I’ve been playing a lot of Gauntlet: Dark Legacy lately and it seems like it has a number of improvements over the arcade release. I’m curious what other ports people find particularly good.
NES Contra is just better in every way except graphics. The arcade version has clunky, awkward movement compared to the console version. But it also wasn’t made to suck quarters out of your pocket until you were broke.
Very true. I’ve had the pleasure of playing NES Contra on a Play Choice 10 cabinet. The cabinet and arcade-stick experience makes this contrast even stronger: it’s simply more fun than the arcade version, even if the only thing that’s different is the software. And if you want to get technical, it’s also running on inferior hardware to boot.
Hands down: Bionic Commando (NES).
The arcade game is an exercise in quarter-eating frustration, with difficulty on par with Ghosts and Goblins only with harder movement tech. I promise you, the next time you boot this in MAME, you’ll move on in under three minutes, possibly never to return.
The NES version is a platforming masterpiece of difficulty scaling, minor backtracking, lightweight inventory management, all with a nice side of world exploration to tie it all together. It even has Commando-style mini-games to break up any possibility of monotony. It’s a solid playthrough that has all those elements, but nothing is overdone or gets in the way of the action.
Ms Pacman, of course.
Power Stone being ported to dreamcast then psp. Much more convenient to have both games, all characters, minigames, and item collections all on one “disc”. The qol improvements simply outweigh the nostalgia factor.
