Comment on Vigilante: A Home Port Comparison
gk99@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I kinda miss when games had wacky version differences. While there was usually one definitive version compared to the rest, having a brand new experience to play by simply buying the same game elsewhere was actually nice to have in some cases.
Nowadays it’s just “oh, you bought Skyrim on Switch? Here’s some Legend of Zelda armor” and “Depending on which platform you’re playing HITMAN 3 (a singleplayer game) on, you get a suit with a differently colored undershirt!”
thehatfox@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The differences in games were often due to the wider differences in the hardware platforms themselves. The dear old Spectrum is a perfect example of that. Plus there were handheld ports where things could get really wacky.
Games on different systems often had a distinctive “feel” right up to the PS1/N64/Saturn era because of that. Now everything is essentially PC like hardware and ports all look and feel the same.
davetansley@lemmy.world 1 year ago
A lot of it was also down to the interpretation of the individual devs… they often had limited access to original source code or assets, and ended up relying on simply playing the arcade game or even watching VHS footage of someone else playing the game.
This is why the early 8-bit ports often felt like they were inspired by, rather than ported from the original games. It sometimes amazes me they got as close as they did.