The Arcade and Retro Port Quality List

[insektmute]

The spirit of this thread is to note problems and changes made to ports released of retro and arcade games. We're talking gritty, ridiculous levels of detail whenever possible - missing frames of animation, glitchy sound, filtered and blurred graphics, missing slowdown, extra slowdown, 240p/480p support, arrange soundtracks, censorship, scanlines, 50/60hz options, TATE/YOKO modes, all that good stuff. "It plays fine" isn't the same as arcade perfect.

A lot of this, just out of necessity, has to come from third-party sources. Sites like TFP Fanitsu, ASSEMbler Games, Neo-Geo.com, Gamengai, The Next Level, Hardcore Gaming 101, and numerous others have a wealth of info if you're willing to do some digging. The basic goal is simply to get enough info about a particular release to help people searching for these games to make a more informed decision.

Particular platforms of interest: PC Engine, PS1, PS2, Saturn. Common sense tends to indicate that NES, SNES, and Genesis ports are gonna suck, so it's probably more useful to note which ones are actually good than which ones are lacking.

Whenever possible, try to keep your notes brief and to the point, and pay very close attention to the release region.


Akumajou Dracula X: Gekka no Yasoukyoku SAT/JP - Includes some extra equipment and an additional character, but suffers from fake transparencies, poor load times, and muddy graphics.
Arcana Heart PS2/JP - 480p support missing (arcade was 30Hz 480p)
Arcana Heart PS2/NA - 480p support missing (arcade was 30Hz 480p), Japanese voices removed from story mode, pre-battle, and victory screens, but retained in battle.
Art of Fighting Anthology PS2/NA - Arranged soundtracks, but blood has been removed and some voice samples were cut.

Bakumatsu Rouman: Gekka no Kenshi 1-2 PS2/JP - Frame rate stutter, arranged soundtracks are distorted.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night PS1/NA - Real transparencies, better load times, cleaner graphics than SAT.
 
Darius Gaiden SAT/JP - Fewer colors, dithering on some bosses.
Deathsmiles 360/NA - Arcade, 360 and Mega Black Label modes, with standard and HD display options, depending on selected mode.
Dennou Senki: Virtual On SAT/JP - Poor framerate, no single-frame cancels, numerous changes to attack damage and movement speeds, Belgdor can shoot through obstacles, no visible hills on Green Hills stage.
DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou PS2/JP - Arcade perfect.
DoDonPachi Resurrection 360/EU - Region-free, TATE support.
DonPachi SAT/JP - Poor sound effect quality, excess slowdown, squished scaling if played in non-TATE mode.

Espgaluda PS2/JP - Arcade perfect, includes arrange mode, superplay footage, fixes graphics glitch when too many ingots are on screen.

Fatal Fury: Battle Archives 1 PS2/NA - Mostly arcade perfect, with arranged soundtrack, but blood has been removed.
Fatal Fury: Battle Archives 2 PS2/NA - Mostly arcade perfect, with arranged soundtrack, but blood has been removed.
Fu'un Super Combo PS2/JP - Arcade perfect with arrange soundtrack option.

Garou Densetsu: Battle Archives 1 PS2/JP - Arcade perfect, uncensored, arranged soundtrack.
Garou Densetsu: Battle Archives 2 PS2/JP - Arcade perfect, uncensored, arranged soundtrack.
Gekirindan SAT/JP  - Additional slowdown, jittery scrolling and scaling effects, FMV ending.
Groove on Fight SAT/JP - Tons of missing frames and crap load times, but it does offer an arrange soundtrack.
Gwuange XBLA/NA - Arcade and 360 modes, with different controls depending on mode, TATE support, switchable between original and HD graphics.

Hyper Duel SAT/JP - Arcade perfect.

