10 Awful Versions Of Iconic Video Games You Didn't Know Existed
There's a Resident Evil 4 on every platform...
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00:00 Video game ports are just part of the gaming industry, and there's nothing wrong with that.
00:04 From a business standpoint, getting your titles onto as many platforms as possible means more
00:08 ways for gamers to play and potentially leads to higher sales numbers. Additionally, it's
00:12 important that beloved and classic titles are made as available as possible so that they don't get
00:17 lost to time. That being said, there are some versions of classics that perhaps should be left
00:22 in the past. I'm Sy for WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 awful versions of iconic video games you
00:28 didn't know existed. Number 10 - Tomb Raider N-Gage
00:32 It would be cheap and easy to fill a list of terrible video game ports with mobile games,
00:36 but what's important is that the Nokia N-Gage positioned itself equally as a handheld games
00:41 console as it did a phone. Getting an icon like Lara onto the system was Nokia's biggest bet at
00:46 pulling in a hardcore gaming audience. Whilst the original Tomb Raider was seven years old at this
00:51 point, the promise of being able to play this classic on the go had a certain allure to it.
00:55 The N-Gage version of Tomb Raider was the console's biggest seller at launch,
00:59 which sounds impressive until you realise it didn't even shift 3,000 units. Whilst ambitious
01:04 in scope, this mobile port just shows why the N-Gage is flawed by design. With its tight buttons
01:09 and sticky D-pad, moving Lara's tag controls have never been harder. Being able to pull off any of
01:14 Lara's jumps is consistently challenging and not in a fun way. Worst of all, Lara now moves with
01:20 an auto-run. Players push up to get her moving and then down to make her stop. Combine running
01:25 off the same ledge over and over with the console's painfully small buttons and it's safe to say that
01:30 even the few people who played Tomb Raider on the N-Gage scarcely made it out of the opening stage.
01:35 Number 9 - Mortal Kombat, Game Boy
01:38 When Mortal Kombat left arcades and came to the home console audience,
01:42 many gamers found themselves debating which version was superior - Mega Drive or Super Nintendo?
01:48 Suffice to say the title's Game Gear and especially Game Boy port did not enter the conversation.
01:53 Technically speaking, character special moves and even fatalities are in the Nintendo handheld
01:58 version, but most players will be hard-pressed to make them happen intentionally. With controls
02:02 this sluggish, trying to even ascertain the right timing, let alone pulling off a combo,
02:06 is not worth the struggle. In its defence, this 8-bit rendition looks somewhat impressive for
02:11 its hardware limitations and it is clearly the same digitised fighters, just shrunk down and
02:16 monochrome. Which obviously presents a problem considering that Scorpion and Sub-Zero on the
02:20 character select screen look identical because of it. The problem is, one of the key selling
02:25 points of many great fighters is style and Mortal Kombat has a very specific feel to it that this
02:30 game can't replicate promptly. Stages are boring, animations are poor and a lack of gore kind of
02:35 makes the entire thing feel heartless. Ergo, it feels as though Shang Tsung devoured the soul of
02:40 Mortal Kombat and this tiny cartridge was all that remained.
02:44 8. Mega Man - MS-DOS
02:47 Just when you think the Blue Bomber has been through enough over his 35 years,
02:50 you discover another blemish on the track record of poor old Mega Man.
02:54 In 1990, as the franchise was at its peak on the NES, Capcom USA gave the licence to
03:00 Hitech Expressions to craft an entry in the series for Microsoft's DOS system.
03:04 From the off, it's pretty clear that the version is limited, as instead of the six
03:07 robot masters from the original, Rockman can only rock up on three boring, albeit totally original,
03:13 bad guys. But that's even if you get to the stage selection screen, as the game features a single
03:18 room intro stage that is simply baffling. The player is immediately attacked by a powerful
03:23 robotic dog which will continuously respawn if killed and moves faster than Mega Man can,
03:28 meaning the game always starts with the player panicking and fleeing for safety.
03:32 Mega Man is all about challenging difficulty, but that just seems cheap and unfair.
03:36 It doesn't really get any better from there, with slippery controls and frankly,
03:39 insultingly bad visuals. At least, like other Mega Man games of the era, it has a fantastic
03:45 soundtrack, right? No, actually, the game doesn't feature a single note of music and is instead just
03:50 15 minutes of bleeping and blooping until it's beaten or abandoned by the player.
