• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

Console ports that went beyond ambitious

Aegis Renfro

Aegis Renfro

Member
Jan 11, 2018
423
We're just gonna skip Atari 2600 Pac-Man? Not only could the 2600 not handle 4 ghosts on screen, not only could they not get the graphics right, but they tried to make the game in 6 weeks and just about cratered the North American video game industry as a result.
 
Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
38,397
Ibis Island
My first time playing Half - Life 2 was on the OG Xbox (Same with Doom 3). I played Half - Life 2 again years later but on 360. Despite being a PC classic, I have not once played it on that system.
 
{Marvelous}

{Marvelous}

Member
Jan 2, 2018
1,284
Relative to other J2ME games Civ 5 is a pretty solid representation of the genuine article - at least fundamentally, I'm not sure if it qualifies for this thread in terms of the platform being a 'console' though. I only mention it because I've been dabbling with it recently.

 
Mugy

Mugy

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,424
What about those attempts by Red Fly Studios to port both Arkham Asylum and DMC4 to Wii?


 
skeezx

skeezx

Member
Oct 27, 2017
20,131
Rise of the Tomb Raider on 360

honestly i was kind of spooked... some kind of black magic going on there
 
chandoog

chandoog

Member
Oct 27, 2017
20,071
Y'all praising Titan Fall 2 shouldn't sleep on Rise of TR's 360 port. Nixxess developed it and it was great.

 
EvilBoris

EvilBoris

Prophet of Truth - HDTVtest
Verified
Oct 29, 2017
16,680
Titanfall on the 360

They optimised the hell out of that one to get the 360 version to a good place. Some really smart changes.
 
NeoPancho

NeoPancho

Member
Nov 3, 2017
219
When i was a kid, the fact that the Ninja Turtles Arcade game for NES and Turtles in Time for Snes had more stages than the arcade ones impressed me.
 
imbarkus

imbarkus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,645
I'm gonna go with something from my youth and slot a vote for S.T.U.N. Runner on the Atari Lynx.

mG5wPM.gif


How could they possibly do any decent kind of port job of this polygonal arcade 60fps racer with a custom analog controller onto a handheld with a digital pad that came out the same time as original Gameboy?

OMYpNB.gif


Welp they somehow captured the original arcade game's speed, gameplay, and visuals (more or less) with sprites and the Lynx's built in hardware spite scaling. You can see some jaggies for sure as walls etc get closer to you and the telltale Lynx sprite-scaling distortion gives it away.

It plays great, even with the digital pad, which is saying something after the Lynx port of Roadblasters was almost unplayable due to the way the analog control wheel was translated into digital pad taps. Just an absolutely amazing port, that I'll always remember.
 
Last edited:
Ardiloso

Ardiloso

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,368
Brazil
Alone in the Dark 4 for the Gameboy Color.
Insane wizardry with the backgrounds. Those impressed with that poor Resident Evil attempt should check this out:

Even more impressive on the real gbc tiny screen.
 
SirNinja

SirNinja

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 17, 2017
8,219
Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States
Borderlands 2 on Vita was a crazy ambitious port, and often a slideshow, but overall it worked just well enough to be sorta-playable. Iron Galaxy kept supporting it with various patches throughout the Vita's lifespan, including a patch that took advantage of a late system firmware update which freed up about 30% of the system's RAM. You could also play on Airplane Mode and/or with gore disabled to get a few extra FPS.

It still has some bad bugs, but honestly I'm kind of amazed it ran at all. A triple-A Unreal 3 game on the go was mostly crazy talk back then.
 
GMM

GMM

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,481
Ardiloso said:
Alone in the Dark 4 for the Gameboy Color.
Insane wizardry with the backgrounds. Those impressed with that poor Resident Evil attempt should check this out:

Even more impressive on the real gbc tiny screen.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


That's REALLY impressive for the Gameboy Color, that must have been hell to make.
 
Mr_Antimatter

Mr_Antimatter

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,571
Was always impressed by Quake 2 on the ps1. If I remember correctly id said once it couldn't be done.

Played the heck out of it though, was a fun game.
 
Silvergun-Blue

Silvergun-Blue

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,932
SirNinja said:
Borderlands 2 on Vita was a crazy ambitious port, and often a slideshow, but overall it worked just well enough to be sorta-playable. Iron Galaxy kept supporting it with various patches throughout the Vita's lifespan, including a patch that took advantage of a late system firmware update which freed up about 30% of the system's RAM. You could also play on Airplane Mode and/or with gore disabled to get a few extra FPS.