Ibara PS2/JP - Forced filtering, but reportedly not quite as bad as Mushihimesama.
Ikaruga XBLA/NA - TATE support

King of Fighters '95 SAT/JP - Arcade perfect, though characters aren't animated during order select.
King of Fighters '96 SAT/JP - Game crashes if you beat the game with an edit team, some sound dropout and voice samples cut short.
King of Fighters XI PS2/JP - Includes 480p support, which was present in the Atomiswave original, shorter load times than arcade.
King of Fighters XI PS2/NA - 480p support has been removed, retains shorter load times of the JP release.

Marvel Super Heroes PS1/NA - Missing frames of animation, poor load times, no tag outs.
Marvel Super Heroes SAT/NA - All frames intact with 1MB expansion, but causes horrible slowdown.
Metal Black SAT/JP - Arcade perfect.

Mushihimesama PS2/JP - Forced filtering and blurred into oblivion.

NeoGeo Battle Coliseum PS2/JP - Includes 480p support, which was present in the Atomiswave original, shorter load times than arcade.
NeoGeo Battle Coliseum PS2/NA - 480p support has been removed, retains shorter load times of the JP release.

Pocket Fighter PS1/NA - Missing frames of animation, poor load times.

Radiant Silvergun XBLA/NA - Includes Arcade and Saturn modes.
Raiden III PS2/NA - TATE support
Raiden IV 360/NA - TATE support
Ryuuko no Ken: Ten-Chi-Jin PS2/JP - Arcade perefect, arranged soundtrack, uncensored, no voice cuts.

Samurai Shodown Anthology PS2/NA - Forced filtering, in-game loading.
Sol Divide PS1/JP - Save system was removed entirely.
Sol Divide SAT/JP - Arcade perfect.
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike DC/JP - Dudley's Punch & Cross from the arcade is missing. May have been a glitch to begin with?
Suggoi! Arcana Heart 2 PS2/JP - Tons of slowdown and lag, reduced graphics quality, forced filtering. Basically unplayable.
Sunset Riders SNES/NA - The women wear longer dresses, woman enemies have been removed, and the Indian enemies have been replaced by cowboys.  Rakes have been removed from the levels.  Chief Scalpem was changed to Chief Wigman.  Some bosses have slightly different dialog.  On level five the lift has been removed.
Sunset Riders GEN/NA - No voices for the bosses.  Only level one, four, five, and a new level remain.  All the levels have been modified.  Each stage is also split into two parts.  Bonus stage has been changed to a horseback riding stage.  The boss from level six has been moved to level four.  Only two characters can be used.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord NES/NA - Floors 7 and 8 have completely changed from the Apple II version and are more difficult.  These maps are also used in the Japan only release of Wizardry: Story of Llylgamyn  Also armor class does not work and has no affect on damage taken.  The classes Priest and Bishop have been changed to Cleric and Wizard.
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord PC/NA - In the PC version there is a glitch where you lose stats more often when you level up than all other versions of Wizardry.
World Heroes Anthology PS2/NA - Mostly arcade perfect, with arranged soundtrack, but blood has been removed.

X-Men: Children of the Atom SAT/JP -  Missing frames of animation.
X-Men vs. Street Fighter PS1/NA - Missing frames of animation, poor load times, no tag outs.

[pacpix]

Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord NES/NA: Floors 7 and 8 have completely changed from the Apple II version and are more difficult.  These maps are also used in the Japan only release of Wizardry: Story of Llylgamyn  Also armor class does not work and has no affect on damage taken.  The classes Priest and Bishop have been changed to Cleric and Wizard.

Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord PC/NA: In the PC version there is a glitch where you lose stats more often when you level up than all other versions of Wizardry.

[pacpix]

Sunset Riders SNES/NA: The women wear longer dresses, woman enemies have been removed, and the Indian enemies have been replaced by cowboys.  Rakes have been removed from the levels.  Chief Scalpem was changed to Chief Wigman.  Some bosses have slightly different dialog.  On level five the lift has been removed.

