worst shmup ports you ever seen?

[copy-paster]

What exactly is bad, let alone the worst, about the NES port of Parodius Da! ?

Insane flickering, slowdown felt like a slide show scrolling, and uneven hitboxes.

Playing this with overclock enabled is somehow decent, and the way how rank works stays true to arcade version unlike the ports after. Also it can do infinite scrolling and tons of colorful backgrounds without any custom chip, that's an achievement technical-wise.

[Rastan78]

We all know and love XS Games original creation Mobile Light Force. Unfortunately the game was handed to fly by night Japanese hacks Psikyo for the port job to arcades. First Psikyo needlessly changed the name to Gunbird. Even worse, due to rampant sexism in Japan, Psikyo could not handle strong female protagonists in games. Therefore they bastardized XS games peerless vision by changing the art work and bastardizing the original character designs.

[BrianC]

Aren't there some computer shmup ports that run at stupidly low framerates? I know that's an issue with a few of Micronics console ports like Raiden Trad and 1942.

[Sengoku Strider]

The ZX Spectrum is the colour-clashing Mike Tyson of this category. Nothing else can go toe to toe with it.

I mean Slap Fight MD? Check out the top notch bullet visibility in Slap Fight ZX:

Spoiler

Or the top notch anything visibility in Space Harrier:

Spoiler

The ZX hardware always brings out the best in any arcade artwork. Like the moody HR Geiger-inspired sci-fi of R-Type here, absolutely nailed it:

Spoiler

Everyone always talks about frame rate this and frame rate that, but how do you really know how many frames per second a game is running? The Spectrum's got your back, by taking all the guesswork out of the equation. How many can you count in UN Squadron here?:

Spoiler

And last but never least, Xenon II is an absolute master class in...just everything, really:

Spoiler

[Herr Schatten]

The ZX Spectrum is the colour-clashing Mike Tyson of this category. Nothing else can go toe to toe with it.

True, but you somehow missed the absolute pinnacle of terrible Spectrum ports: Darius+
To be honest, the Amiga version isn't any better, but at least it hasn't color clash.

[DenimDemon]

I loved Spectrum R-Type. That was my go to home version.

[Marc]

You can't rag on Speccy R-Type. It was an absolutely incredible achievement.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

We all know and love XS Games original creation Mobile Light Force.

I just want to acknowledge this glorious shitpost as the best contribution to the thread so far.

[gray117]

Perhaps for me will be the unpopular take that vv/grind stormer on mega drive is no good for me since the crop makes that infuriating for me (but it's still a pretty impressive game in other regards). I suppose the 'enhanced disappointment' comes from the impression that I should love it, but it just makes me annoyed.

There's definitely a difference between limited hardware and a straight up bad port imho... I'll almost certainly never play anything on a spectrum ever again, but I remember r-type as actually a great port (yes caveat; for a spectrum)... there's also some ports I kind of brought on faith, but just didn't like the game so those won't really count ... but I'm not sure how to quite square that take with my comment above on vv... and then my opinion that although a few ps2 ports needed a 240p hack those are then some of my top 5 ps2 games ever...

[sunnshine]

There's definitely a difference between limited hardware and a straight up bad port imho... I'll almost certainly never play anything on a spectrum ever again, but I remember r-type as actually a great port (yes caveat; for a spectrum)...

I had R-Type on the Speccy too and I remember it being fun and good (for a given value of good)- I still fire up the 128K versions of Renegade and Target Renegade even now!

[TransatlanticFoe]

I kind of think the 80s home computer ports should get a free pass. Those things were never designed to run games so it's kind of impressive they even got what they got. That Speccy R-Type port is something amazing, but frankly that it can even run a vague semblance of Space Harrier is pretty great. A lot definitely falls into "so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should" territory but remain pretty impressive someone even got that far.

There's definitely some shoddy stuff on the NES, having just "experienced" Sky Shark. The Micronics 1942 is horrific BEEP. BEEP. BEEP BEEP. BEEP. Even Micronics themselves show it's possible to do justice to an arcade shmup with Twin Cobra (BIL's hilarious video of Micronics being Micronics aside) - so something as bad as Sky Shark turned out is pretty unforgivable. Stuff like Saturn Gekirindan is lazy, but at least it's not aggressively broken (as long as you can rotate your monitor....