It still has some bad bugs, but honestly I'm kind of amazed it ran at all. A triple-A Unreal 3 game on the go was mostly crazy talk back then.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This was gonna be my choice, it was a fantastic effort.
 
{Marvelous}

{Marvelous}

Member
Jan 2, 2018
1,284
Mugy said:
What about those attempts by Red Fly Studios to port both Arkham Asylum and DMC4 to Wii?

Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


This looks great, I would have totally played a downport of Arkham from Red Fly. I loved what they did with the stylised Ghostbusters port, I was gobsmacked by how perfectly they adapted the tone of that game to a whimsical low-fi art style without really sacrificing the quality of content (also no stone cherubs ftw); it made it to PSP as well and it was ostensibly the full package.
 

Deleted member 19702

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,722
Street Fighter Alpha 2 (SNES)
Resident Evil 2 (N64)
Virtua Fighter 2 (GEN)
Virtua Racing (GEN)
Doom 3 (XBOX)
Half Life 2 (XBOX)
Doom (Switch)
Wolfenstein 2 (Switch)
 
smash_robot

smash_robot

Member
Oct 27, 2017
994
Aegis Renfro said:
We're just gonna skip Atari 2600 Pac-Man? Not only could the 2600 not handle 4 ghosts on screen, not only could they not get the graphics right, but they tried to make the game in 6 weeks and just about cratered the North American video game industry as a result.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I played that a lot as a kid. Although it wasn't really that ambitious - just a shitty port.

Somebody actually did a decent job of writing a pac man port for the 2600 a few years ago.

 
Mugy

Mugy

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,424


The fact that Street Fighter Alpha 3 came out for the GBA the way it did its also really amazing for me. It was surprisingly fun to play
 
logan_cadfgs

logan_cadfgs

Member
Oct 28, 2017
945
Aegis Renfro said:
We're just gonna skip Atari 2600 Pac-Man? Not only could the 2600 not handle 4 ghosts on screen, not only could they not get the graphics right, but they tried to make the game in 6 weeks and just about cratered the North American video game industry as a result.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's impressive considering the short dev time, for sure! So many crunch stories from the 2600 days - Atari really was something back then.

Speaking of Pac-Man, the 2600 port of Jr. Pac-Man was pretty great from a technical standpoint, considering the hardware - It's got the scrolling and everything!

 
Tokyo_Funk

Tokyo_Funk

Banned
Dec 10, 2018
10,053
Quake Sega Saturn. Full polygon characters and full sized levels without tricks. One or two levels were broken up, but there wasn't a loading screen between sectors. Also had full colour lighting. For a console that was not meant to do 3D well, this was a minor miracle.

Duke Nukem 3D was also ambitious, the build engine levels were re-jigged to work on a full 3D engine. The Saturn version eliminates the odd warping you get from the original by making the entire level proper 3D. Throw in coloured lighting, and once again Lobotomy made another small miracle on the Saturn.
 
Wood Man

Wood Man

Member
Oct 30, 2017
5,449
X-Men vs Street Fighter Saturn (with 4MB RAM cart) - I know this was available only in Japan, but I was blown away when I was a able to play this at home. Compared to what we got in the States this was incredible. Like having the arcade in your house. I was finally able to practice combos and characters I was unfamiliar with. This was my first import venture and sparked my interested in buying more.
 
Stooge

Stooge

Member
Oct 29, 2017
11,138
Hard Drivin' on SNES was pure garbage. Like 5 FPS.

Edit: it was race Drivin'. Sorry. Still garbage.
 
dodo

dodo

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,997
the witcher 2 on xbox 360 was fucking bananas when it launched. like yeah it was ~30fps, but until the PC version of enhanced edition came out it featured some effects/lighting techniques that looked better than the PC version, which was a high benchmark at the time.

honestly a lot of late 360/PS3 stuff from the later years is wild. Crysis on XBLA/PSN was fantastic for what it was, the 360 version of titanfall was better than it had any right to be, etc
 
RedSwirl

RedSwirl

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,052
dadjumper said:
This is essentially the concept for Punching Weight, give it a look if you haven't already!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


The Game Boy Color legit pulle off a lot of shit when nobody was looking. A surprising number of underrated games that on first glance look like crap either because of the packaging or because they were just shockingly good movie tie-in games. You had stuff like the GBC versions of Daikatana and one of the Harry Potter tie-in games. A lot of this was due to those games just falling back on tried-and-true 2D game design tropes.

