Porting is also the term used when a
video game designed to run on one platform, be it an
arcade,
video game console, or
personal computer, is converted to run on a different platform, perhaps with some minor differences. From the beginning of video games through to the 1990s, "ports", at the time often known as "
conversions", were often not true ports, but rather reworked versions of the games due to the limitations of different systems. For example, the 1982 game
The Hobbit, a text adventure augmented with graphic images, has significantly different graphic styles across the range of personal computers that its ports were developed for. Many 21st century video games, however, are developed using software (often in
C++) that can output code for one or more consoles as well as for a PC without the need for actual porting (instead relying on the common porting of individual component
libraries). Many early ports suffered significant gameplay quality issues because computers greatly differed.
Richard Garriott stated in 1984 at
Origins Game Fair that
Origin Systems developed video games for the
Apple II first then ported them to
Commodore 64 and
Atari 8-bit computers, because the latter machines'
sprites and other sophisticated features made porting from them to Apple "far more difficult, perhaps even impossible". Reviews complained of ports that suffered from "Apple conversionitis", retaining the Apple's "lousy sound and black-white-green-purple graphics"; after Garriott's statement, when
Dan Bunten asked "Atari and Commodore people in the audience, are you happy with the Apple rewrites?" the audience shouted "No!" Garriott responded, "[otherwise] the Apple version will never get done. From a publisher's point of view that's not money wise". Others worked differently. Ozark Softscape, for example, wrote
M.U.L.E. for the Atari first because it preferred to develop for the most advanced computers, removing or altering features as necessary during porting. Such a policy was not always feasible; Bunten stated that "M.U.L.E. can't be done for an Apple", and that the non-Atari versions of
The Seven Cities of Gold were inferior. ''
Compute!'s Gazette'' wrote in 1986 that when porting from Atari to Commodore the original was usually superior. The latter's games' quality improved when developers began creating new software for it in late 1983. In porting
arcade games, the terms "arcade perfect" or "arcade accurate" were often used to describe how closely the gameplay, graphics, and other assets on the ported version matched the arcade version. Many arcade ports in the early 1980s were far from arcade perfect as home consoles and computers lacked the sophisticated hardware in arcade games, but games could still approximate the gameplay. Notably,
Space Invaders on the Atari VCS became the console's
killer app despite its differences, while the later
Pac-Man port was notorious for its deviations from the arcade version. Arcade-accurate games became more prevalent starting in the 1990s as home consoles caught up to the power of arcade systems. Notably, the
Neo Geo system from
SNK, which was introduced as a multi-game arcade system, would also be offered as a home console with the same specifications. This allowed arcade perfect games to be played at home. Impossible ports are ports of video games onto hardware significantly weaker than the target release. Examples include ports of
PlayStation 4 and
Xbox One games, such as
Nier: Automata and
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, to the
Nintendo Switch. ==See also==