[Zeether]

Spectrum R-Type isn't by Tiertex so it gets a pass.

[davyK]

We all know and love XS Games original creation Mobile Light Force. Unfortunately the game was handed to fly by night Japanese hacks Psikyo for the port job to arcades. First Psikyo needlessly changed the name to Gunbird. Even worse, due to rampant sexism in Japan, Psikyo could not handle strong female protagonists in games. Therefore they bastardized XS games peerless vision by changing the art work and bastardizing the original character designs.

Good call. It's a nice game but the PS2 port tries its best to screw it up. Ugly blurry filtered look to it as well.

[nZero]

Utterly flabbergasted that the back-and-forth here regarding the PS2 has been about Ibara and not Giga Wing Generations.

Yeah I'm surprised I had to scroll down this far in the thread to find GWG.

[Bassa-Bassa]

I don't think many people have played the original version of GWG to compare, even today.

Stuff like Saturn Gekirindan is lazy, but at least it's not aggressively broken (as long as you can rotate your monitor....

For a developer which had only made JRPGs and table games before as I've just learned, it could have been worse, I agree.

[Sengoku Strider]

Every defence of the Spectrum kinda ends up the same. "If you ignore all the ways that it automatically makes every game bad, it's not so bad."

It really isn't a 'good for its time' thing. It launched at the same time as the Commodore 64, and only a year before the Famicom. And even ignoring all that, the Atari 2600 could properly colour sprites in all its 1977 glory, as could preceding micros like the VIC-20.

The Spectrum succeeded because:

• It was the cheapest machine on the block.
• It hit at a time when cultural interest in home micros had been stoked by the BBC and Ministry of Finance initiatives.
• It landed right before Atari & the American consoles crashed.
• Its cassette tape media made distributing - and copying - games incredibly cheap and easy.

Cassette games were initially £9.99, and then budget titles from Mastertronic & Codemasters etc. began being sold at £1.99, which any kid could manage with their weekly allowance (even if they had to save for a week). Which is cool in and of itself, there's nothing wrong at all with a platform being accessible. I could easily see why kids would end up attached to that experience over others. But that doesn't place it in another dimension immune to comparison, either.

There were plenty of inherent flaws:

• Whereas competitors like the C64 & Atari computer line could offer native cartridge support, games took a long time to load off tape, like 5 minutes, and frequently required lengthy between-level loading. Neo Geo CD but worse.
• Its sound was awful. Screeches & bleeps, or often nothing at all.
• Games often moved at a slow shuffle.
• It struggled with full screen display. HUD/menu bars, large static artwork and developer credits & copyright info typically took up much of the screen real estate.
• Ports of arcade titles were compromised by single-button support, though this was common to home micros back then for some dumb reason.
• The limited nature of its colour display meant almost no port ever looked like it should have.
• The clashing nature of its particular colour palate was often hideous:

There's just so much there that complaints about Famicom ports are rendered trivial by comparison. The Spectrum is a platform where reaching Micronics quality unironically counts as a job well done.

I kind of think the 80s home computer ports should get a free pass. Those things were never designed to run games so it's kind of impressive they even got what they got.

Oh, for sure they were. By the time the Spectrum was introduced (it was Sinclair's 3rd home micro, I think?) they knew gaming would be the major use case; it was never positioned as a business or educational computer, spaces held by Acorn & others. It was assembled as cheaply as possible to be a home micro aimed at middle class families, and parents only have to update their household finances or do their taxes so often.

This is a pretty good quote from a retrospective article by the Oliver brothers, the guys behind the Dizzy games and others of the time:

The ZX Spectrum launched 23 April 1982 at £125 (about £450 today) for the initial 16K RAM model, followed in October by the 48K version for £175 (about £620). Even though the majority of consumers were skeptical that they needed a home computer, several hit the market at around the same time. The Commodore 64, the Dragon 32, and the BBC Model B were all tough competitors, but Sinclair came in cheaper, and with its very small but stylised look, it was one that felt more like a high tech toy. It was within the price range of skeptical parents when their kids wanted a home computer ostensibly for playing games!

