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Most ambitious, impossible console ports of all time?
- Thread starter Romulus
- Start date
Hudo
Member
Well, then we seem to be in disagreement in that regard. But if we want to generalize, it might be better founded to say that general purpose engines, like Unreal Engine or Unity, generally run worse than more specialized, purpose-developed engines. Unreal Engine can run like shit as well, it certainly is a pain in the arse to work with, IMHO but that's off-topic, I guess.
Anyway, you were right about Doom 2016, I confused it with the original Doom ports for Switch.
By the way, the Doom 64 port for Switch uses Nightdive Studios' 'Kex Engine'.
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RAIDEN1
Member
This game more than anything demonstrates "what could have been" this is running on the Super Nintendo, and looks so much better than the grainy visuals of the Sega CD version, back in the day this could have been released, and offers a glimpse of what games could have been like if Nintendo released the Super CD, or Super Nintendo CD add-on player in 1992...this is what it SHOULD have looked like on Sega's add on....instead it ended up looking worse than the arcade version.
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Nikana
Go Go Neo Rangers!
Will have to agree to disagree. I am not trying to downplay its impressiveness, I just think the end result wasn't a great product and in fact was a bad version of something great. I think the product was better off not existing but its a cool moment in gaming history.
. How they did this on the Switch is amazing. The full fat game.
Romulus
Member
All good. I think alot of what skews it is many people that had already played Doom on other platforms, especially PC. Not that it was great for those that didn't. But for it to come to an old console like SNES and deliver on many fronts is impressive. Maybe it shouldn't have happened though, but it was definitely more than a cash grab because you can tell Randy tried to make it as faithful as he could with the hardware.
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Slings and Arrows
Banned
OT but
People who say this is a bad port lack perspective. You needed a good gaming PC to run HL2 in 2005 without major compromises (i.e. low texture quality, shadow quality). Being able to just pop in a $50 disc into your console made it a good way to play back then.
Is this playable on the 1x/XSX in BC mode?
MasterDerico
Member
Ki for gb and snes.
Pauliorobinson
Neo Member
I remember being asked to make low poly models of Resident Evil characters for a port. Pretty sure it was for GBA. This was years ago and i had just finished working at Acclaim.
Romulus
Member
Yes, but its not 60fps.
Sadfaceotter
Neo Member
Has anyone mentioned Half-Life on the PS2 and Half-Life 2 on Xbox ?
I enjoyed them both at the time but I doubt either has aged particularly well.
I enjoyed them both at the time but I doubt either has aged particularly well.
The Fartist
Gold Member
So fucking cool! Thanks for sharing.
GametimeUK
Member
This kind of blew my mind a few months ago. Sure it's only a demo, but the whole history surrounding Nintendo vs Sega make this so interesting.
OnionSnake
Banned
Raytracing on SNES?
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22175585/Hardware.jpg)
www.theverge.com
An absolutely wild mod has brought real-time ray tracing to the SNES
A cutting-edge graphics technology has come to a 30-year-old game console.
www.theverge.com
intbal
Member
No, it's not playable on 1X or SeriesX.
Only on 360.
The 360 version is playable on 1X/SeriesX.
Romulus
Member
Ah, that's right. I forgot about that version.
Pegasus Actual
Member
But... the link... is wrong. Like, factually incorrect. Those aren't the minimum requirements for Doom in 1993. They didn't advertise those specs. They didn't put them on the box. Clearly you didn't play Doom back in the day or maybe you don't have such a great memory.
From the README:
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
-------------------------------------------------------------
DOOM(TM) requires an IBM compatible 386 or better with 4 megs of
RAM, a VGA graphics card, and a hard disk drive. A 486 or
better, a Sound Blaster Pro(TM) or 100% compatible sound card
is recommended. A network that uses the IPX protocol is
required for network gameplay. And let's face it, the SNES port was bad. Maybe it was about as good as they could manage but the thing about Doom is that it really was a "wow" moment when it hit. The SNES version was 2 years after the fact and was a lot worse than running it on even a fairly crappy computer. The PSX came out around the same time as the SNES port with obviously much more impressive 3D stuff going on. It wasn't worth playing
And the thing is, the SNES was so far ahead of the IBM PC world in its day in the types of games it was actually made for. That super smooth 60 fps scrolling gameplay with big colorful sprites basically didn't exist on PC at the time. Not to mention Mode 7.
You can tell the age of this forum when there are no 8-bit titles mentioned
Candidate for an impossible arcade port - Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 (and 3, but that was horrid) on the Master System
In order to display such large characters on the screen, the developers need to keep switching the fighters between the sprite and background layers. The game still flickers, but not as bad as it could have.
The fighters are almost (almost) the same size as the Mega Drive version, with only slightly less colours.
