Worst Arcade Conversion

[Hewitson]

A funny thing I have noticed on here is that everyone acts like Final Fight is the worst conversion ever. It's actually brilliant compared to many others.

What do you think is THE worst conversion ever done?

My vote would probably have to go to Outrun.

[ransom1122]

Rolling Thunder
Street Fighter
Super Contra

[Tigerskunk]

That crown goes to the infamous Rolling Thunder, I'd say.

It's hard to conceive how that game is so slow. Even if they'd update blit everything in that small screen area, the game is much too slow for what it is...

It's kind of amazing how bad this port is.

[fryguy]

Street Fighter indeed, it looked awful and the frame rate was horrible

Amiga version: [ Show youtube player ]

Arcade: [ Show youtube player ]

[nobody]

Black Tiger is number 1. 1943 a close second. That US Gold taking Capcom rights was a bad thing.

[005AGIMA]

+1 for Outrun

Bitterly disappointing given the Amiga's potential, and proven capabilities in that genre like Lotus and the driving level of Batman.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks they couldn't make it "as good as" the Arcade or why would kids go and dump coinage in the original?

Also they couldn't make it "better" than the master system perhaps?

But did they have to make it...THAT BAD?

Times have changed.
I had and LOVED Outrun Coast to Coast on my PS3.
One day I spotted the sit-down Arcade, and I swear, it was EXACTLY the same as the PS3 version.

Anyway,

Another pic for me is Chase HQ

From memory Chase HQ 2 (CSI) was an improvement.

Yep YouTube confirms it
[ Show youtube player ]

(Off topic: Had me a 300ZX for a while )

[mcgeezer]

Rolling Thunder for me, simply because it could have been arcade perfect even on OCS. There's not any other game after it as far as I'm aware that even did it justice either.

[Shatterhand]

Rolling Thunder
Dynasty Wars
Street Fighter
Bionic Commando
Ninja Spirit
1943


I was going to pick 5, but couldn't choose between Ninja Spirit and 1943.

EDIT: You know what, Super Contra is way worse tha Ninja Spirit. And Ninja Spirit is awful.

[WayneK]

A tie between Rolling Thunder + Street Fighter I would say, both are truly horrible conversions.

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by WayneK

A tie between Rolling Thunder + Street Fighter I would say, both are truly horrible conversions.

Both were coded by the same guy. One of the guys who founded Tiertex.

[Coagulus]

Power drift on A500 was pretty bad. Was a bit better with a faster processor though.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Coagulus

Power drift on A500 was pretty bad. Was a bit better with a faster processor though.

Sadly the guy who converted it is actually quite a decent programmer, but he had a short time to convert it and had to include too much from the arcade.

Digital Magics Drivin' Force showed that it could be handled better.

[malko]

Ok, Rolling Thunder*, Out Run*, Bionic Commando*, Strider*, Robocop*, Shinobi*, etc. could have been better... Indeed it was possible to do better, just look at what has been accomplished with Silkworm, The Ninja Warriors, etc. to be convinced...
but I am surprised to see that so far nobody mentioned one of the WORST port ever made. It is obvious that they used a different name because they knew it was that bad : Thunderboy...

*Let's be honest, I was happy to be able to play them on my Amiga, but... they deserved a better port.

[jotd]

Thunderboy: "Amiga original game: yes". Rainbow Arts at its finest copying great games without copyright. But not an official and licensed arcade port. Botched copies don't count, or there are a lot of bad arkanoid clones that need a mention.

Now Pit Fighter (http://hol.abime.net/1075). Wasn't that port the pits? Tengen was able to do good ports (Escape from the planet of Robot monsters) and the worst conversions. In general, arcade ports which used digitized graphics were horrible. Mortal Kombat was some exception, surprisingly good and fast, with 2 button support.

I remain most frustrated by games with ok graphics (sometimes ripped from the arcade machine, like final fight) but with jerky gameplay and rewritten code (because arcade game writers rarely shared their code, which explain a lot about fighting games, except for MK or/and MKII which reportedly contains original fighting algorithms and that shows!)

[Shatterhand]

Pit Fighter on Amiga suffers because of the dreaded 1 button controller.... this issue aside, it's by far the best home port of the game.

Problem is that the arcade game kinda sucks anyway.

This is even worse with Double Dragon 3. DD3 on Amiga is genuinely one of the few arcade ports that are BETTER than the arcade original. Coders made the game run smoother than the arcade version and corrected a few issues.

Problem is that the arcade game is horrible. So DD3 is a great port of an awful game.

[Galahad/FLT]

Disagree with Pitfighter. The Amiga version is the best conversion bar none.

Unfortunately, I don't rate the coin-op it was converted from at all, but for a home version, the Amiga was treated better than most.

[dlfrsilver]

DD3 has a programming error that was never corrected. The coder did something wrong with the sprites frames tiles metadata.

[malko]

Originally Posted by jotd

Thunderboy: "Amiga original game: yes". Rainbow Arts at its finest copying great games without copyright. But not an official and licensed arcade port. Botched copies don't count, or there are a lot of bad arkanoid clones that need a mention. [...]

Official or not the Amiga version deserves the loser's prize.
For "Rainbow Arts" in general, like your "its finest" black humour for Thunderboy .

OT : I think Rainbow Arts finest clones (good one) were : Katakis/Denaris (R-Type) & Great Giana Sisters (Mario).

[demoniac]

Originally Posted by fryguy

Street Fighter indeed, it looked awful and the frame rate was horrible

I thought it looked OK, but the frame rate was atrocious.

[demoniac]

I think Altered Beast port was not very good.

Also even though I wasn't that familiar with Dynasty Wars in the arcade, the port isn't good either.