[To Far Away Times]

Mobile Light Force is such a bizarre bait and switch that it goes from good to bad and wraps around back to good again, just for the sheer audacity of it all.

[BulletMagnet]

I don't think many people have played the original version of GWG to compare, even today.

You don't have to have played the original; just watch the attract mode run at 60 FPS, then start the game itself and wonder what the hell happened. And no tate mode on top of that.

[To Far Away Times]

Utterly flabbergasted that the back-and-forth here regarding the PS2 has been about Ibara and not Giga Wing Generations.

Yeah I'm surprised I had to scroll down this far in the thread to find GWG.

I don't think I've ever seen a series drop off so hard with it's sequels. I'm assuming it's just down to most people not really caring about it. Ibara atleast has something going for it, so the bad port is frustrating with the wasted potential.

The first GigaWing is great. It's a classic. What the hell happened with GigaWing 2 and Generations? Those games look like such ass. Some of the roughest 3D visuals of the era and lots of mismatched assets. Why is music so bad? And then they made the music really quiet and buried it under the loud sound effects to try and hide it. No care was put into the presentation of these games. Like everything got one attempt, and however it turned out it was good enough, and they slapped it all together and said "fuck it, just ship it." I'm not going to invest any time into a game like that.

[gray117]

I think you really have to look at most shmup ports prior to the ps2/xbox/gc era out of interest in terms of the system they are on, not too much in terms of the game they are based on... and that will include some systems where gloriously the platform was basically the arcade hardware in a few cases - something that just never was possible on anything like a contemporary level before saturn and ps1, but yeah post that, the landscape for this kind of thing, and the explosion of emulation, really changed as the expectations for not just a 'version of', but a 'reproduction of' a given game via a port.

[BulletMagnet]

No care was put into the presentation of these games.

The saddest part for me is that, purely in terms of mechanics, Generations is probably my favorite in the series; bullet visibility is easily the best of the three, and the proximity bonus and other additional score mechanisms give you more to focus on than just reflecting as much as possible (let alone 2's "don't even bother unless you can trigger a volcanon" structure). The trimmings are as bare-bones as they get, but I could easily put up with that if they didn't completely muck up the playability of the port...which, naturally, they did, and it'll be a miracle if a (legit) alternative ever appears.

[BrianC]

I don't think many people have played the original version of GWG to compare, even today.

You don't have to have played the original; just watch the attract mode run at 60 FPS, then start the game itself and wonder what the hell happened. And no tate mode on top of that.

I was surprised when I read that tate mode comment since the first two games were verizontal. Surprised that GWG AC actually uses a vertical monitor. At least GW2 can't be faulted for port quality since it's Naomi based.

[Marc]

Every defence of the Spectrum kinda ends up the same. "If you ignore all the ways that it automatically makes every game bad, it's not so bad."

It really isn't a 'good for its time' thing. It launched at the same time as the Commodore 64, and only a year before the Famicom. And even ignoring all that, the Atari 2600 could properly colour sprites in all its 1977 glory, as could preceding micros like the VIC-20.

The Spectrum succeeded because:

• It was the cheapest machine on the block.
• It hit at a time when cultural interest in home micros had been stoked by the BBC and Ministry of Finance initiatives.
• It landed right before Atari & the American consoles crashed.
• Its cassette tape media made distributing - and copying - games incredibly cheap and easy.

Cassette games were initially £9.99, and then budget titles from Mastertronic & Codemasters etc. began being sold at £1.99, which any kid could manage with their weekly allowance (even if they had to save for a week). Which is cool in and of itself, there's nothing wrong at all with a platform being accessible. I could easily see why kids would end up attached to that experience over others. But that doesn't place it in another dimension immune to comparison, either.

There were plenty of inherent flaws:

• Whereas competitors like the C64 & Atari computer line could offer native cartridge support, games took a long time to load off tape, like 5 minutes, and frequently required lengthy between-level loading. Neo Geo CD but worse.
• Its sound was awful. Screeches & bleeps, or often nothing at all.
• Games often moved at a slow shuffle.
• It struggled with full screen display. HUD/menu bars, large static artwork and developer credits & copyright info typically took up much of the screen real estate.
• Ports of arcade titles were compromised by single-button support, though this was common to home micros back then for some dumb reason.
• The limited nature of its colour display meant almost no port ever looked like it should have.
• The clashing nature of its particular colour palate was often hideous:

There's just so much there that complaints about Famicom ports are rendered trivial by comparison. The Spectrum is a platform where reaching Micronics quality unironically counts as a job well done.

