Best Arcade to Mega Drive / Genesis conversions

Pit Fighter went down well with my friends and I since at the time there wasn't a lot of traditional 'fists 'n feet' fighting/beat 'em up games for the console, every second game released was a shmup. Which is all well and good now, but people forget the apathy that had set in at the time.

The movie Bloodsport was also still fresh in our minds, and Pit Fighter was as close to a kumite simulator you could get at the time. That played into it as well.

The chaos of two player mode that let you gang up on the computer is really where the game shone IMO. Pity the sequel, which was set to include characters from Guardians of the Hood never released. But by that stage I suppose SFII had arrived and redefined how fighting games were executed, so I'm not surprised it was cancelled.

Speaking of Tengen arcade ports, Road Blasters is also pretty excellent. I haven't played the arcade version in over twenty-five years, but on the technical side of things the MD game does an impressive job of the scaling and car animations for sure.

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Speaking of Tengen arcade ports, Road Blasters is also pretty excellent. I haven't played the arcade version in over twenty-five years, but on the technical side of things the MD game does an impressive job of the scaling and car animations for sure.

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Not to mention the music (as little as there was of it) was pretty faithful. Gameplay-wise the only difference is that the Mega Drive version accelerates automatically.

Alien Storm. The levels themselves have different backgrounds but gameplay is arcade perfect.

Strider looks excellent but does control rather stiff. Joe and Mac is a beautiful port that is nearly arcade perfect. Street Fighter 2 CE is a rather impressive port as well.

Tried Chiki Chiki Boys (or Mega Twins as It was named on the arcade I played a lot at child) And I really amazed how nice the port is! Very very nice gameplay. Sure, no 2P is a letdown, but music and graphics are very nice! Huge :) But also, they added some stuff to be better, as the shop, and the little fayris. (Dont remember them on arcade) So I can count it as a very lovely port. Midnight Wanderers and Willow could be ported too with the same engine! A pity that didnt happened :_(

What about New Zealand History? A full list of coin-up ports if was not done, could be very useful :)

as havok666 said 8 years ago, Gain Ground on the MD might only feature 2 players and a smaller screen (which I also like better), but has a cool whole console-exclusive world. Lots of fun.

Chiki Chiki Boys doesn't have 2 player coop, and it's a shame, but it includes a shop where you buy upgrades which is very cool.

I didn't play it much yet, but Burning Force is the smoothest 'scrolling' game I've seen on the console.

Gauntlet IV is a 1993 'expanded remake' of the 1985 game, has good music from a known composer and a cool quest mode. Very fun.

^trying not to be too obvious

A few that haven't been mentioned yet: The New Zealand Story, shame that the music is a mess, but graphically is just as good as the Fm Towns port.

From Toaplan: Flying Shark and Hellfire.

Data East: Crude Buster, this one plays even better than the arcade, Data East fixed the hit/hurt boxes for the MD port.

Namco: Rolling Thunder 2, same as Crude Buster, plays better than the arcade, plus, it keeps the 2 player coop.

Ninja Warriors for the MegaCD, again, this port plays better than the arcade, but I think they removed the 2 player mode which is a shame.

Ninja Warriors for Mega CD is 2-player unless I'm very much mistaken.

If we're talking CD as well then Sengoku is a great port despite what the Sega16 review suggests. It's way more accurate than the other Neo ports to Mega CD. Except for the 1 player only thing, of course. I think it probably plays better than the original actually, seems like Sammy tuned some of the invincibility frame times and stuff since when I went to play the arcade version my tricks no longer worked the same way. The Wolf form's paw swipe actually works here too (for some reason this attack has no hit detection in emulated versions I've tried in the past, at least IIRC MAME and the SNK Arcade Classics PS2).

Props to them for keeping all the transformations intact with no load times, even if the game does have to access for a few seconds for level transitions.

Most of the sound FX are there too, just lower fidelity than the Neo originals. Doesn't mess around with number of sprites on-screen either, there's sections where there's eight or more (admittedly half size, goblin-like) enemies all bouncing around at once. Trying to keep the intensity in these scenes intact may be the reason Sammy balked at including the 2-player mode - that and the fact that some power ups have you shooting streams of fireballs/shuriken across the screen as well, couldn't have been easy.

Frogger is pretty much arcade perfect, no? Might be kind of lame to mention it, but it's a classic!

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Originally Posted by LinkueiBR

Fatal Fury 2 - plays better and faster than the NEOGEO version including FFSpecial

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Maybe if you play on a 50Hz NEO•GEO, otherwise no. And especially no when compared to Fatal Fury Special.

I reckon Golden Axe plays better on the Mega Drive version compared to the arcade, it really is great to play.

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Originally Posted by crazyteknohed

Is everyone overlooking Rolling Thunder 2? Must admit I have not played much of the arcade game, but the Megadrive version looked pretty close to it BITD.

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Theyre both great, the arcade version is awesome and has better graphics with extra effects, but the Mega Drive version adds 3 more levels and retains everything else that matters, it pretty much plays so close to the same indeed. Just a shame they destroyed the 3rd one by changing a few awesome things that made the second one so great.