Do we tend to take for granted how hard it was to develop games for retro consoles? Especially those now easy to emulate (and with games that don't take up much storage space)?
One of the things I notice in retro review is how writers often always state "go for this version because its the superior one" and "the ___ version is pointless" and such statement about describing that a particular platform hands down has the superior copy of the game. This is particularly true for ports from the arcade and computer where retro reviews always state that since say the SNES of Street Fighter games is closer to the arcade, one should avoid the megadrive and other console ports because they are missing frames and other minuscule elements important in the competitive gaming of the original arcade and PC versions.
I am wondering though do many people- not just passionate retro reviewers but also casual gamers who are AWARE of how to use emulators- underestimate just how difficult it was for developers to make different conversions of a single game? Especially PC and arcade ports?
What inspired me to ask this question was because as someone who grew up in the 6th generation, I remember reading articles about how it was quite difficult to port games from one console to another and even systems with similar specs (Xbox and Gamecube) would have great difficulty trying to convert the game to another platform's format. Even the Xbox games had difficulties being converted to PC and vice versa despite how magazines often joked the Xbox was a computer in a box and how Xbox was described as being similar to PC in architecture and software coding.
So whenever claims are made such as the SNES version of The Lion King being hands down the superior port because the sound is better and graphics are crispier so you should ignore the Megadrive port, I can't help but feel its an insult to the hardwork the developers had done trying to build versions for both consoles.
I may not know much about older consoles development, but just because modern emulations make it easier to choose the best version does not mean that it was easy making the games (and it shouldn't mean we just shove off inferior versions)! I mean I remember witnessing the difficulty a video on Youtube of all the difficulty it took to port Ghost Recon to the various consoles and how they had to make major modification to the in-game engine, do weird tricks to fit in with the console's weaker specs that were quite below what the PCs had at the time, etc. This is in an era with easy development kits and lots of input from the publishers of how the console works and so on and even than it was immensely difficult.
So I shudder at the thought of old consoles when the architectures were far far more confusing and game dev kits weren't as user friendly, etc.
Does anyone agree? In particular I am curious about PC ports. People are always complaining the PC version (in addition to being a hassle to play), often take up considerably more space than counterparts on pre-CD rom ports so they play the SNES or Megadrive version both for convenience and to save space (or download the game faster). Is this an insult to the hardwork PC developers had to do to make the games playable on MS-Dos and early Windows?
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