I kind of think the 80s home computer ports should get a free pass. Those things were never designed to run games so it's kind of impressive they even got what they got.

Oh, for sure they were. By the time the Spectrum was introduced (it was Sinclair's 3rd home micro, I think?) they knew gaming would be the major use case; it was never positioned as a business or educational computer, spaces held by Acorn & others. It was assembled as cheaply as possible to be a home micro aimed at middle class families, and parents only have to update their household finances or do their taxes so often.

This is a pretty good quote from a retrospective article by the Oliver brothers, the guys behind the Dizzy games and others of the time:

The ZX Spectrum launched 23 April 1982 at £125 (about £450 today) for the initial 16K RAM model, followed in October by the 48K version for £175 (about £620). Even though the majority of consumers were skeptical that they needed a home computer, several hit the market at around the same time. The Commodore 64, the Dragon 32, and the BBC Model B were all tough competitors, but Sinclair came in cheaper, and with its very small but stylised look, it was one that felt more like a high tech toy. It was within the price range of skeptical parents when their kids wanted a home computer ostensibly for playing games!

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.

The Speccy DID offer cart support, but it was even less popular than the limited numbers released for the C64/Atari, they never really took off on any of those platforms. Hence the C64GC disaster.
Sound was pants on the 48k, not so much so on the 128k.
I remember plenty of conversions on other 8-bit micro's with huge HUDs, artwork, credits etc, this wasn't just a Speccy thing.
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. It always amuses me to hear folk talk like this was a global thing - the 'crash' period was one of the UK most fertile and imaginative eras.
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.

Plus we're forgetting all the other amazing stuff of the time - Ultimate's games, Lords of Midnight, The Sentinel, Manic Miner, Chaos to name but a few - the number of titles originating on the Speccy that would continue to be improved upon and expanded for years to come is quite astonishing, as are the number of people still in the industry today who cut their teeth on the machine. I guess to really understand the impact of the machine, you had to be there like the time, much like you have to be outside the US to understand there never was a 'global crash'.

[davyK]

I'd defend the ZX Spectrum port of Xenon II. Simply because that game is shit no matter what platform it's on.

One of the few cartridges (The Megadrive version) I actually threw in the bin.

[StrzxgvNuvWvfld]

- Donpachi on Sega Saturn was a steaming pile of broken crap.

- Ibara on the Playstation 2 was also hot garbage.

- Akai Katana on Xbox 360 is still £19.99 brand new today on Amazon for a reason, it is an alright port but has terrible accuracy.

You have clearly lived a very priveleged life

I realise they have issues and are certainly not arcade accurate, but they're only really things that came to light for me in this era of analysis and discussion online.
They're all perfectly playable games that gave me hours of entertainment. I didn't have an Ibara PCB to compare the slowdown, I doubt there was even an Ibara PCB within 100 miles of where I lived! And I couldn't see the filtering because it was barely visible on my cheap 14" CRT.

In 2022 there are better options I'm sure (especially for DDP), but no way are these "broken crap" or "hot garbage".

[StrzxgvNuvWvfld]

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.

The Speccy DID offer cart support, but it was even less popular than the limited numbers released for the C64/Atari, they never really took off on any of those platforms. Hence the C64GC disaster.
Sound was pants on the 48k, not so much so on the 128k.
I remember plenty of conversions on other 8-bit micro's with huge HUDs, artwork, credits etc, this wasn't just a Speccy thing.
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. It always amuses me to hear folk talk like this was a global thing - the 'crash' period was one of the UK most fertile and imaginative eras.
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.

Plus we're forgetting all the other amazing stuff of the time - Ultimate's games, Lords of Midnight, The Sentinel, Manic Miner, Chaos to name but a few - the number of titles originating on the Speccy that would continue to be improved upon and expanded for years to come is quite astonishing, as are the number of people still in the industry today who cut their teeth on the machine. I guess to really understand the impact of the machine, you had to be there like the time, much like you have to be outside the US to understand there never was a 'global crash'.