While Metal Gear Ghost Babel is probably one of the best Game Boy Games ever made however, you have to admit the reason Konami was able to basically port MGS1's gameplay to the Game Boy Color is because that gameplay was originally from the 2nd MSX game -- Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. MGS1 itself is basically already a 2D game rendered in polygons.
 
Lukemia SL

Lukemia SL

Member
Jan 30, 2018
9,384
I wanna say the PS2 version of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.
Since they weren't able to implement normal mapping they came up with another technique called Geotexturing which wasn't as good but looked good in its own right.

Then they gave the game water fluids that looked better than the Xbox version to a degree as well as, yes an exclusive water kill move not seen in the xbox or PC versions.
SplinterCellChaosTheory4.jpg


They also added glass refraction techniques not seen in the Xbox version (as far as I remember)
 
WaffleTaco

WaffleTaco

Community Resettler
Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
2,908
GTA 5 upped the graphics and added first person mode. It was great and it's more popular as a port then the original game on the 360/PS3.
 
DrLight66

DrLight66

Banned
Nov 27, 2017
296
Some great mentions in this thread. I'd like to add...

Contra - NES
U.N. Squadron - SNES
Lifeforce - NES
Ridge Racer - PS1
Mike Tyson's Punch Out! - NES
 
GrrImAFridge

GrrImAFridge

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARYDOOS
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,666
Western Australia
A fun fact about the Xbox port of HL2 is that it utilises a rudimentary data streaming system, a feature that was never implemented into the PC branches of Source, to overcome the system's paltry amount of RAM.
 
SMD

SMD

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,341
It will always be Saturn Quake for me because that game had no right to be running as well as it did on that system.
To get what was a comparable experience to most home computers at the time on a machine that struggled so much and to do it in a way that the PlayStation couldn't match up to was wizardry.

For a brief, beautiful time, seeing that Lobotomy splash logo meant you were getting a cutting edge console experience on Saturn.
 
Tokyo_Funk

Tokyo_Funk

Banned
Dec 10, 2018
10,053
JaseC said:
A fun fact about the Xbox port of HL2 is that it utilises a rudimentary data streaming system, a feature that was never implemented into the PC branches of Source, to overcome the system's paltry amount of RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is cool. Finding solutions to limitations is always beneficial for future titles. The OG Xbox Half Life 2 taught Valve how to optimise CPU cycles and shaders which did actually help the PC version down the track. The Xbox only had a 733 MHz CPU and HL2 recommended at the time a 1.2-1.4 ghz dual core processor.
 
-JD-

-JD-

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
3,470
The Witcher 2 on 360 was a minor miracle at the time. That game still puts modern PCs to work.

Here it is running on Xbox One X:
 
Valdega

Valdega

Banned
Sep 7, 2018
1,609
Quake 2 PSX was pretty impressive given the hardware. The devs basically had to remake the game using their own engine and it ended up looking and running better than most games on the platform.

 
Dant21

Dant21

Member
Apr 24, 2018
842
imbarkus said:
I'm gonna go with something from my youth and slot a vote for S.T.U.N. Runner on the Atari Lynx.

mG5wPM.gif


How could they possibly do any decent kind of port job of this polygonal arcade 60fps racer with a custom analog controller onto a handheld with a digital pad that came out the same time as original Gameboy?

OMYpNB.gif


Welp they somehow captured the original arcade game's speed, gameplay, and visuals (more or less) with sprites and the Lynx's built in hardware spite scaling. You can see some jaggies for sure as walls etc get closer to you and the telltale Lynx sprite-scaling distortion gives it away.

It plays great, even with the digital pad, which is saying something after the Lynx port of Roadblasters was almost unplayable due to the way the analog control wheel was translated into digital pad taps. Just an absolutely amazing port, that I'll always remember.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


I was going to point out Race Drivin' on the original Game Boy, but this kicks the crap out of that.

 
CloseTalker

CloseTalker

Member
Oct 25, 2017
30,583
Titanfall 360 was a marvel at the time. It single-handedly made me wait another year to get an Xbone, because all I really wanted to play was TF
 
You must log in or register to reply here.