Sunset Riders Gen/NA: No voices for the bosses.  Only level one, four, five, and a new level remain.  All the levels have been modified.  Each stage is also split into two parts.  Bonus stage has been changed to a horseback riding stage.  The boss from level six has been moved to level four.  Only two characters can be used.

[kingrat101]

Marvel Super Heroes/Saturn-All frames of animation with 1MB expansion, but horrible slowdown in that mode.
X-men vs Street Fighter and Marvel Super Heroes vs Street fighter/PS1-No Tag outs, horrible load times, missing frames of animation.
Pocket fighter/PS1-Missing animation a kind of bad load times

Those are some of the big ones I've noticed so far, I might have to come back to this list in a while.

[insektmute]

Marvel Super Heroes/Saturn-All frames of animation with 1MB expansion, but horrible slowdown in that mode.
X-men vs Street Fighter and Marvel Super Heroes vs Street fighter/PS1-No Tag outs, horrible load times, missing frames of animation.
Pocket fighter/PS1-Missing animation a kind of bad load times

Those are some of the big ones I've noticed so far, I might have to come back to this list in a while.

Speaking of all these old Capcom goodies, most of which received absolutely crap ports, anyone know how the Marvel vs. Capcom Origins stuff on PSN/XBLA stacks up?

Also, try and keep submissions in the format I've used, with region included. Makes it easier for me to copy stuff into the main list without having to do any digging around or clean up.

[insektmute]

A few new additions from me:

Arcana Heart PS2/JP - 480p support missing (arcade was 30Hz 480p)
Arcana Heart PS2/NA - 480p support missing (arcade was 30Hz 480p), Japanese voices removed from story mode, pre-battle, and victory screens, but retained in battle.

Espgaluda PS2/JP - Arcade perfect, includes arrange mode, superplay footage, fixes graphics glitch when too many ingots are on screen.

Suggoi! Arcana Heart 2 PS2/JP - Tons of slowdown and lag, reduced graphics quality, forced filtering. Basically unplayable.

[scott]

Um. I'm not huge on details. But, here's some shmups.

Deathsmiles 360/NA - Arcade, 360 and Mega Black Label modes. Standard and HD graphics, depending on mode selected.
Raiden III PS2/NA - Allows screen to be set up in Tate mode.
Raiden IV 360/NA - Allows for Tate, HD graphics.
Ikaruga XBLA/NA - Allows for Tate, HD graphics
Radiant Silvergun XBLA/NA - Has Arcade and Saturn modes, HD graphics
Gwuange XBLA/NA - has Arcade and 360 modes, with different controls depending on mode. Regular and HD graphics and allows for Tate.
DoDonPachi Resurrection 360/EU - Region Free, Allows for Tate.

There may be more details I am missing, but I'm on my phone and can't check it all over.

[htimreimer]

castle of dragon NES/NA - it plays decently, not sure how good it is compared to it arcade counterpart

[insektmute]

Need a little more detail in the two above cases. Stuff like TATE mode is good to know, but doesn't give enough of a clear picture, and HD graphics is actually more vague than it sounds - is it true 16:9 or letterboxed? 4:3? forced filtering or optional? Have the graphics been upscaled and blurred (and to complicate this, is it that way because the 360/PS3 is set to do it, or the port itself looks that way)?

If we can't discern how a port stacks up to the original, I won't add it to the main list until we can get a little more to go on.

