Yes I know this is from a time that pc's weren't nearly as advanced as today, but still...
Makes me appreciate the effort that was put in the NES technology.
Can't have a thread like this without bringing up Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis for GBA
This is oftentimes considered by many to be one of the worst porting jobs of all time due to how lazy it was (All they did was basically import the Genesis assests onto the Advance engine, which wasn't designed to handle big ass Genesis/Mega Drive sprites.)
And due to how much it bastardizes the original game. what makes this specific version worse though is that the GBA can clearly handle the original Sonic 1 just fine.
So there's pretty much no excuse for this port to be the way it is.
Another worthy mention is the Mega Man ports for the iOS
Like look at this?
Do I have anything else to say......?
The Gameboy port of Puyo Puyo definitely is this, see it by yourself:
(Yes, i had to record that myself because i couldn't find any non-color gameplay of it)
Where do i begin?
The Puyo don't have any color (other than white and gray) and are only differentiated by the shape, which makes the game unnecessary confusing, and sometimes even unplayable, yeah, this was on the original Gameboy, but the port of the sequel fixes this by adding a texture-like pattern to the Puyo.
Also, the game is sloooooow, while it slowly gets faster as you advance on the game, it's still noticeably slow compared to the original game, i don't complain about the music on this, but the sound effects are...not right.
Here's the Sega Genesis version of the game, a near-perfect port of the arcade one, for comparison:
Damn, Sonic Genesis was put up already! Must think of another! Umm... Ratchet and Clank HD ports. God those cutscene... and it gets even worse at Ratchet Deadlocked/Gladiator HD port!
Fighting games in general shouldn't be ported to two things, systems that can't handle the hardware and portable consoles. Put them together and you get horrible messes like Mortal Kombat for the GB.
I am SO glad that ports today are not as bad as they were before. The Wii U to Switch ports are pretty good, an example Mario Kart 8 deluxe.
But back then, it was a gift from god if a port was ANY good. Glover for n64 was a fun and changing game, looks good and plays well and was enjoyed by consumers and reviewers alike. When it was ported to the ps1 the story couldn't be any different. Reviewers absolutely loathed the game, saying that it looked poor for a ps1 game and lost all the charm that the n64 did. I tried it for myself and i can see why it wasn't well received.
Honestly, all the titles ported to the Game.com were just awful on that platform.
Don't get me wrong here, the effort behind these titles was admirable (and the fact they got games like Duke Nukem or Resident Evil to work on it at all was amazing), but at the end of the day, they're all terrible ports simply because the system wasn't powerful enough to run these types of games. If they'd focused more on strategy, puzzle and RPG titles they may have done okay, but fast paced action games just do not do well on a system with Game Boy esque graphics, limited sound capabilities and very weak hardware in general.
Same situation with Mortal Kombat on the Game Boy:
Or the scrapped Resident Evil port for the same. Admirable efforts, but they just don't translate well to the hardware:
Still, they're all great compared to Rise of the Robots on Game Gear. That was already an awful game on home consoles, and marketed itself entirely on the quality of its graphics and music. Which as you can imagine, did not translate at all to a handheld:
First off, the Sly Cooper Trilogy on PS3. They're playable, and it might do the job of getting tou in the series, but the games have some audio glitches that just do not exist in the original versions of these three games. If you never played the games, they might not hurt, but the best thing about these ports was that they showed me what the games meant to me if I can see these problems and let them bug me. I'd argue you're better off sticking with the PS2 versions and putting up with their lower resolution.
Then there's the PS2 versions of Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog. Say what you will about these two, but these two didn't exactly make the transition to PS2 the best. The ports aren't unplayable, and they were the first time I got to play these, and I had fun, but these are not the best way to experience these titles, if you wanna play them.
I also heard bad things about the Xbox 360 version of Batman: Arkham Origins. The game is glitchy no matter what you play it on, but I was able to get by in the unpatched PS3 version. I suggested the Wii U version to my brother, and he enjoyed it (to this day, he doesn't have a PS3). We both avoided the 360 version, since I heard its glitches made the game darn near unplayable even with patches. Get the PS3 version if you wanna play the game at all.
Based on what I've heard, it seems the recent port of Chrono Trigger on Steam may count here. It's literally a port of the mobile game with changes that don't really work too well on desktop computers.