03:55 Number 7 - Spider-Man 2 PC
03:58 Spider-Man 2 for PS2, Xbox and Gamecube is not just one of the most beloved video game
04:02 adaptations for the webbed one, but also an overall solid game that had a hand in crafting
04:07 what an open world could be. Much like 2018's Spider-Man game, this 2004 title can be hours
04:14 of fun when avoiding the objective and simply swinging around Manhattan.
04:18 It was one of the releases that put the young team of Treyarch on the map, however the PC
04:22 version was uniquely crafted by The Fizz Factor, whose relative lack of video game experience is
04:27 immediately apparent. The open world web swinging has been turfed out for a tired level system and
04:33 swinging is done by clicking the mouse whenever the game asks. These simple changes are enough
04:37 to totally derail the game, but even beyond comparison to the console version, Spider-Man
04:42 2 for PC is a technical mess. Awful hit detection, bad controls and dire camera make this game a
04:48 frustration as well as a bore. It's essentially a completely different game to the celebrated home
04:53 console title, the problem is that Activision didn't advertise it as such, so PC gamers that
04:58 saw this on a store shelf and were excited to try out the console game everyone was high on,
05:03 were about to get stung.
05:04 Number 6 - Myst - Nintendo DS
05:07 In 1993, developer Cyan Inc released Mac OS type Myst, a calm yet eerie little game that
05:14 enraptured audiences with its puzzles and visual design in a way that felt like the industry taking
05:18 its first steps into gaming as an art form. The 2007 Nintendo DS version does not live up to that
05:25 legacy, not one iota. How exactly this was allowed to release at all is a question in itself as this
05:31 hand-held port of the classic feels like the most lazy and unfinished tie-in possible. Something
05:36 clearly happened behind the scenes with developers Hotlight Research as their earlier efforts porting
05:40 Myst to the PSP were fine compared to this. The game's now 15 year old visuals are horribly
05:46 compressed to the point where text is unreadable, the audio gets the same treatment which is an
05:50 issue since many puzzle solutions are sound based. And considering the whole point of the system is
05:55 an additional touch screen, the second screen is basically just black with a few icons on it.
06:00 Thrilling. On top of this, the port was upgraded for the Nintendo 3DS which only made things worse.
06:07 Cutscene audio is now out of sync, the controls are totally reworked into something clunkier
06:12 and the game's promise to use the system's 3D feature is unfulfilled.
06:16 5. Dead Rising - Chop Till You Drop - Nintendo Wii
06:21 Dead Rising released a year into the Xbox 360's life and really showed what the console could do
06:25 by rendering large crowds of zombies and inviting players to mow them all down however they saw fit.
06:31 Three years later, the franchise made its way to the Nintendo Wii.
06:35 Presumably the original Dead Rising was too far out of reach for the Wii's power and so Chop Till
06:39 You Drop is a quasi-remake. The game has been built from the ground up on the engine used for
06:44 Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition which totally alters the gameplay style. Whilst this doesn't have to
06:50 necessarily be a bad change and could offer a unique experience, the Wii version has several
06:54 big holes that sink it as a viable contender. In short, everything that made Dead Rising great.
07:00 The overall countdown clock which made players do the best they could in the three available days
07:05 they had is completely reworked and Frank West, famous photojournalist, can no longer whip out
07:10 his camera for a perfect Kodak moment. Worst of all, not only is Willamette Parkview Mall
07:15 a smaller location, it's far less inhabited. Gone are the big crowds of zombies and instead
07:20 players will neatly navigate around the dozen or two that the game can render at a time.
07:25 Rendering this version the one that misses the entire concept of Dead Rising.
07:30 4. Call of Duty N-Gage
07:33 Before it became a million dollar grossing worldwide phenomenon, Call of Duty was just
07:37 one little PC FPS. In fact, it almost completely stayed this way as there were five years between
07:42 the PC and home console release. Therefore, the N-Gage version of Call of Duty is the first
07:48 handheld port for the series and it actually predates the franchise coming to both Xbox and
07:53 PlayStation. Launching on Nokia's video game system and cell phone hybrid means that Call
07:57 of Duty suffers the same issues every title on the system does. A tiny screen, an aspect ratio
08:03 that is not suitable for gaming and awkward controls. Still, this version of Call of Duty,
08:08 at the very least, has clearly had plenty of effort put into it which is what makes it even
08:12 more of a shame that it functions terribly. Sluggish aiming makes the game incredibly hard
08:16 to play. Furthermore, limited textures, terrible draw distance and, in fact, enemies that can shoot
08:22 and kill you from behind that draw distance make this an alarming departure from the quality of
08:26 the original. Thankfully, Call of Duty's first port wasn't setting a precedent and remains little
08:31 more than a strange footnote in the franchise's rise to global dominance.
