Game with the Most Individual Ports

[electricmastro]

Per Tracy Poff at Mobygames, who posted a list in 2017 of presumably the games which had the most ports throughout the years. I was interested to see if anyone here would be inclined to come up with better suggestions of what the most ported game might really be, since I know it can get tricky deciding what counts as a port and what doesn’t at times:

 

Game Title	Count
Pac-Man	38
Dig Dug	34
Frogger	33
Tristam Island	31
Lode Runner	29
Ms. Pac-Man	28
Xevious	26
Altered Beast	25
Commando	25
Nobunaga's Ambition	25
Lemmings	25
Ghosts 'N Goblins	25
Klax	24
Double Dragon	24
Galaga	24
Bubble Bobble	23
Dragon's Lair	23
Prince of Persia	23
Paperboy	22
Shanghai	22
Fatal Fury Special	22
Golden Axe	22
Metal Slug: Super Vehicle - 001	22
Donkey Kong	22
SimCity	21
Pipe Dream	21
Mappy	21
Sonic the Hedgehog	21
Space Harrier	21
R-Type	21
Samurai Shodown	20
Centipede	20
Puyo Puyo 2	20
Zork: The Great Underground Empire	20
Boulder Dash	20
Arkanoid	20
Angry Birds	20
1942	20
Metal Slug X	20
Metal Slug 3	19
Miner 2049er	19
Defender of the Crown	19
Garou: Mark of the Wolves	19
Q*bert	19
Ikari Warriors	19
Doodle God	19
Galaxian	19
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar	19
California Games	18
Fatal Fury	18
QIX	18
James Pond 2: Codename: RoboCod	18
Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz	18
Rogue	18
Art of Fighting	18
BurgerTime	18
Brain Challenge	18
Murder Club	18
Metal Slug 2: Super Vehicle - 001/II	18
Theme Park	18
SimCity 2000	18
Uno	18
Renegade	18
Elevator Action	18
Angry Birds: Star Wars	17
Football Manager	17
Planetfall	17
Silent Service	17
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy	17
The King of Fighters 2002: Challenge to Ultimate Battle	17
Bomb Jack	17
Super Cobra	17
Choplifter!	17
Marble Madness	17
Pooyan	17
Columns	17
Tennis in the Face	17
King Oddball	17
Baseball Stars 2	17
The Last Blade	17
Back to Bed	17
Space Invaders	17
OutRun	16
NetHack	16
Manic Miner	16
Battle Chess	16
Cannon Fodder	16
Doodle Fit	16
Neo Turf Masters	16
Winter Games	16
Sparkle 2	16
After Burner II	16
Pac-Mania	16
The King of Fighters '97	16
Plants vs. Zombies	16
Hamurabi	16
The Bard's Tale	16
Samurai Shodown II	16
Flight Control	16
Another World: 20th Anniversary Edition	16
Rampage	16
Jet Set Willy	16
Terraria	16
Shock Troopers	16
Edge	16
Defender	16
World Heroes	16
Fatal Fury 2	16
Samurai Shodown IV: Amakusa's Revenge	16
robotfindskitten	16
Rod-land	15
Chase H.Q.	15
Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe	15
Strange Odyssey	15
Archon: The Light and the Dark	15
Bad Dudes	15
Moon Patrol	15
Puyo Puyo	15
Zork III: The Dungeon Master	15
Space Harrier II	15
Bust-A-Move Again	15
Rush'n Attack	15
Sonic the Hedgehog 2	15
Star Wars	15
OpenTTD	15
Raiden	15
Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road	15
Suspended	15
Robotron: 2084	15
Genghis Khan II: Clan of the Gray Wolf	15
Mario Bros.	15
Karateka	15
Hostage: Rescue Mission	15
Pac-Land	15
Gradius	15
Machinarium	15
Space Ace	15
Front Line	15
Twinkle Star Sprites	15
Retro City Rampage: DX	15
The King of Fighters '98: The Slugfest	15
Ghouls 'N Ghosts	15
Streets of Rage 2	15
King of the Monsters	15
Fieldrunners	15

Rayman

15

 

 

Source: https://www.mobygames.com/forums/dga,2/dgb,5/dgm,236883

[SeanR]

Are there a bunch of trap streets in this list?

