I’m feeling nostalgic and I wanted to talk about arcade games that were ported to the NES and were royally screwed up in the process. Here are some of mine.
Double Dragon: Now, I am not trashing this game. I think it’s a really good game for what it is. But what it isn’t is a faithful port of the arcades game. The main thing that made the arcade version great was the 2-player co-op mode, which is missing from this version. The Vs mode does not replace that and is pretty boring besides.
Gauntlet: Anyone who has played the arcade version and then play this will understand. The graphics are a mess, the sound is terrible, and the gameplay lacks the intensity of the arcade version. This was an open-ended game where the only goal was to see how far you could go. I really didn't think the “quest” theme was needed here. Not every video game has to have an ending.
Xenophobe: It has come to me attention that not many people are aware of the arcade version of this game, but it exists and is nuch better. The arcade game offers more characters to choose from (the choice is purely aesthetic) instead of only three like the NES. On that subject; the arcade version would not allow players to choose the same character. In the NES version you are forced to do so. And what is the deal with aliens materializing out of thin air? The arcade game had enough aliens to fight without needing to do that. I could go on, but I would be writing a novel.
Gyruss: I had this game on the Commodore 64 and the Atari, but leave it to Nintendo to f*** it up. First of all, the map screen. What was wrong with the game just saying how many warps to the next planet? That wasn’t good enough? Then there’s the addition of level bosses. This wasn’t that kind of game! And lastly, getting to Earth was the original goal, and then you would start back out at Pluto again. Going beyond Earth to end(?) the game at Mercury was just wrong. If Nintendo thought they made this game better…they didn’t.
What arcade games do you think suffered when oorted to the NES?