I totally agree with what you're saying. Even though I was a C64 guy, I have a soft spot for the Speccy. I certainly appreciate there was a huge amount of creativity, especially in the early days and as someone who does a lot of 8 bit pixel art, I really like the Speccy's graphics. Those bright saturated colours are really interesting to work with!

Couple of (minor) points.

Totally agree the C64 conersion of R-Type is pretty poor to play (though the music is great!). I do think that while everyone always says the Speccy version is far better, if that exact version had showed up on the C64 with blocky movement it would've also been hammered. But yes, I loved playing that port at friend's houses and I appreciate it used the hardware it was on extremely well.

Also (being quite pedantic here) C64 carts did take off, it just only happened within the last few years! Virtually every significant new release is on cart and it allows developers to do things that wouldn't have been possible loading from disk.

[Angry Hina]

- Akai Katana on Xbox 360 is still £19.99 brand new today on Amazon for a reason, it is an alright port but has terrible accuracy.

Whats the problem with ths one?

[NuclearPotato]

- Akai Katana on Xbox 360 is still £19.99 brand new today on Amazon for a reason, it is an alright port but has terrible accuracy.

Whats the problem with ths one?

Mainly Origin mode has too little slowdown compared to the PCB (given how slowdown heavy the PCB was, whether that's actually a bad thing playability-wise is a matter of personal taste). At any rate, I think the presence of Slash mode alone makes the inclusion of this port in this thread questionable, imo.

[Despatche]

Ah, another shitty hot take thread.

- Donpachi on Sega Saturn was a steaming pile of broken crap.

- Ibara on the Playstation 2 was also hot garbage.

- Akai Katana on Xbox 360 is still £19.99 brand new today on Amazon for a reason, it is an alright port but has terrible accuracy.

- Ketsui on Nintendo DS was a £70 boss rush that i would also like to forget. Possibly the worst pre-order i ever made.

For example. Every single one of these is wrong to the degree that this really reads like trolling.

MD Raiden was straight from Seibu themselves, AFAIK - a lovely conversion either way. Funny how it plays more like Raiden's template Kyuukyoku Tiger than KT's own, perversely lovable crash-zoomed 4:3 MD port.

Pretty sure that port is by Micronet. I think that port just wanted to credit some arcade staff. At least one name on it is a Micronet employee.

Utterly flabbergasted that the back-and-forth here regarding the PS2 has been about Ibara and not Giga Wing Generations.

I've played the original, the port is fine. I might concede that it's the "worst PS2 port", but Generations is an extremely high bar in that case.

Perhaps for me will be the unpopular take that vv/grind stormer on mega drive is no good for me since the crop makes that infuriating for me (but it's still a pretty impressive game in other regards). I suppose the 'enhanced disappointment' comes from the impression that I should love it, but it just makes me annoyed.

You don't have to love the port, I sure don't, but you really have to respect it. There is not really a better way of porting that game to stock Mega Drive hardware.

You're absolutely right, ports should be considered in context. There are just some things you cannot do with some hardware,
----------
I know Mobile Light Force is very funny, but I'd like to point out that it's just a terrible localization of an already existing port.

And yes, contrary to what <business> will try to tell you, a lot of those older computers either started as gaming machines or were almost completely turned into gaming machines eventually.

Anyway, Darius+. Might not even be a port anymore, but whatever. There is no reason for this thing to exist.

I suppose I could say Super Darius because of the Wave bug, but that seems incredibly unfair to it.

Fuck it, Darius R too, why not.

I also have various questions and concerns about Daisenpu Mega Drive, but I need to spend more time with it. Like, this thing might just be fakking boolshit.

[To Far Away Times]

- Akai Katana on Xbox 360 is still £19.99 brand new today on Amazon for a reason, it is an alright port but has terrible accuracy.

Whats the problem with ths one?

Mainly Origin mode has too little slowdown compared to the PCB (given how slowdown heavy the PCB was, whether that's actually a bad thing playability-wise is a matter of personal taste). At any rate, I think the presence of Slash mode alone makes the inclusion of this port in this thread questionable, imo.

Akai Katana Slash is so good. I never had much fun with Origin, but Slash is so much fun. One of CAVE's best games, IMO.