8 and and 16 Bit Games Ported -- Wow, what happened?

[SoulBlazer]

So as a kid I had a Commodore 64 (my main computer) from 1985 to 1994. Didn't even get a PC until 89, and didn't do any serious gaming on it until we got a new ones in 92. Also, I'm American, so some computers that were big in Europe never came out over here.

 

I know that computing was different in Europe -- due to higher prices, tape and disk based games stuck around a lot longer then here in the States, and their computers (for the most part) seemed 'inferior' to what was available on the best US systems such as the Commodore, Atari systems, and so on.

 

Recently I've been watching some 'let's compare' videos on YouTube from the great Classic Gaming History channel. He does a good job of taking a game and showing gameplay that he did himself of all the systems. I'd link some here but I don't feel it's really needed.

 

Having watched about 30 or so of these, I've made the following comments/points/observations:

 

1) Wow, did the European computers suck! Well, that's probably a bit too strong. But time and again I saw games being ported to the Spectrum and Aramstad, among other systems, that were too complex and powerful for those computers to handle, especily being loaded on tape. Horrible graphics, no music and basic sounds, slow gameplay....

 

2) For that matter, it seems too often the Commodore, Atari systems, and Amiga got bad ports. Having bought many Commodore games, I KNOW the games can be done very well on the system. Good graphics, music during gameplay, fun gameplay. I'm sure the Atari and Amiga people feel the same way. But these were often original games. It seems often the ports made to these computers -- again, especily the European ones for some reason -- don't play up to these systems strengths.

 

3) It makes me glad that I was a NES and SNES gamer during this time period. They are not perfect, but time and again they seem to have gotten the best port of a arcade or computer game. Not perfect -- there's very few ports that were AS good as the arcade -- but often 'close enough', or at least the best port of the game.

 

4) The Game Boy had many limitations, the biggest being B&W, but often I'm very surprised by how good the ports are. Detailed graphics, good music, and often playing to the hand held's strengths. The Game Gear and Lynx also, but especily true with the Game Boy.

 

5) Today I suspose it's kind of a moot point, since with MAME we can play all these games in their original glory. Still, it makes me amazed at how bad conversions and ports were BITD.

[Rybags]

Spectrum is probably one of the most overrated computers, got more hype than deserved due to being homegrown UK and being a big seller there.

Amstrad suffered to some degree since being Z80 CPU based like Spectrum, parallel development meant sometimes it copped the graphical treatment as per the lesser capable Spectrum.

Amstrad also had weaknesses in no fine h-scrolling, no hardware sprites, fairly ordinary sound.

 

Bad ports - already covered to a degree, but the problem exists still today. Lowest common denominator, ie a game gets developed in parallel and often shackled in capability based on what the weakest system involved is able to handle, e.g. many 3D games and consoles, usually Wii being the weaker element.

[Seob]

The sinclair became so big because it was the first homecomputer to sell for less then 100 pounds. Thus breaking a psychological barrier. Getting a larg userbase and laying the base for found memories for a lot of UK people. Yes ports where a issue but a lot of todays programmers from the uk started programming on the spectrum.

[+nanochess]

Sinclair Spectrum was so incredibly limited in its graphics and color, and anyway it was so popular that Double Dragon, Street Fighter and R-Type were ported to it.

 

The most amazing thing is that (except Street Fighter) them resemble visually the original games.

[TMR]

1) Wow, did the European computers suck! Well, that's probably a bit too strong. But time and again I saw games being ported to the Spectrum and Aramstad, among other systems, that were too complex and powerful for those computers to handle, especily being loaded on tape. Horrible graphics, no music and basic sounds, slow gameplay....

The Amstrad got some of the smelly end of the stick because it tended to get ported Spectrum code stapled to similarly shifted graphics. But code that was written optimally for the hardware could barrel along at 50FPS like the C64 or Atari 8-bit and there's one scrolling shoot 'em up called Killer Cobra that shifts four multicolour pixels a frame, that's about the same as Uridium on the C64 at top speed but all the time so it's quite tough to play. (Personally, i love that game. =-)

 

There's actually two versions of the Amstrad CPC series as well, the Plus machines have a 4,096 colour palette, hardware scrolling, sprites (which aren't quite as flexible as the C64 but they're better than most other 8-bits) and DMA for sound; sadly it arrived too late into the 8-bit era to establish itself properly and slipped under most people's radars.

 

2) For that matter, it seems too often the Commodore, Atari systems, and Amiga got bad ports.

Bad ports happen because of a number of factors, most of which tend to be about money. In quite a few cases the publisher spent far more on procuring the license than they paid the developers involved in getting the games onto the 8-bits, adding a cherry to the cake by demanding product in a ridiculously short period of time.

 

In the case of R-Type for the C64, the original team were pulled off the project late in the day (Spectrum coder Bob Pape tells some of this tale in his ebook It's Behind You, which is also an interesting insight into what it took to make the Spectrum actually handle R-Type and how much crap people like Pape had to actually put up with) and Manfred Trenz was commissioned to basically take Katakis (the game he'd ended up in legal hot water with Activision over because it was deemed an R-Type clone) and convert it into an official port for... erm, Activision. He got six weeks for what was still a pretty daunting job so it's no surprise that, although it's an okay game in it's own right, as a conversion of R-Type there are fairly serious issues.

 

Other mistakes include hiring people who couldn't code for toffee just because they'd put in the lowest quote for the work, licensing a game that was never going to work on an 8-bit, p**sing off the coders just before the deadline so they leg it with the source code or have a breakdown...

 

3) It makes me glad that I was a NES and SNES gamer during this time period. They are not perfect, but time and again they seem to have gotten the best port of a arcade or computer game. Not perfect -- there's very few ports that were AS good as the arcade -- but often 'close enough', or at least the best port of the game.

If ports were all you wanted then perhaps so (although it really depended on the game, Salamander on the C64 was pretty awesome and the Spectrum R-Type is, despite the lower framerate, a cracking conversion) but what the home computers had in spades was good games that were designed for them and used the hardware to their advantage; for the C64 alone there were titles like Wizball, Armalyte, Mayhem In Monsterland, Turbocharge, Uridium, The Last Ninja, Impossible Mission or Turrican which were all very playable and you'd get a couple for the same price as one NES cartridge.

[SoulBlazer]

Thanks for the extra information, very interesting. And yes, I should have said ports vs original games. I thought both the consoles and computers did a great job for original games, but it was the consoles that got the better ports for some reason.