[Nick R]

If you count unofficial, non-commercial ports, it's probably Doom, the Hello World of games.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/itrunsdoom/

[electricmastro]

Just now, Nick R said:

If you count unofficial, non-commercial ports, it's probably Doom, the Hello World of games.

 

And it gets more complex seeing as how there are expanded versions of the original game, like The Ultimate Doom.

[Qazimod]

Surprised that Street Fighter 2 didn't make the cut. At a certain point in the 90s it was the latest hotness and every platform had to have its own version of the game, no matter how many concessions were made for 8-bit micros and the like.

[electricmastro]

17 minutes ago, Qazimod said:

Surprised that Street Fighter 2 didn't make the cut. At a certain point in the 90s it was the latest hotness and every platform had to have its own version of the game, no matter how many concessions were made for 8-bit micros and the like.

 

Similar to Doom, there just seem to be too many alternate versions to simply count them as ports. SNES alone has multiple versions I recall.

[readonly]

Tetris, surely, would top the chart.

[electricmastro]

In accordance to the list, these are apparently thus the most ported games that started off on mobile:

Angry Birds

Doodle God

Brain Challenge

Tennis in the Face

King Oddball

Back to Bed

Sparkle 2

Flight Control

Edge

Fieldrunners

[Vespa Alex]

Are you talking about official ports only, as back in the 8 bit era there were no end of clones of Space invaders on every system. Way more than 17. 

[K]

Some of those figures seem intuitively wrong to me. Did Metal Slug really get 22 ports? That seems like a lot. What systems did it get ported to? I can think of PS1, Saturn, Neo Geo AES / MVS / CD, iOS, PS3. Was there an Xbox version?

[electricmastro]

2 minutes ago, K said:

Some of those figures seem intuitively wrong to me. Did Metal Slug really get 22 ports? That seems like a lot. What systems did it get ported to? I can think of PS1, Saturn, Neo Geo AES / MVS / CD, iOS, PS3. Was there an Xbox version?

 

Yeah, versions of it have been releasing as recently as 2019:

 

[the_debaser]

Seems weird counting cloud ports like Antstream and Blacknut, they’re both presumably running on AWS or whatever with the same emulator so doing exactly the same thing. 
 

Anyway the answer is deffo Tetris. 

[electricmastro]

13 minutes ago, the_debaser said:

Seems weird counting cloud ports like Antstream and Blacknut, they’re both presumably running on AWS or whatever with the same emulator so doing exactly the same thing. 

 

Yeah, I suppose it all goes back to the idea of what should and shouldn't be counted.

[Lyrical Donut]

2 hours ago, the_debaser said:

Seems weird counting cloud ports like Antstream and Blacknut, they’re both presumably running on AWS or whatever with the same emulator so doing exactly the same thing. 
 

Anyway the answer is deffo Tetris. 

 

2 hours ago, electricmastro said:

 

Yeah, I suppose it all goes back to the idea of what should and shouldn't be counted.

 

Indeed. I would argue that Metal Slug 'ports', or any other arcade game of that era would've utilised emulation from the PS3/360 era onwards, as opposed to being coded from the ground up. Possibly even earlier than that.

[electricmastro]

48 minutes ago, Lyrical Donut said:

 

 

Indeed. I would argue that Metal Slug 'ports', or any other arcade game of that era would've utilised emulation from the PS3/360 era onwards, as opposed to being coded from the ground up. Possibly even earlier than that.

 

In speaking on that, Terraria and Angry Birds: Star Wars are two more recent examples I've seen of mass-ported games getting physical releases instead of just digital. I recall that Another World had a few physical releases for its 20th anniversary as well.

 

 

[ScouserInExile]

12 hours ago, readonly said:

Tetris, surely, would top the chart.

Depending on what you consider an "individual port", just the early-mid 2000s versions on mobile would push it to the top of the list. I remember having a spreadsheet with over a hundred (I think it was about 108, iirc) SKUs / versions of just original Tetris that I needed to get released. 

[Soulstar]

17 hours ago, Nick R said:

If you count unofficial, non-commercial ports, it's probably Doom, the Hello World of games.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/itrunsdoom/

 

I knew someone would get there first but I was shocked Doom wasn’t on that list. 

[Nick R]

This raises an interesting (well, maybe not that interesting) question: at what point does a game stop being a port of an existing title, and start being a new game entirely?

