Which video games have been trapped on a hardware platform (console/handheld/headset/etc.) that you wish would be ported well?

Gmr Leon@mstdn.social to Games@sh.itjust.works – 65 points –

Which video games have been trapped on a hardware platform (console/handheld/headset/etc.) that you wish would be ported well?

I was reading about Oculus accounts that haven't been assimilated into Meta accounts being erased, & it got me thinking about games trapped on hardware platforms again. What are some of the games you wish would have good ports across different hardware?

@games

71

Red Dead Redemption

They never made a PC port

I've never played it, but I am curious about it : I wonder why SEGA never ported Jet Set Radio Future on any other platform. It never left the original xBox.

It's a bit weird because SEGA is usually not against getting a few quick bucks from the old catalogue. The first Jet Set Radio, along with a couple other Dreamcast games, has a PC version, and it's at least playable, if not absolutely perfect.

Jet Set Radio Future not appearing on another platform or being rereleased does not have an officially known reason, but I 100% personally guarantee you its about music copyright. Either a license for a sound sample used in a song expired, or the license for a song expired. There is no other reason.

That or something with a contract with Microsoft to be exclusive to the Xbox, barring it even from releasing on Windows. Or both.

Microsoft wanted the Xbox to succeed and guaranteeing exclusives, especially a sequel from SEGA from their previous console for a game that had some popularity, would be a step in guaranteeing that. If the game were also released on PS2 and GameCube and even Windows, it would have hurt the Xbox from players who wanted to play JSRF.

I would agree, except that Future also does not appear as a port for any other Xbox console except for the original. The only way to play it is either an original Xbox, or backwards compatibility with an original Xbox disk [EDIT: JSRF is not backwards compatible on any Xbox platform, meaning the only way to play is on an OG Xbox or via emulation]. There are no ports or remasters of Future, despite wider availability of Jet Grind Radio.

It is of note that Sony is the most aggressive with purchasing exclusive rights to third party games, a practice they still continue to engage in to this day that is incredibly infuriating.

1 more...
1 more...
1 more...

I would like to play Bloodborne and Demon's Souls. But I really don't want to buy a PlayStation just for two games...

Megaman & Bass on Super Nintendo

Sega Rally Championship 1995 on Sega Saturn

Drakengard on PlayStation 2

inFamous on PlayStation 3

As someone who played Drakengard, the story is cool but the gameplay is absolutely awful. The gameplay is repetitive and the game feels like trying to play a Dynasty Warriors game with the controls of Ace Combat 2, but only for the ground parts because the flying parts control nothing like Ace Combat. Even Yoko Taro agrees that the gameplay is trash.

Its a game with a cool story but youll have a 10/10 better experience just watching the cutscenes. If ever a game needed a remake where major gameplay systems are completely overhauled or changed, its definitely Drakengard.

Megaman and Bass made it to GBA I think if you want to play the worst port ever. So many blind jumps.

You reminded me of "Drakken" for the snes. Don't think that was a very good game though.

I've been wanting to play ghost of tsushima, hopefully they port it to pc.

You're in luck. Apparently info is coming in the next week about a port according to Eurogamer.

I remember hearing about it in that nvidia leak a while back, so I was pretty sure they are actually going to port it, just don't know when. Seems likely very soon though if eurogamer is right :)

Metal Gear Solid 4.

Agreed. Hopefully they release it in the second part of the Metal Gear collection

A lot of DS games that rely on the touchscreen just can't be ported very well like Elite Beat Agents or Trauma Center.

Especially since DS, 3DS and Wii U gamepad had resistive screens. They could use a thin bit of plastic as a stylus and you could get very precise instantly with it.

Capacitive is nowhere near as convenient for (most) game interfaces. Fingers are inaccurate as fuck and get in the way of the screen, big round styluses are only marginally better, and even those clear-disc capacitive stylus things don't work as well and are still usually quite a bit thicker than the DS bit of plastic.

With the Switch screen being capacitive too, I've tried using a capacitive stylus to design Super Mario Maker courses. It's just not the same, it was a lot easier on the Wii U screen. On the Switch I have to go back and correct stuff constantly, and pointing in particular doesn't always register immediately.

Ugh that reminded me of getting "stuck" in Phoenix Wright 15 years ago because I didn't have a microphone for my PC! What a disaster! That said, they did a steam remake, so that made me happy :)

oh if only I could have my beloved Bloodborne on PC

As far along as emulation has come, I'd like to see a proper Little Big Planet port with multi-player and local server support.

