Ports of games from one console to another.

Greetings.

Well, the purpose of this thread is just to get an opinion of the games, released on one console, then ported to another. There have been a lot of games which were on the Sega Dreamcast and ported to the PS2, and in Shenmue II’s case, the Xbox.

Some examples of games from, say the Dreamcast (I’m using this as an example.). Games like Dead or Alive 2, Wacky Races, Crazy Taxi, Grandia 2 and Skies of Arcadia, have been ported from the Dreamcast to the PS2. The games on the Dreamcast have a sharper feel to them, and sound quality is quite good as well. On the PS2, Dead or Alive 2 is an alright game, but has something missing from it which the Dreamcast version had. Grandia 2 has some glitches to it, but the only difference between the PS2 and Dreamcast versions are a few more FMV. That’s all.

Anywayz, what do you all think? Ports of games from one console to another, are they any good?

Well it’s not really a port from console to console, it’s a port from console to PC I am oging to talk about.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance.

This game has been ported to PC, I must admit, it’s really a bunch of crap. It’s really pathetic how this has turned out. The controls are whack, it’s impossible to play this game with keybaord and really hard with a proper pad. (Ever tried pressing the L1 button on a keyboard? no? you catch my drift)

The graphics are degrading, it really don’t look all that great (compared to the PS2 or GC and XboX versions). The music and sound effects are unchanged (though you want a good card to benefit here).

So overall this port (if you ask me), was totally un-nessecary.

Another game port I am giving a thumbs up to, Grandia from the Sega Saturn to the Playstation. Okay, so the graphics and stuff weren’t as sharp as the original, but I absolutely adored the game, the storyline, the character interaction and the overall feel of the game.

Grandia 2 from Dreamcast also went to the PC. That game was class as well. I almost failed my second year exams because of that game. It was kinda addictive.

Well, I remember when Final Fantasy VII was ported to the PC and the port was pretty good. There wasn’t many differences between both the PC and PSX version. Then, Final Fantasy VIII was ported onto the PC and it was bad. Real bad. After that, I basically lost interest in any games ported to the PC.

I’ve played the original Lunar games on the Saturn (or the Mega-CD, can’t remember, my mind’s a bit fuzzy.), same with Grandia as well as Lost Vikings 2 on the Saturn. Great games.

Some ports work out well, while others, unfortunately don’t.

Actually, both Final Fantasy VII and VIII sucked on the PC compared to the PSX versions….I mean, sure enough when you had a decently strong PC they could be somewhat decent but the fact remained that those blurry background with hi-res 3D models was simply unforgivable…coupled with a sadly-lacking MIDI soundtrack (having a good soundcard with great MIDI playback is a must for these two games, and even so it is not as good as on the PlayStation, which is unforgivable considering PCs have far better MIDI capabilities than the PlayStation) and unbearing load times for movies…at least the other loading times were non-existant.

Pretty much all the Final Fantasy "remakes" (FFIV through VI and Chrono Trigger) sucked on the PSX compared to their original SNES counterparts. Far too long loading times for the menus and saving on the memory card made the experiment far less enjoyable than on the PC…oh yeah, they added a few FMVs…wow, as if THAT would compensate enough.

Even the recently ported Final Fantasy Origins is not that great of a port if you consider they’re from a Wonderswan game…Once again all they added from those Wonderswan games is one or two FMVs and added loading times, though one will admit they have improved on that compared to previous ports

In short, Square has a long way to understand how to properly port a game…Unlike Working Designs for example. Their job on the Lunar Games is simply awesome.

As for the other ports…it’s one case at a time.

Grandia II on the PS2 also suffered from slow-downs ( yeah, you heard right…a game that got ported from the DC had slow-downs on a much more powerful console…weird isn’t it ? ) And I heard the same thing happened with the recently released Sonic Adventure DX on GameCube. It is plagued with slow-downs compared to the original Dreamcast version. Makes you wonder what made the Dreamcast perform so well considering it should be a dinosaur compared to the Cube and even the PS2 huh ?

The original Grandia, once ported on PSX, did okay though…

One exception, and I do not agree with Deaths Head here, is that the PS2 version of DOA2 was MUCH BETTER than the original : You could CLEARLY see the difference between a cutscene and a fight on the Dreamcast ( there was some blurring on the blackground ) whereas this is not as apparent on PS2, the load times were slower AND the controls were simplified once you activated the analog options, allowing you to chain throws or holds by the simple pressing of a button ( which made Hayabusa’s awesome hold much easier to perform ).

So, as you can see, I have my reserves on ports from other games…Next ones I’m trying out are Skies of Arcadia Legends and the GameCube port of Ocarina of Time.