 

Tetris has been mentioned a few times in this thread. I haven't played most of the early versions of Tetris, but AFAIK certain features (e.g. soft/hard drops, and the "bag" system of piece randomisation) were introduced before they were finally formally codified by The Tetris Company. (Here's a page listing the type of randomisers that have been used over the years.) At what point do the features become so different from Pajitnov's original Electronika 60 version that it stops counting as a "port" and becomes a "new game based on the same concept"? You have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise things like Tetris: The Grand Master, Tetris 99 and Tetris Effect would count as ports of the original, which is clearly ridiculous!

 

 

Another example:

 

If you're adding up ports of Street Fighter II, should you count Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition (Mega Drive) and Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers (Mega Drive) as two ports of the original SFII? Or should you count each re-titled revision separately:

• Street Fighter II: The World Warrior + all its ports = 1 game with multiple ports

• Street Fighter II: Champion Edition + all its ports = 1 game with multiple ports

• Street Fighter II Turbo + all its ports = 1 game with multiple ports

• Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers + all its ports = 1 game with multiple ports

• etc...

[electricmastro]

5 hours ago, Nick R said:

This raises an interesting (well, maybe not that interesting) question: at what point does a game stop being a port of an existing title, and start being a new game entirely?

 

Tetris has been mentioned a few times in this thread. I haven't played most of the early versions of Tetris, but AFAIK certain features (e.g. soft/hard drops, and the "bag" system of piece randomisation) were introduced before they were finally formally codified by The Tetris Company. (Here's a page listing the type of randomisers that have been used over the years.) At what point do the features become so different from Pajitnov's original Electronika 60 version that it stops counting as a "port" and becomes a "new game based on the same concept"? You have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise things like Tetris: The Grand Master, Tetris 99 and Tetris Effect would count as ports of the original, which is clearly ridiculous!

 

 

Another example:

 

If you're adding up ports of Street Fighter II, should you count Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition (Mega Drive) and Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers (Mega Drive) as two ports of the original SFII? Or should you count each re-titled revision separately:

• Street Fighter II: The World Warrior + all its ports = 1 game with multiple ports

• Street Fighter II: Champion Edition + all its ports = 1 game with multiple ports

• Street Fighter II Turbo + all its ports = 1 game with multiple ports

• Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers + all its ports = 1 game with multiple ports

• etc...

 

Perhaps the most apparent example is Dragon's Lair, which at times has its NES game listed separate from other versions like on 3DO despite sharing the same name. Not as drastic as Tetris, but still goes back to how the Elektronika 60 version can be seen as distinct from other versions depending on what they change/add (Tetris 2, Tetris Blast, Puyo Puyo Tetris, several modes in general, etc.):

 

 

[ScouserInExile]

6 hours ago, Nick R said:

This raises an interesting (well, maybe not that interesting) question: at what point does a game stop being a port of an existing title, and start being a new game entirely?

 

Tetris has been mentioned a few times in this thread. I haven't played most of the early versions of Tetris, but AFAIK certain features (e.g. soft/hard drops, and the "bag" system of piece randomisation) were introduced before they were finally formally codified by The Tetris Company. (Here's a page listing the type of randomisers that have been used over the years.) At what point do the features become so different from Pajitnov's original Electronika 60 version that it stops counting as a "port" and becomes a "new game based on the same concept"? You have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise things like Tetris: The Grand Master, Tetris 99 and Tetris Effect would count as ports of the original, which is clearly ridiculous!

 

 

Another example:

 

If you're adding up ports of Street Fighter II, should you count Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition (Mega Drive) and Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers (Mega Drive) as two ports of the original SFII? Or should you count each re-titled revision separately:

• Street Fighter II: The World Warrior + all its ports = 1 game with multiple ports

• Street Fighter II: Champion Edition + all its ports = 1 game with multiple ports

• Street Fighter II Turbo + all its ports = 1 game with multiple ports

• Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers + all its ports = 1 game with multiple ports

• etc...

To then go further with this, if you fundamentally change an element of a game in order to get it to fit on a system, is it the same game? Is Street Fighter II on SNES the same game as Street Fighter II on the Commodore 64? The control schemes are totally different, to the point where they play completely differently. Even SNES Vs MD ports of SFII is an interesting comparison, if you're talking about using a 3 button MD pad...

