Definitely no two player. It was a pretty butchered port.

Mega drive ports were generally great. Ghouls n ghosts was better than the arcade absolutely, but ghosts n goblins only had that piss poor nes port.

Super Hang On on mega drive, I love that game, but the frame rate really kills it.

Altered Beast. Amazing on mega drive, but I played the shit out of it in arcade and I just think it’s not close. As a kid I absolutely did, but it feels a bit sloppy now. I started with the master system port, the MD version goddamn blew me away though!

Smash TV feels good on mega drive but I can’t get down with the controls. Xeno Crisis all these years later just feels so much better somehow though

The Double Dragon port on mega drive, ouch. I love the Master system version, actually I was on the fence about putting DD on this list because I do love the Master system version more than the arcade, but that’s not a convincing argument. I played so much DD arcade in the pub near where I grew up, years later I played the rom on mega drive emulator and it’s not a fun time. It’s the fighting and weird animation speed or something.

Primal rage is super fun on mega drive, that’s how I used to play it with my cousins. It was ages later that I played an arcade version. Mega drive has the fun gameplay but that arcade version really shows how the game is carried by graphical spectacle. Obviously you won’t find an arcade for comparison now, but check out the Saturn version. Just much better.

Go the other way, like the original post title actually asked for 😑. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter ports, I love the mega drive ports more, they lose graphical fidelity but they play so much more fun. Paperboy, best on mega drive. Golden Axe is definitive on the mega drive. Strider, I’ll take the mega drive version all day. Alien Storm, more fun on mega drive.

If we want to talk 32x, I’ve still got mine from 30 years ago. Afterburner and Space Harrier are excellent. I know I said Space Harrier was better in arcade, but that’s because realistically people aren’t counting 32x as the console version. Space Harrier on master system is great for that system, but it’s no arcade. Space Harrier 2 on mega drive, same as hang on, just should have been great but almost unplayable frame rate.

Final Fight on mega cd is a very good port. Still not as good as the arcade, but as enjoyable.

Final Fight on SNES was just bad. Guy removed as a character choice. No two player mode. An incredibly low sprite limit, like no more than 3 or 4 characters on screen at once. One of the stages is cut out.

I’ll just smack myself in the head here

I feel like an idiot, bit also I was trying to get kids to sleep for 4 hours in the middle of the night. So can’t be too hard on myself.

There’s a lot. Consoles didn’t have the power to deliver what arcade machines could.

Altered Beast, Double Dragon, Primal Rage, Hang On, Space Harrier, Rampage, ghosts n goblins, Bad Dudes, Smash TV, Final Fight

The ones that did better on consoles were either made into different games or had some other gameplay improvement to make it more appealing.

I’ve got them all!

Zelda, Final Fantasy, Metroid, Star Wars, Warcraft, Metal Gear, Resident Evil, Castlevania, Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider

Those last few got kind of weak. Only few episodes and not as engaging as the earlier stuff.

I shaved my chin and weak-ass sideburns so I had a horseshoe moustache. Just as a joke to go show my partner. She said “It’s good you should keep it like that”. so now I’m a horseshoe moustache man.

I didn’t hate it, bit it was weird and as a teenager in the 90s with nothing but a really sketchy translation of the script I had no idea what it was.

They bought the card system back for a DBZ RPG on the Nintendo DS. Can’t remember what the game was called, but I had fun with it. It got panned pretty hard for the weird mechanics but I kind of knew it from my time with the Super Famicom game. Check that one out if you’re keen, but it definitely plays differently, more like moving around a board game.

This card system comes up in most of the DBZ rpg of the time. The most known being the SNES remake of the two games prior to this one.

It’s called Super Saiyan Densetsu I think. It was quite well known in the emulation/translation scene in the late 90s. And I hate to say it because you seem quite taken with the card system, but people generally disliked it then.

I had the DOS version, still do on my shelf. But even before that we played the demo (with 5 minutes time limit) about 50 million times.

I liked the second one, it was cool but not quite as good.

The third one was that PS2 era I found hard to get interested in our even look at. I quit gaming from about 2003 onwards (kind of, just kept playing my Sega), and picked it back up when things got better around 2010. I would like to try GTA4 one day.

Sengoku 3

Super Baseball 2020

Double Dragon

NAM 1975

That’s a great list! I disagree with SNES holding up better though. For RPGs yes, but anything else you better go Sega.

I want to suggest some more great Mega drive games:

Haunting starring Polterguy

General Chaos

Mutant League Football

Subterrania

Desert Strike, Jungle Strike

Ranger X

Flink

Shining Force 1 and 2

Flashback

Skeleton Krew

Shadowrun

Wonderboy n Monster World

Skitchin

Phantasy Star 4

All the Ecco games, even Ecco Jr which is just very relaxing to sit and play through

I’ll suggest some great games on master system, I could go on all day about Sega.

Sonic. The 8 bit version is not a port of the 16 but game, it’s a master system exclusive and I’ve always liked it a bit more.

Wonderboy in Monster Land. It’s true Wonderboy 3 is a better game, but it also has a stellar modern remake. Monster Land for me is the Wonderboy go to if I’m during up the SMS. And Monster World for mega drive of course.

Asterix. Just my favourite game when I was a small kid. Pretty much just perfect platforming and if you loved Asterix comics it’s really cool to see it as video games.

Golvellius. An action-adventure, I guess you can liken it to early Zelda games with top down perspective and since side scrolling. Pretty hard but good fun.

Lucky Dime Caper. Another platformer, but Sega killed at making these perfect. It’s Donald Duck.

The Ninja. Top down, like, shooter, I don’t know what the genre is called. Like Ikari Warriors/Commando/etc. but actual fun and really good. Needs strategy, quick reflexes and hunting secrets.

Fantasy Zone 2. My favourite shmup on the system, better than the first one for me. It’s a cute em up. There’s also Fantasy Zone The Maze which is a somewhat Pacman like game set in this world. I played that a lot too, definitely fun and good in 2-player.

Super Monaco GP and World Grand Prix are the racing games I like. 8 bit racing games are simple, but they’re fun.

Tazmania. Another great platformer, this one has Taz from looney tunes. This is streets ahead of the 16 bit version and it’s not even close.

Cloud Master. A shmup I used to love. Going back now I can barely beat the first stage and it has some slowdown so YMMV.

Double Dragon. The beat em up for master system. Looks great. Plays, fine, hit detection is a bit wonky but it’s not bad. Great translation of the arcade game.

Robocop vs Terminator. Great on both Sega systems.

Aztec Adventure. Like Golvellius, it’s a bit early Zelda like, much more straight forward though. You can bribe some enemies to help you which is interesting mechanic.

It was one of the best. Just nitpicking but R-type wasn’t a Nintendo series. R-type 3 was developed for SNES.

Calvin and Hobbes still daily posting but from that community specifically. they just did the classic ‘house got broken into’ story.

NFS 1, 2, 3, Porsche Unleashed. excellent track design. The early parts of the series were the gold standard in track design for me.

Second dos game I ever played was Doom on a 486. My mum was doing a tax return for the local bowls club, and the manager let me play Doom on their computer while she was going through all the paperwork.

A couple years later we got our own Pentium 133mhz and a copy of Doom and Duke 3D.