[insektmute]

Whole bunch of SNK stuff I'm adding:

Art of Fighting Anthology PS2/NA - Arranged soundtracks, but blood has been removed and some voice samples were cut.
Bakumatsu Rouman: Gekka no Kenshi 1-2 PS2/JP - Massive frame rate stutter, arranged soundtracks are distorted.
Fatal Fury: Battle Archives 1 PS2/NA - Mostly arcade perfect, with arranged soundtrack, but blood has been removed.
Fatal Fury: Battle Archives 2 PS2/NA - Mostly arcade perfect, with arranged soundtrack, but blood has been removed.
Fu'un Super Combo PS2/JP - Arcade perfect with arrange soundtrack option.
Garou Densetsu: Battle Archives 1 PS2/JP - Arcade perfect, uncensored, arranged soundtrack.
Garou Densetsu: Battle Archives 2 PS2/JP - Arcade perfect, uncensored, arranged soundtrack.
Ryuuko no Ken: Ten-Chi-Jin PS2/JP - Arcade perefect, arranged soundtrack, uncensored, no voice cuts.
Samurai Shodown Anthology PS2/NA - Forced filtering, in-game loading.
World Heroes Anthology PS2/NA - Mostly arcade perfect, with arranged soundtrack, but blood has been removed.

I'll probably do some clean up of how everything is sorted in the main list, so it's more scalable and easy to dig through as it grows, but would you guys prefer things sorted just straight alphabetically, or by platform?

[scott]

Need a little more detail in the two above cases. Stuff like TATE mode is good to know, but doesn't give enough of a clear picture, and HD graphics is actually more vague than it sounds - is it true 16:9 or letterboxed? 4:3? forced filtering or optional? Have the graphics been upscaled and blurred (and to complicate this, is it that way because the 360/PS3 is set to do it, or the port itself looks that way)?

If we can't discern how a port stacks up to the original, I won't add it to the main list until we can get a little more to go on.

Yea. Like I said. I don't really pay attention to details that much. But figured it would be useful to know what little info I could provide.

[insektmute]

Yea. Like I said. I don't really pay attention to details that much. But figured it would be useful to know what little info I could provide.

Yeah, which is why I opted to add them after all. TATE support is a good thing to know, and I'm kinda looking at this as an iterative process anyway, where we're routinely changing/updating stuff as we're able to find out more.

[kimimi]

Bakumatsu Rouman: Gekka no Kenshi 1-2 PS2/JP - Massive frame rate stutter, arranged soundtracks are distorted.

As somebody who owns both the PS2 pack and LB2 on MVS I really haven't found the above to be true at all. I'll bet there are some minor differences, but you'd have to run them side-by-side to spot them. Then again, I do find when people critique Neo Geo ports two frames missing in one background and they're all "Worthless! Ditch this $20 collection and buy each game for $100+ instead!".

Also there's the not insignificant bonus of online play on the PS2 version (probably shut down at this point).

[insektmute]

Bakumatsu Rouman: Gekka no Kenshi 1-2 PS2/JP - Massive frame rate stutter, arranged soundtracks are distorted.

As somebody who owns both the PS2 pack and LB2 on MVS I really haven't found the above to be true at all. I'll bet there are some minor differences, but you'd have to run them side-by-side to spot them. Then again, I do find when people critique Neo Geo ports two frames missing in one background and they're all "Worthless! Ditch this $20 collection and buy each game for $100+ instead!".

Also there's the not insignificant bonus of online play on the PS2 version (probably shut down at this point).

Yeah, Neo stuff definitely seems to be more contentious than most. I found the audio and frame rate problems to be pretty distracting when I played the PS2 compilation, but I also didn't think much of the Dreamcast and PS1 ports, so I've mostly stuck with MAME. The Neo-Geo CD versions are pretty good though, if not 100% perfect, and the redbook audio is a nice touch, but the load times are a bit hard to swallow.

I *think* the online play is dead on all the NeoGeo Online Collection stuff, but for people in the US like me, it never worked in the first place

So it's a toss-up. I'm inclined to go with my memory of it and the general consensus on the Last Blade comp, in part because that one in particular seems to stand out as exceptionally bad by Neo fans, but I may leave a note that you disagree with that consensus, so people at least know there's a dissenting view. Thoughts?

[kimimi]

I'd be happy with just the removal of "massive" from the description to be honest, I don't claim the PS2 compilation to be perfect but I don't think it's bad enough to warrant such a strong negative as that.