Thinking back old consoles, I had already forgotten just how much the "arcade quality games" tried to be a thing and how much it never really was until many years later.
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Thinking back old consoles, I had already forgotten just how much the "arcade quality games" tried to be a thing and how much it never really was until many years later. I think it was when I first saw Crazy Taxi on a Dreamcast that I could agree that you could call it a "arcade quality" port.
You folk have any memories of really harsh disappointments when playing arcade ports on a home console or some hidden gems?
@apzpins In retrospective, I may have (sub)consciously avoided arcade ports for the C64 even back then. But the first and topmost thing on my list of porting horrors has to be Dragons Lair
I don't think I ever played it on arcade because it just seemed like a super stupid game to me to begin and never mind the graphics. But the C64 port!
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@Energetic_Nova @apzpins that is SO awesome. Would love to play you someday so you could also kick my ass, I'm sure
it would be an honor 
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@Energetic_Nova @apzpins that is SO awesome. Would love to play you someday so you could also kick my ass, I'm sure
it would be an honor -
@apzpins It didn't take the young me long to realise that there would be a big difference between the arcade machine version of a game and its play at home equivalent.
Space Invaders on the Atari 2600 sounded like people farting but it had lots of variations in the 112 games on the cartridge. Pac-Man on the 2600 was a disappointment. Asteroids wasn't bad, I kept going for hours on that. 48000 was my high score on the 2600 version.
I still feel a buzz whenever I sit in a Star Wars cabinet or at a Tron cabinet.
@apzpins The Atari joysitcks suffered under my heavy use, But I could sit down in my bedroom instead of spending lots of 10p pieces at the chip shop half an hour's walk away.
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@apzpins In retrospective, I may have (sub)consciously avoided arcade ports for the C64 even back then. But the first and topmost thing on my list of porting horrors has to be Dragons Lair
I don't think I ever played it on arcade because it just seemed like a super stupid game to me to begin and never mind the graphics. But the C64 port!
@Turre Looks like I learned something new today as I was not aware of the C64 port. The Amiga one, sure and it was surprisingly decent considering the storage limitations.
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@apzpins Rampage on the Atari ST might be the one that comes to mind. Ateast I remember it being very good and faithful to the arcade.
But the correct answer is probably Super Sprint on the ST. It's almost identical to the arcade and extremely fun to play, even today. I didn't mention it because at the time I didn't know it was an arcade game.
@loke ST's Rampage was very decent, but then again 68k was on whole another level compared to console CPUs of the era.
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Thinking back old consoles, I had already forgotten just how much the "arcade quality games" tried to be a thing and how much it never really was until many years later. I think it was when I first saw Crazy Taxi on a Dreamcast that I could agree that you could call it a "arcade quality" port.
You folk have any memories of really harsh disappointments when playing arcade ports on a home console or some hidden gems?
@apzpins That was the era for sure. I played a lot of perfect or near-perfect arcade ports on my PSX.
I pretty much knew what to expect from home ports before that. Maybe the super early PC Pac-Man port I once bought a boxed copy of was disappoonting. So old you booted the machine off the disk to play.
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@apzpins It didn't take the young me long to realise that there would be a big difference between the arcade machine version of a game and its play at home equivalent.
Space Invaders on the Atari 2600 sounded like people farting but it had lots of variations in the 112 games on the cartridge. Pac-Man on the 2600 was a disappointment. Asteroids wasn't bad, I kept going for hours on that. 48000 was my high score on the 2600 version.
I still feel a buzz whenever I sit in a Star Wars cabinet or at a Tron cabinet.
@CaptMikeYates This was also the era, where adults would debut the meme level phrase of "we have pinball/video games at home".
For pinball it was even more sad, with the pinball at home being those tiny physical toy pins or C64/NES era video pins.
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@CaptMikeYates This was also the era, where adults would debut the meme level phrase of "we have pinball/video games at home".
For pinball it was even more sad, with the pinball at home being those tiny physical toy pins or C64/NES era video pins.
@apzpins Video pinball of any variant was never the same. Especially with the rubber keys on the ZX Spectrum
. There was a place about half an hour's walk in the other direction to the chip shop that had a couple of pinball tables and a couple of arcade machines. -
@Turre Looks like I learned something new today as I was not aware of the C64 port. The Amiga one, sure and it was surprisingly decent considering the storage limitations.
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@apzpins Rampage on the Atari ST might be the one that comes to mind. Ateast I remember it being very good and faithful to the arcade.
But the correct answer is probably Super Sprint on the ST. It's almost identical to the arcade and extremely fun to play, even today. I didn't mention it because at the time I didn't know it was an arcade game.
@loke @apzpins I wouldn't say Super Sprint, because you really need that 360 steering wheel to get the feel of the arcade.
But Rampage, Bubble Bobble, Arkanoid (and Arkanoid 2) Star Wars were among many awesome arcade ports on the ST.
A lot of arcade ports on the ST were awful, of course, but if there wasn't any scrolling, there was a good chance...
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@arto_koivisto I feel like a lot of the crappy C64 titles were less of a disappointment as at least those got accidentally copied from a friend. But asking for some console cartridge for a birthday or Christmas present, waiting for it and then realising it was a turd, that shit hurt bad.
@apzpins oh yea totally can agree on that.
For one decent conversion + cartridge, for me that could be Gorf on VIC-20. As you’d expect, graphics are no match, pretty ok anyway, but I think it plays fine even to date.
Was also the first home computer arcade port ever I got to play, so slight chance of personal bias
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@apzpins In retrospective, I may have (sub)consciously avoided arcade ports for the C64 even back then. But the first and topmost thing on my list of porting horrors has to be Dragons Lair
I don't think I ever played it on arcade because it just seemed like a super stupid game to me to begin and never mind the graphics. But the C64 port!
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@loke @apzpins I wouldn't say Super Sprint, because you really need that 360 steering wheel to get the feel of the arcade.
But Rampage, Bubble Bobble, Arkanoid (and Arkanoid 2) Star Wars were among many awesome arcade ports on the ST.
A lot of arcade ports on the ST were awful, of course, but if there wasn't any scrolling, there was a good chance...
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@apzpins The Atari joysitcks suffered under my heavy use, But I could sit down in my bedroom instead of spending lots of 10p pieces at the chip shop half an hour's walk away.
@CaptMikeYates I went through a lot ot Quickshot's joystics, mostly because they used lame leaf switches that would break. Dad fixed a lot of them for me to use proper micro switches.
Others from the era include TAC-2 and the weird grenade looking one.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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@CaptMikeYates I went through a lot ot Quickshot's joystics, mostly because they used lame leaf switches that would break. Dad fixed a lot of them for me to use proper micro switches.
Others from the era include TAC-2 and the weird grenade looking one.
@apzpins When I found microswitch joysticks I was overjoyed. Got a vague recall that the Quickshot 2 Turbo had them but I ended using with a blue based joystick that had a red metal stick and good switches.
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@arto_koivisto @apzpins
A cassette version of that. OMG A friend had Summer Games on cassette - it was a pain, but at least the game was good
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@apzpins ha! Yeah, the crappy Atari 2600 one came to mind hahaha
@jake4480 There was so much shit on the 2600. Modern emulator gamers play some of the platform's games and say they weren't THAT bad, but they only enjoy what survived the test of time. Ditto with C64, so much stuff from which I wanted my money back even when they were pirated.
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@arto_koivisto @Turre Oh god, the multi-part tape games were so much fun. Or the polar opposite of it. Some also enabled a creative way of cheating. Rambo 3 for example loaded between levels. If the game was over, it told to rewind and press play. But if you just pressed play, it loaded the next level.