The old Uncharted games. Every other year I forget that the "Legacy of Thieves Collection" is not a collection of legacy games.

You can't even emulate them without a proper PlayStation controller because they need the movement feature. And the Steam Deck's movement feature isn't supported by the emulators.

I'd also like to play Until Dawn but I guess that's finally coming.

There's the Nathan Drake collection for PS4, which has remakes of the first 3 games

Gran Turismo. I really dont wanna deal with console obsolescence just to play a decent racing sim. Not like they need it to farm PSN subscriptions because people already pay more for iRacing

Fingers crossed. Kaz has been displaying interest in a PC version. His first early demo of Ray Tracing at a conference years ago used a PC fork of Gran Turismo because it didn't exist on consoles at the time. With all of the relevant competing franchises existing on PC, they're missing out.

Sony has been pretty good with porting games to PC but usually only the ones that aren't "live service" titles like Gran Turismo has become nowadays.

For now, I guess Modded GT4 is the best im gonna get (which isn't a low bar by any means, it's great on steamdeck!)

The ps2 gen had some great FPS games that were console exclusives since PC physical was dying, I wish I could play Black, urban Chaos Riot Response, Darkwatch, Timesplitters and Shadow Tower Abyss with a mouse and keyboard.

If you still have your game disk to rip you can use this to play it on pc.

I have an old pc with an i7-6700 cpu and older graphics card using a ps5 controller I bought from a pawn shop. Been playing OG God of war and Shadow of the Colossus on it. Plays just as good if not better than real ps2 hardware.

I would let you custom map keyboard keys to controller keys too

I know about that emulator, but the mouse functions like an analogue stick when mapped, feels so wrong that I played with a controller anyway.

Illusion City - MSX Turbo

A cyberpunk JRPG/CRPG that takes place in a futuristic Hong Kong.

This game actually was ported to the NEC PC-9800 computers, as well as the FM Towns which is IMO the best version. However, I bring this game up because it is language locked, being only in Japanese, and the partial, incomplete and honestly kind of poor English fan translation is only available for the MSX Turbo version which is the original version.

Bubblegum Crash - NEC PC Engine

An adventure game tie-in with the cyberpunk/scifi anime Bubblegum Crisis sequel, Bubblegum Crash!.

This game was only on the PC Engine, or in the US it was called the TurboGrafx16. It also was only released in Japan. The initial gameplay is that of a point and click adventure, which would be more fitting for a PC game. It also features other gameplay including a racing section, a puzzle game section, and a CRPG first person dungeon crawler section.

White Knight Chronicles - PS3/PSP

A Monster Hunter like fantasy RPG with giant mecha-like suits of knight armor.

I actually really like these games. It was available in English, and some were released in the US. But I can't help but think how being locked to PlayStation really limited the reach of the game. A PC port of each would be much more popular than the original releases IMO.

I'm pretty sure the white knight chronicles games are available to stream if you have a ps plus premium subscription. Not quite the same as a remake for modern platforms, but it's something

Oh man it's so frustrating when they don't translate the best version of a game, I hope it's because it's way harder to hack or something and not personal preference.

Infamous Second Son looked like a fun game probably will never play it.

The Infinity Blade series on the iPhone. You can't buy them anymore and I'm not sure you can download them even if you own them. They wouldn't work on a modern iPhone anyway because you need some old version of ios. You can't really emulate it them a useful way either. So the only way would be to get an old iphone/iPod touch, jailbreak it and sideload the .ipa if you can still find it somewhere.

Shame because I really enjoyed those games and anything remaining of the franchise has been absorbed into fortnite meaning there will never be another sequel.

Imagine taking the best game on the platform in its prime, locking it up, and making a fucking fortnite skin out of it. That is the sad tale of Infinity Blade.

I would love to see the old PS2 third person platformers ported/remastered onto PC. Sly Cooper 1-3(Sly 4 I guess), Jak 1-3(And Jak X I guess), and all the Ratchet and Clank games. You can play them via RPCS3 and PCSX2, but that's not a substitute for a proper port imo.

Fuck, YES. These and the InFamous games, honestly.

Come the fuck on Sony, you're leaving money on the table!

mass effect 3 multiplayer. absolutely loved being a krogan vanguard or a geth prime w siege pulse.

it still connects... sometimes. i usually try once a day. fucking ea.

I was just talking about this with a buddy last night. Mass Effect 3 MP was fuckin amazing. Playing the Krogan Warlord was a fantastic time.