For the first game, they squeezed 6 fighters (5 + palette swap - just missing Kano) and 2 bosses. That's 7 unique sprite sheets for the game on a 4Mb cartridge. Also, unlike the Mega Drive version, this version has Sub Zero's proper stance
All the moves are there. All the fatalities are there (including modified fatalities if you don't add the blood code)
There is only two backgrounds, a handful of music tracks, low frame rate (due to the use of the background layer) and text only winning stories, but its Mortal Kombat on the Master System. And it's playable
Then a year later, on the same 4Mb cartridge, the same team ported Mortal Kombat 2
They used the same engine, meaning the game was constantly switching the fighters between the sprite and background layer, but this time they managed to:
8 Fighters + 2 hidden fighters + 2 bosses, however due to palette swapping there was still technically only 5 fighters + 2 bosses. So still with 7 unique sprite sheets
2 backgrounds + a hidden background, which admittedly was just a modification of an existing background
1 speech sample (a grainy but distinguishable "FIGHT" at the start of the rounds")
But fatalities suffered, with one 1 fatality and the stage fatality left in the game, everything else remove (inc Johnny Cage, Kung Lao, Raiden and Baraka)
Still, the Mega Drive game was 24Mb (and lets face it, most of the space was wasted considering the SNES version was also 24Mb and had more animation, more colour, more speech, more blood and better music) yet the Master System game was only 4Mb.
That was an "impossible on paper" port.
But we won't talk about MK3 on the Master System.
Candidate for an impossible arcade port - Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 (and 3, but that was horrid) on the Master System
In order to display such large characters on the screen, the developers need to keep switching the fighters between the sprite and background layers. The game still flickers, but not as bad as it could have.
The fighters are almost (almost) the same size as the Mega Drive version, with only slightly less colours.
For the first game, they squeezed 6 fighters (5 + palette swap - just missing Kano) and 2 bosses. That's 7 unique sprite sheets for the game on a 4Mb cartridge. Also, unlike the Mega Drive version, this version has Sub Zero's proper stance
All the moves are there. All the fatalities are there (including modified fatalities if you don't add the blood code)
There is only two backgrounds, a handful of music tracks, low frame rate (due to the use of the background layer) and text only winning stories, but its Mortal Kombat on the Master System. And it's playable
Then a year later, on the same 4Mb cartridge, the same team ported Mortal Kombat 2
They used the same engine, meaning the game was constantly switching the fighters between the sprite and background layer, but this time they managed to:
8 Fighters + 2 hidden fighters + 2 bosses, however due to palette swapping there was still technically only 5 fighters + 2 bosses. So still with 7 unique sprite sheets
2 backgrounds + a hidden background, which admittedly was just a modification of an existing background
1 speech sample (a grainy but distinguishable "FIGHT" at the start of the rounds")
But fatalities suffered, with one 1 fatality and the stage fatality left in the game, everything else remove (inc Johnny Cage, Kung Lao, Raiden and Baraka)
Still, the Mega Drive game was 24Mb (and lets face it, most of the space was wasted considering the SNES version was also 24Mb and had more animation, more colour, more speech, more blood and better music) yet the Master System game was only 4Mb.
That was an "impossible on paper" port.
But we won't talk about MK3 on the Master System.
Blond
Banned
Warcraft 2 on the PS1. Up until mission 10 for both orks and humans, everything was fine. Then the game turns into a single digit fps slideshow. Unplayable. I still enjoyed it as a kid.
This reminded me of a funny story. Parents bought a PC from a garage sale for us to use for school work and then there was this installed. My brother had the DMX album grand champ in the CD drive and when I went to start a game I suddenly had this gem load up on a campaign save. Was good level music, though lol.
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Romulus
Member
I mean you're basically saying what I already did. Even if your link is 100% correct its still leagues better than snes. You could even lower the specs even more than that and the fact remains.
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thanks for that cool storySadfaceotter
Neo Member
Street Fighter 2 on the Spectrum
jufonuk
not tag worthy
Me and my mate would take out TV’s backing off find the horizontal size knob and increase it to give scan bars and a more arcade look lol.
mas for impossible ports. Quake or Hexen on Saturn.
Quake2 on N64 maybe ?
Modern Day the switch has a few. They are. It perfect but damn well great.
Doom 2016
Doom Eternal
Witcher
jufonuk
not tag worthy
SFIV 3DS is an impressive game still.
Krisprolls
Banned
Cyberpunk on base Xbox One is up there as impossible ports. People don't realize how impossible it is and why it runs in the 10s fps.
The city is extremely vertical, with big structures everywhere close to the player. It's killing GPUs.
The city is extremely vertical, with big structures everywhere close to the player. It's killing GPUs.
McCheese
Member
So weird that the doom developer had to reverse engineer the chip and make his own dev tools for it, I wonder why Nintendo didn't give him the Argonaut toolchain. Sorta jelly he got to do that as his day job, sounds really rewarding and is reminiscent of the current day homebrew scene.
I worked on the (cancelled) playstation 1 port of Black & White, that was a casebook example of "technically you could probably get something up and running" being taken too seriously.
Was the reason I left the game development scene and moved into tools/networking instead.
I worked on the (cancelled) playstation 1 port of Black & White, that was a casebook example of "technically you could probably get something up and running" being taken too seriously.
Was the reason I left the game development scene and moved into tools/networking instead.
