D. It is a very goddamn weird version of that game.

you can crouch walk in this version which makes it 100x better
except the controls are weird even with a circle pad pro...

I played through MGS3 on the switch collection and was baffled that I couldn't crouch walk...
totally forgot that was exclusive to 3DS

 

[kvetcha]

I had this exact thought recently when reading a post lamenting potential Switch 2 ports having 'low graphics settings.'

Like, I'm old enough that the entire idea of getting a full-fat, content-complete version of console games playable on a handheld feels like a dream.

 

[Razgriz]

I'm fine with the perspective of a competitive standard version, but there's undeniably a tone of elitism on the FGC when they look down to anyone even trying to justify playing the not as perfect ports. This goes back when these handheld ports were even new and relevant..

I think a big component of that is misaimed audience; the FGC crowd does not try to appeal to casual players and to my understanding explicitly resents the idea. The notion of casual play kinda goes out of the water when there are actual cash prizes involved. (Which is one half of the reason why Nintendo doesn't like their competitive circuits much; money makes things difficult for them. The other half is the semi-constant rate for their competitive communities to just keep spitting out horrible people - just a few weeks ago they got egg on their face again because a winning splatoon team turned out to be absurdly racist.)

I mean, if you want to have a fun argument, look at what the FGC did to Smash Bros to try and shave it down from a fun family party game into a fighting game. Competitive Smash only barely resembles actual Smash Bros in terms of any "fun" mechanics. Smash 64 has had so many different stages cut that at this point the only legal stage is Dreamland. Melee is seen as the peak but that's pretty much entirely because of the fact that half the roster is capable of relying on glitches that are considered "tech". Hell look at the outrage on this forum when Sakurai said he balances the game mainly around "what makes it fun for everyone" rather than "what makes it fun for the elite group of best players".

There's plenty of elitism and toxicity in the FGC but it doesn't really apply to game versions. That's the kinda handwringing that's not really unique to them regardless; ask on any online community which version of a game to play if there are multiple and I guarantee you that in almost all cases you'll have answers for every potential option out there.

 

[Mekanos]

Davide Soliani of MarioRabbids fame worked on some of those "downports" back in the late GBC era. The GBC versions of Rayman 1 and Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers were cute little games. Rayman 1 even received praise from Mario Club in Japan.

Heck, even Rayman 2 got a GBC release. I only learned this years later because Nintendo Power didn't cover it. No idea if that's any good though.

 

[palemire]

Did you ever hear the tragedy of No More Fucked Up Ports?
I thought not. It's not a story Nintendo would tell you.
It's a Fami legend.

 

[Twohearts]

Rayman raving rabbits ds was a pretty good 2d platformer

 

[BassForever]

These technically aren't ports, but 'conversions' because the games are being built from the ground up with very little shared with the big brother versions.
There's a whole youtube niche that explores these sort of games.

I do agree that I miss these jank versions of games. SSFF's show punching weight shows off tons of crazy ports to handhelds like the GB/C/A.

 

[Krvavi Abadas]

it’s still wild to me that CAPCOM gave up on porting Resident Evil 1 to Game Boy Color late in development and just created an original game instead.


what was finished was fairly impressive for the hardware.

another developer also created a port of Resident Evil 2 for the Game Boy Advance, though that was only a tech demo with a tiny portion of the opening.

 

[omniryu]

I think the Resident demo would probably have cost too much for Capcom.

 

[MagiCarbo]

It ultimately comes down to development costs and advancements in mobile tech. The GBA and DS were using custom hardware different from consoles and were easy and cheap enough to develop for that you could create custom versions of console games from scratch.

But with the 3DS, development costs for handheld games were becoming too expensive to keep doing stuff like this, and developers began moving towards universal development tools that can work across multiple platforms.

Nintendo saw the wind shifting, which is why the Switch went with an Nvidia SoC with PC-like development tools. That way developers can more directly port console titles over without having to create a separate version from scratch.

 

[robertman2]

I'll say something out of my chest, but the FGC usually are very elitist and have no clue of what's about video games outside their bubble. They will keep yapping about how terrible PS1 ports of Capcom fighting games are, like if everyone in the planet was playing these games on the SEGA Saturn or Dreamcast. Importing no less, a luxury that very few people could even afford.

The ports they disdain so much are more than serviceable and are usually much more popular than the so called Arcade Perfect convertions of the time.

Calling a poorly performing port that's missing integral features a bad port isn't elitism, it's calling a spade a spade. Especially nowadays when it's incredibly easy to play the original versions of the game.

 

[Dice]

I just had to see what this looked like and wow i hate it But still, it was cool to see how much the GBA could still do (even lil' FMVs), but...i dunno cool