Jade Cocoon. It didn't even get the PS3 emulation port that a lot of PS1 games got.

Xenoblade Chronicles X

I own it on the WiiU and yes I can use an emulator but a proper port which better integrates the content from the second screen into a one screen interface would be great.

Honestly, I feel like any manner of integrating the game pad screen is going to end up feeling like a downgrade, simply because of how information dense the map is compared to the minimap on the main screen. I've been emulating it, and playing it on a multi monitor setup has been absolutely amazing.

Not a game per se, but the Kinect. I loved the sports games, and it was my wife's favorite way to play Just Dance, but they axed it midway through the Xbox One cycle.

I would legit buy an Xbox if it had Kinect and back catalog support. But alas, I only have the Xbox 360 and didn't upgrade once they killed it in the next console.

There was one really underrated feature in the Kinect and that was its microphones. It allowed for voice commands and interactions in games.

And with how popular LLMs have gotten, wouldn't it be amazing to have an actual conversation with an NPC? Imagine LA Noire where you can ask any question you want. Or Bethesda games where you're not limited to 4 or 5 canned responses. Natural language conversation with NPCs would be such an amazing feature and I thought that's where Kinect was going to take us.

Call of Duty 3

I loved 2 and 4, but I think 3 only came out on the original Xbox and the PS2? I’m probably misremembering that, but I know a PC port was never made cause boy, I’d love to try it but don’t think it exists

I played Call of Duty 3 on my Wii, so that's one more platform. It's also the only CoD I spent a considerable amount of time with.

Some notable games still stuck on the PS2

  • Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 1/2
  • Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
  • Valkyrie Profile 2
  • Onimusha 2/3
  • Atelier Iris 1/2/3
  • Shadow Hearts 1/2/3
  • Fatal Frame 1/2/3
  • Cold Fear
  • Echo Night Beyond
  • Haunting Ground
  • Ape Escape 3

And that was just me picking stuff with some noteriety

Aside from everything Nintendo makes- with how they run the switch, I really wish they'd crash out of the console market- I would hope for the Bomberman Battle Royale game that was on Stadia only. It was some sort of deal to keep it there, but it was definitely a fun Bomberman game.

3D Dot Game Heroes on the PS3. Forget good ports, this poor game didn't get ANY ports.

Seriously, that game was a charming semi-parody of some RPG elements and aspects of classic Legend of Zelda.

One of my favorite parts was the character creator, such a smart integration of a voxel editor. It put me in the mind of RPG Maker's pixel art sprite editor with how it had you make a small voxel spritesheet for the character.

Oh man one of the biggest regrets was me getting rid of this game so much fun.

Worlds Adrift. It was shut down by the creators partly due to funding another project but also partly because the serverside was built on a proprietary OS that isn't supported anymore so there weren't any options other than re-building it from the ground up

Follow-up: what are some of the lesser known or niche games trapped on a hardware platform you'd like to see a good port of?

@games

I mostly use a Linux box to play games.

  • Consoles are pretty weak compared to the PC when it comes to complex simulations, stuff like Heart of Iron 4. Maybe some of that is lack of a mouse, or maybe the TV screen covers a smaller portion of the visual arc than the computer screen. Maybe user demographic preferences differ. I think that it'd be reasonable to do controller-friendly ports.

  • Android and deep games. A lot of mobile gaming seems to be incredibly-shallow. When I look at mobile, it seems like a great platform for turn-based games, low battery usage games. I don't have or want a Google account for privacy reasons. Android even with the inclusion of Google's store is weak, and cutting Google Play Services out makes it a really, really weak gaming platform. I have no problem paying for games on mobile, but I have a large problem with that being tied to being tracked wherever I go. I'd like a privacy-friendly option to purchase and a collection of good turn-based, replayable games on Android.

  • I'd like to see a better port of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead to Android. This game is fundamentally tied to a keyboard interface, and someone did an admittedly-impressive job of making it actually playable with a touch interface, but it's still painful compared to using a keyboard. Needs a deeper UI overhaul.

  • The one major game that I can't play on Steam/Linux due to Proton/WINE compatibility issues that I'd really like is Command: Modern Operations.

  • I don't really want a modern port of AV-8B Harrier Assault on Linux -- the game is ancient -- but I'd like to see something in that rough genre, a military simulation with a dynamic campaign.

I think that it’d be reasonable to do controller-friendly ports.

At least some Paradox games have console ports. Stellaris, for example, is on PS4/Xbox One. It's a serviceable port, but it plays much better on mnk.