[smac]

21 hours ago, Vespa Alex said:

Are you talking about official ports only, as back in the 8 bit era there were no end of clones of Space invaders on every system. Way more than 17. 

 

Yeah, that's what I was thinking - tons of unofficial clones and variants of Invaders, Defender, Asteroids and the like.

 

But Tetris is going to be tough to beat.

 

 

[electricmastro]

The Bard's Tale might possibly be the most ported 3D game. Other mass-ported 3D candidates that were on the PS2:

 

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - 14:

Android (2013), Fire OS (2013), iPad (2013), iPhone (2013), Macintosh (2011), PlayStation 2 (2004), PlayStation 3 (2012), PlayStation 4 (2015), Windows (2005), Windows Apps (2014), Windows Phone (2014), Xbox (2005), Xbox 360 (2008) and Xbox One (2018)

 

Crazy Taxi - 13:

Android (2013), Arcade (1999), Dreamcast (2000), GameCube (2001), iPad (2012), iPhone (2012), OnLive (2012), PlayStation 2 (2001), PlayStation 3 (2010), PlayStation Now (2014), Windows (2002), Xbox 360 (2010) and Xbox One (2015)

 

Syberia - 13:

Android (2013), Blacknut (2019), iPad (2014), iPhone (2014), Macintosh (2014), Nintendo DS (2008), Nintendo Switch (2017), PlayStation 2 (2003), PlayStation 3 (2014), Windows (2002), Windows Mobile (2006), Xbox (2003) and Xbox 360 (2014)

 

Psychonauts - 11:

Linux (2012), Macintosh (2011), PlayStation 2 (2005), PlayStation 3 (2012), PlayStation 4 (2016), Windows (2005), Windows Apps (2021), Xbox (2005), Xbox 360 (2007), Xbox One (2017) and Xbox Cloud Gaming (2021)

 

Rayman 2: The Great Escape - 11:

Dreamcast (2000), iPhone (2010), Nintendo 3DS (2011), Nintendo 64 (1999), Nintendo DS (2005), PlayStation (2000), PlayStation 2 (2000), PlayStation 3 (2008), PSP (2008), PS Vita (2012) and Windows (1999)

 

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance - 10:

GameCube (2002), Linux (2021), Macintosh (2021), Nintendo Switch (2021), PlayStation 2 (2001), PlayStation 4 (2021), Windows (2021), Xbox (2002), Xbox One (2021) and Xbox Series (2021)

 

Max Payne - 10:

Android (2012), iPad (2012), iPhone (2012), Macintosh (2002), PlayStation 2 (2001), PlayStation 3 (2012), PlayStation 4 (2016), Windows (2001), Xbox (2001) and Xbox 360 (2009)

[Vespa Alex]

45 minutes ago, electricmastro said:

The Bard's Tale might possibly be the most ported 3D game. Other mass-ported 3D candidates that were on the PS2:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doom_ports

[electricmastro]

2 minutes ago, Vespa Alex said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doom_ports

 

Hmm, interesting case we have here:

 

[Vespa Alex]

14 minutes ago, electricmastro said:

 

Hmm, interesting case we have here:

 

https://gamerant.com/weirdest-consoles-you-can-play-doom-on/

[electricmastro]

5 minutes ago, Vespa Alex said:

https://gamerant.com/weirdest-consoles-you-can-play-doom-on/

 

Ah, I'm personally not keen in talking about system ports like pregnancy tests, and more so with systems like 3DO and GBA, but still an amusing conversion. lol

[electricmastro]

What I understand to be the most ported computer games which weren't on home consoles:

 

Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz

Rogue

Football Manager

Planetfall

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

NetHack

Hamurabi

Strange Odyssey

OpenTTD

Suspended

[smac]

9 hours ago, electricmastro said:

Hamurabi

 

Bloody hell. That's positively antediluvian. It was in the first ever compilation I bought (well, borrowed from the library in this case): 

 

 

You should also include the original TREK, and ADVENT...

[electricmastro]

5 hours ago, smac said:

 

Bloody hell. That's positively antediluvian. It was in the first ever compilation I bought (well, borrowed from the library in this case): 

 

 

You should also include the original TREK, and ADVENT...

 

I understand that Hamurabi is on iPhone as well, which is noteworthy since not many 70s text games get remembered that far like that apparently.

[electricmastro]

Impressive vector graphics display of Star Wars on most of the 70s/80s computers: