Note: Obviously I'm talking about ports that were made roughly within the same time period, not ports that arrived years and years later on more powerful hardware
"Superior" version doesn't necessarily mean better looking -- but at the least, it should mean a more full-featured package (it plays better, has notably more stages/characters/content). "Superior" is not a matter of your preferences though -- just because you prefer controller to mouse/keyboard doesn't make a console version superior to the PC original. If local multiplayer is important enough to overcome the graphical deficiencies of a console port, then feel free to submit your favorites.
I was just the other day trying to think of examples of this. For a long time it was pretty rare for a console port to even look or sound as good as the PC/Arcade original, but slowly it started happening. Soul Calibur is the most obvious and notorious example -- the Dreamcast version looked markedly superior to the arcade. Hype surrounding Soul Calibur DC is arguably what turned the series into a long-running and storied franchise. If it had only received a middling PS1 port, it probably would have just been another fighting game forgotten by time. By the same turn, I think Tekken Tag Tournament ended up better on PS2, but it really wasn't as mind-blowing of a revelation after what happened with SC. If SC had never been ported to Dreamcast, I think TTT PS2 would have turned a lot more heads.
In my mind at least, Strider was way better on Genesis than the arcade but that's really just a hazy recollection.
I'm kind of at a loss when it comes to thinking of PC games that wound up better on consoles. Maybe there were some PC games that started in CGA or EGA graphics, and the NES versions benefitted from a bigger color pallete. Something like Maniac Mansion perhaps? Maybe the SNES version of Sim City? From 1995 onward though, I absolutely cannot think of a PC game that wound up notably better on consoles. I suppose Diablo 3 might count if you really hated the online requirement and prefer directly controlling the character.
What are your best examples of this fairly rare phenomenon?
"Superior" version doesn't necessarily mean better looking -- but at the least, it should mean a more full-featured package (it plays better, has notably more stages/characters/content). "Superior" is not a matter of your preferences though -- just because you prefer controller to mouse/keyboard doesn't make a console version superior to the PC original. If local multiplayer is important enough to overcome the graphical deficiencies of a console port, then feel free to submit your favorites.
I was just the other day trying to think of examples of this. For a long time it was pretty rare for a console port to even look or sound as good as the PC/Arcade original, but slowly it started happening. Soul Calibur is the most obvious and notorious example -- the Dreamcast version looked markedly superior to the arcade. Hype surrounding Soul Calibur DC is arguably what turned the series into a long-running and storied franchise. If it had only received a middling PS1 port, it probably would have just been another fighting game forgotten by time. By the same turn, I think Tekken Tag Tournament ended up better on PS2, but it really wasn't as mind-blowing of a revelation after what happened with SC. If SC had never been ported to Dreamcast, I think TTT PS2 would have turned a lot more heads.
In my mind at least, Strider was way better on Genesis than the arcade but that's really just a hazy recollection.
I'm kind of at a loss when it comes to thinking of PC games that wound up better on consoles. Maybe there were some PC games that started in CGA or EGA graphics, and the NES versions benefitted from a bigger color pallete. Something like Maniac Mansion perhaps? Maybe the SNES version of Sim City? From 1995 onward though, I absolutely cannot think of a PC game that wound up notably better on consoles. I suppose Diablo 3 might count if you really hated the online requirement and prefer directly controlling the character.
What are your best examples of this fairly rare phenomenon?
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