08:35 3. Super Mario Bros. Special - PC-8801
08:39 Whilst in this day and age Nintendo are very careful about who they let come near their
08:43 sacred intellectual properties, that wasn't always the case. During the mid-1980s they
08:48 loaned the Mario name to the likes of esteemed development studio Hudson Soft who created
08:53 various versions of Mario titles for home computers. Super Mario Bros. Special, in
08:58 particular the PC-8801 version, is the worst of the bunch. First of all, they couldn't even get
09:04 the character's colour scheme right and the now yellow and red suited plumber looks more like Hulk
09:08 Hogan than Super Mario. That is, when you can see him at all, as the screen is almost always blinking
09:13 wildly to try and keep up with the fast moving graphics. The PC-8801 just couldn't handle what
09:19 was originally made for the NES and, as a result, one of the game's best features is totally cut.
09:25 Mario's smooth sideways scrolling is what blew minds in 1985 and this port instead has to settle
09:31 for long and awkward screen transitions every time the player moves forward. Whilst Super Mario
09:36 Bros. itself might feel like a dinosaur compared to gaming in the current day, at the time the
09:40 special ports made gamers appreciate just how cutting edge and powerful the NES was.
09:45 2. Perfect Dark - Game Boy Colour In many ways, Rareware defined the Nintendo 64
09:51 almost as much as the company who owned the hardware. Outputting titles such as Banjo-Kazooie,
09:56 Diddy Kong Racing, Goldeneye and Jet Force Gemini, it was almost as if the developers could do no
10:02 wrong. In 2000 they released Perfect Dark to critical aplomb, but the game had a handheld
10:07 version that has been mostly lost to time. The Game Boy Colour port of Perfect Dark,
10:12 unsurprisingly, has to make huge changes to the formula to even function. Gone is the first person
10:18 perspective and instead the game acts as a sort of Metal Gear-esque isometric top-down action game.
10:23 However, whilst it might have looked decent for the time, it's certainly not aged well.
10:27 More than that, it's just not fun to play. Perfect Dark asks players to use stealth,
10:32 which is a total headache to operate. With such a restrictive field of view,
10:36 it's easy to accidentally trigger alarms or encounters, and stealth kills are all based
10:40 on an arbitrary amount of distance between Joanna and the enemy's back. With awkward and overstuffed
10:45 controls, it's clear that Rare was expecting too much out of the GBC in its twilight years.
10:50 With all the goodwill in the world for Rare, the gaming industry moved on from this poor
10:54 Perfect Dark port quickly to save them the embarrassment.
10:58 1. Resident Evil 4 - Zeebo
11:01 Considering the huge success of the fourth numbered entry in Capcom's corporate terror
11:05 franchise, you can't really blame them for porting Resident Evil 4 to every system under the sun.
11:10 Starting off on the Gamecube, famously jumping to the PS2, and from there spreading its joy like…
11:15 well, a virus. Most likely, you've never heard of this particular Resident Evil 4 port because
11:20 the console it released for was exclusively available in Brazil and Mexico. The Zeebo was
11:25 a quaint yet incredibly underpowered machine that had a fairly short lifespan and shallow pool of
11:30 games. Resident Evil 4 Zeebo Edition is a pale imitation of what made it great elsewhere. The
11:35 panic horror gameplay of being overwhelmed by hatchet and chainsaw wielding Ganado is pretty
11:40 much impossible to feel considering that the game renders very few enemies at a time.
11:45 Most of the game's campaign is completely absent. The Zeebo version is 12 missions that are all just
11:50 a single iconic room from the game we all know and love. Furthermore, the joy we all had organising
11:55 our inventory can't be replicated here as the game does away with it. As such, it's not surprising
12:00 to learn that the Zeebo edition of Resident Evil 4 was originally designed for Nokia phones. Which
12:05 somehow makes it even worse that this was repurposed and brought to a home console,
12:09 even one that risked winding up in very few homes.
12:12 And that's the list. Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below,
12:17 have you played any of these awful versions and let us know of any other terrible ports
12:22 that most people don't know about. Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends,
12:27 subscribe and hit that notification bell. I've been Sy for WhatCulture and have a good week.