Fun Club The Tragedy of No More Fucked Up Ports

[Rychu_Supadude]

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

The games themselves have an undeniable charm that's being left behind. But what I don't miss is the years of built up cultural attitude that treated handheld gaming as second-rate, minor-league, "casual" - fueled in large part by these attempts to recreate existing games in an environment that couldn't measure up on a technical level. But with the GBA being able to produce experiences that played almost the same as their 3D counterparts, and the DS outright having 3D graphics, the attitude really should have died out or lessened, but it just didn't.

To be specific, I'm thinking of some articles I came across the other day from the time of Fire Emblem: Three Houses' release - but you could find examples across any series - about how FE was "finally back on a home device" and it just kinda makes me go "huh?" Sure, it's technically correct that it's cool to have shiny graphics again, but it's not like the Radiance games (great as they are in a bubble) were the true peak of the series and all the other Western releases were spinoffs. Gameplay-wise, going from GBA to Wii to 3DS to Switch is mostly unchanged, you just get a different presentation.

To put it another way... the Wii U version of Smash 4 is much prettier than the 3DS one, but it's eclipsed in terms of the number of people who actually played it, so which is the "true, core" experience?

Merging the product lines wasn't just a win for Nintendo's profits, it was a win for the health of the community in general.

 

[Gingerbread Man]

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.

Not bad but clearly rushed, the final boss is just a random Robot Pirate lol It is more an expansion of Rayman 1 GBC than a proper Rayman 2 port.

Rayman 2 was also ported to GBA. GBA Rayman 3 is actually Rayman 2 with Rayman 3 enemies and some plot points tackled in.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

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.

Other than the audio compression (or maybe load times, which was to be expected), there's nothing bad about the ports of (internally made) Capcom fighting games on PS1. They are feature rich, mechanically sound and, again, had unique things to compensate what they couldn't adapt from the Arcade originals.

The way people say, one could think they are comparable to US Gold ports for MS-DOS of older games or something. It's really baffling to me. Want to talk about actual bad PS1 ports, there's always Children of the Atom by Probe and published by Acclaim.

I grew up playing XMvSF, MSH, MSHvSF and MvC1 on PS1, and I didn't feel I was missing anything.

 

[Brock Reiher]

 

[CyberWolfBia]

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.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is actually a recent situation, of how much FGC trashes on it.. like, I get it.. not having Rollback or training mode for every game included is a shame, and later Capcom fighting game collections improved on that front.

But it's not like I can't recommend to people wanting to try older Street Fighter games on modern systems. Not everyone cares about the technicalities. 3rd Strike is on Switch and that's more than enough for most.

Do I wish they had all the content from the PSP version of Alpha 3 in the collection? sure! The same way I wish the The Chaos Tower were included in the Darkstalkers collection. But that's when the priorities get reversed.. that Darkstalkers collection had what FGC cares about, so they don't even miss the meat of later home ports revisions, let alone one that was previously released on a handheld (to stay on topic).

EDIT: and just be clear, despite of how I'm venting about these cases, I have nothing against the greater FGC. I'm not a competitive person myself, but I do vaguely follow the scenario through Maximilian Dood and I guess his podcast too.

That's just a very particular situation that bothers me; especially when comes to derogatory terms used to talk about stuff like Alpha 3 Upper on GBA, which is nothing short but a technical marvel.

 

[Twohearts]

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is actually a recent situation, of how much FGC trashes on it.. like, I get it.. not having Rollback or training mode for every game included is a shame, and later Capcom fighting game collections improved on that front.

But it's not like I can't recommend to people wanting to try older Street Fighter games on modern systems. Not everyone cares about the technicalities. 3rd Strike is on Switch and that's more than enough for most.

Do I wish they had all the content from the PSP version of Alpha 3 in the collection? sure! The same way I wish the The Chaos Tower were included in the Darkstalkers collection. But that's when the priorities get reversed.. that Darkstalkers collection had what FGC cares about, so they don't even miss the meat of later home ports revisions, let alone one that was previously released on a handheld (to stay on topic).

EDIT: and just be clear, despite of how I'm venting about these cases, I have nothing against the greater FGC. I'm not a competitive person myself, but I do vaguely follow the scenario through Maximilian Dood and I guess his podcast too.

That's just a very particular situation that bothers me; especially when comes to derogatory terms used to talk about stuff like Alpha 3 Upper on GBA, which is nothing short but a technical marvel.

Yeah, I loved street fighter 4 3ds as young teen and mucking around in it is what got me to try and fail to take street fighter 5 seriously. I am just sick of elitism in the FGC and how intense everyone is and just like all my friends who play smash are competitive players and I have fine and gross motor issues so I can't play well, so they play seriously against me for what's meant to be chill games and just completely own me because they always p,ay seriously. I'm sick of it and I just want to play very casually jn games like these with friends