worst shmup ports you ever seen?

[BulletMagnet]

I've played the original, the port is fine.

Rob also used to argue that the port was passable, but the borked frame rate in particular absolutely killed it for me; slowdown inaccuracy is one thing, but I don't think I've ever seen a port so completely vomit all over itself in that regard like GWG does, and it's particularly inexcusable for a graphically-unimpressive game on hardware that could easily have handled it. Whoever did that port must have been given about 20 minutes to do it and paid with a stale pack of Nilla Wafers.

[Angry Hina]

And Akai Katana Climax is great as well. felt the same about the post trolling-wise.

[nZero]

I've played the original, the port is fine.

Rob also used to argue that the port was passable, but the borked frame rate in particular absolutely killed it for me; slowdown inaccuracy is one thing, but I don't think I've ever seen a port so completely vomit all over itself in that regard like GWG does, and it's particularly inexcusable for a graphically-unimpressive game on hardware that could easily have handled it. Whoever did that port must have been given about 20 minutes to do it and paid with a stale pack of Nilla Wafers.

Especially given how well contemporary ports to the PS2 of Raiden III and Homura turned out.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

And Akai Katana Climax is great as well. felt the same about the post trolling-wise.

Yeah, the widescreen modes in the port are worth the price of admission alone. The game is forgiving enough that any slowdown inaccuracy in the original arcade mode simply isn't likely to have an impact (unless you're a WR tier player, but in that case you'd have the skill to adjust accordingly).

[Sengoku Strider]

OK this got my nerd rage boner hard
Yes, the Speccy was designed to run games, but we're talking Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong knock-offs. Arcade technology progressed at a huge rate, the Spectrum didn't. For every clunker of a conversion, there was also another that was incredibly impressive - Enduro Racer, Flying Shark, Karnov, Renegade, Rainbow Islands, Chase HQ to name a few. Are any of them worth playing today? Not outside of curiosity's sake, but I'd argue that other than conversions actually redesigned for the host platform, neither are any others these days. They were all we had at the time, so we made do. And poke fun at the colours all you will, but R-Type is a legit impressive and playable port, incidentally FAR better then the 'better' looking C64 version.

You can argue that the NES was released in 1983 I suppose, but that was a games machine. Period. The Spectrum absolutely wasn't designed as a games machine - Sinclair was enraged when he didn't win the BBC contract, and was often heard making disparaging comments about how his computer had ended up as a 'toy' for 'fucking video games'. It might not have been the most powerful home micro of the time, but it was certainly more than a games machine, hence the massive boost in bedroom coders and software house start-ups in the early 80's.

I've put these two paragraphs together here because they're along similar lines.

If the ZX Spectrum was a person then okay, we could say it's not Timmy's fault he was a little slow and colour-blind and really bad at singing and couldn't keep up with the other kids. He's trying his best out there.

But we're talking about a purposefully designed machine here. If it was built for Pac Man, Space Invaders, etc., then okay, it compromised power for price and wasn't up to the task of handing the games of its time. Or a properly coloured Pac-man, for that matter.

Jerky scrolling, poor colour, poor sound, the Spectrum was specifically bad at the task of rendering video games. Both compared to contemporary competition, and even in several ways to prior machines. If we're using rationalizations like "yeah, but it's amazing R-Type even functioned on it," that's a participation trophy rather than a gold medal.

You write later on:

I guess to really understand the impact of the machine, you had to be there like the time

I was a tiny kid, but I was there. The Commodore 64, released the same year, smoked the Spec up the street and back. That's what most everyone I knew was gaming on. The Spectrum 128 hit in 1985, the same year as the Amiga, which it frankly doesn't belong in the same sentence as. Even stuff like the Amstrad CPC could manage a proper colour display with equivalent hardware.

If you or anyone has positive memories and fuzzy nostalgia for the Spectrum, that's 100% fine. You don't have to apologize for or defend that to me or anyone else. Hang onto those memories, there's enough stress in the world. But I think asking "is it good?" and answering in terms that have meaning to anyone else becomes a something of a different matter.

The 'crash' didn't affect the UK in the slightest, so that had nothing to do with the machine's success. Apart from remaining Atari and Intellivision carts tumbling in price, the UK was blissfully unaware that there even had been a crash.

If you look back, I wrote 'landed right before Atari & the American consoles crashed' - meaning that the Spectrum benefited from the well-funded American competition in the lower price ranges of the gaming market getting out of the way soon after it hit.

It's pretty clear that the Spectrum's success was largely based around being the cheapest and most available option at the right time, and specifically in the right market. It made nothing resembling a dent in North America or Japan. And by 1985 Clive had to sell off the rights to Amstrad, he couldn't make that lightning strike a second time without all those stars aligning at once.

[BrianC]

Some of Sinclair's computers were released in the US under the Timex name, but the release of the US counterpart of the Spectrum was more limited and the computer from them more often seen was closer to the ZX-81. Primarily a business computer AFAIK, or at least that was my impression as a young boy who wondered if it had games.

Speaking of computer ports, the Atari 800 Asteroids is terrible. Very slow and boring with a noticeable delay with shields, hyperspace, and even flipping. It did have 4p when played on an older Atari 800, though.