Mistershine.
Banned
Pretty much anything on the saturn by labotomy.
AV
We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
This sort of fits the bill, but it came to mind. They actually released a version of both THPS3 and 4 on PS1, but 4 is the bigger shock considering the PS2 had been available for 2.5 years already. I say sort of because it's not really the same game, but it still impresses me that they kept going so far into the PS2 lifecycle.
NeoIkaruGAF
Gold Member
I first experienced Doom on a SNES, and whatever you think about that version today or thought about it at the time, it was one of the very few true epiphanies of my gaming life. I was absolutely mesmerized by that game, limitations be damned. When I got to play it on PC a couple years later, I wasn’t impressed. Sure, it was miles ahead of the SNES port, but the gaming experience provided by the port was enough to blow me away to the point that the obviously better version was basically same ol’, same ol’ by then.
That was the age of compromise. The same game on a different machine would always be a somewhat different game. And we managed to have fun nonetheless.
The simple fact that SNES Doom could offer enough of “true” Doom to make that effect on me, makes it a good port and game to my eyes. So no, I can’t agree that it was a bad game. And you didn’t need a new console or an expensive - and ultimately almost useless - add-on to play it. You had a SNES, you could pop this into your SNES and play. A SNES could be had for peanuts in 1995.
Sure, our perspective on this has changed greatly in the last 25 years. But it’s funny to think that people today mock the plastic box that they didn’t buy if it drops a frame here and there compared to the plastic box they did buy, and 25 years ago people could have fun with a 12fps, low-res version of Doom that lacked levels, savestates and circle strafing.
That was the age of compromise. The same game on a different machine would always be a somewhat different game. And we managed to have fun nonetheless.
The simple fact that SNES Doom could offer enough of “true” Doom to make that effect on me, makes it a good port and game to my eyes. So no, I can’t agree that it was a bad game. And you didn’t need a new console or an expensive - and ultimately almost useless - add-on to play it. You had a SNES, you could pop this into your SNES and play. A SNES could be had for peanuts in 1995.
Sure, our perspective on this has changed greatly in the last 25 years. But it’s funny to think that people today mock the plastic box that they didn’t buy if it drops a frame here and there compared to the plastic box they did buy, and 25 years ago people could have fun with a 12fps, low-res version of Doom that lacked levels, savestates and circle strafing.
cireza
Member
Still the game runs at a higher resolution and framerate. It is obvious to the eye when playing both games. SNES game doubles the pixels, so even if the window is bigger, it is much lower resolution.
Not saying that the SNES game is not a great achievement. But I don't really like when games use special chips. It kind of blurs the ability to really appreciate the achievement. I find many "stock" SNES games much more impressive. Like Maui Mallard, to give one example.
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Redneckerz
Those long posts don't cover that red neck boy
Doom can run on a 386 SX-25. Postage stamp size though.
However, this year saw the release of FastDoom - a port meant to run as fast as possible on 386/486 machines. And you can even make it look like the SNES version, too!
(That's Back To Saturn X)
And here are two videos, one ran on a 486 DX-33, and one on a 386 SX-33:
It totally was worth playing for the technical feats alone + that it actually ran semi-decently. SNES Doom is a unique version of Doom and has its fair share of fans.
PSX Doom however is easily the most feature rich port of Doom of that console era, what with using colored lighting that was not even available in the PC version. There is a reverse engineered project to PC that allows you to use the PSX engine native on Windows, PsyDoom, along with a reverse engineering project of the PSX binary, PSXDOOM-RE.
Team Andromeda
Member
Coolwhhip
Neophyte
trikster40
Member
They said it couldn’t be done...
And they did it.
And they did it.
Romulus
Member
Well yeah, but even with the chip it's still a far cry from the 32x in terms of power, not to mention well over 4x the RAM.
cireza
Member
And it is largely inferior technically speaking. I think we agree with this.
Romulus
Member
We do, I'm just saying for the snes version to have some big advantages is crazy considering the vast power and memory gulf. Larger sprites is another one I forgot along with way more content. The music and effects are all better on snes too.
cireza
Member
Sprites aren't larger, and all pixels are doubled anyway. SNES has better music and colors indeed.
The most impressive thing the SNES does (in my opinion) is casting shadows on a distance.
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Romulus
Member
The colors disparity with the 32x version is because it uses less wall textures strangely. Almost the blues and reds textures used in the 1st and 2nd act were missing. Even the colorful computer terminals are missing on most versions but the snes.
But the floors and ceiling were missing in snes.
Yeah the shadows are pretty awesome looking considering. Despite its lower resolution I prefer the way the lighting looked over most other versions.
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cireza
Member
Yes, all the ports are based on the same basis (32X, Jaguar, 3DO, Saturn, PSX) and use only a handful of textures. This is ridiculous honestly.
SNES version retained a lot of different textures (despite not having floor and ceiling), and this is really impressive as well. By the way, there is a patch to fix the strafing issue on SNES (it was released this year).
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Sleepwalker
Member
midasmulligan
Member
Witcher 3 switch
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