4 Ages of Chase HQ
10A four way split screen comparison video between 4 different versions of Chase HQ - the 1988 arcade racing game by Taito. This was one of my all time favourite arcade games when I was a kid.
Quite a few yeas ago, before I got into emulation, I bought a Japanese version of Chase HQ for my Euro Sega Saturn (played with an Action Replay converter cartridge) and until fairly recently I thought it was an arcade perfect port. But it isn't. When you see the arcade and Saturn versions side-by-side, the Saturn version really does look quite different. On top of that, it also handles differently as well, and not in a good way. The car seems to fly off the course a lot when you take corners at speed, something that didn't happen in the arcade version (you can see me really struggling to keep it on the track towards the end of the second level in the video on the Saturn version, whereas in the MAME version I cruise through that level still on my first credit). It's a shame because it really does make the Saturn version less enjoyable in my opinion. In a way though, I'm kind of glad that it is just the port's handling, because when I first got it I thought the game didn't seem as much fun as I remembered (again, mistakenly thinking it was an arcade perfect copy), but upon firing it up in MAME years later, it seemed just as much fun as ever.
I didn't own any of the home ports back in the day, but I did rent the Sega Master System version from a local video store for a few days (I'd been scared off from buying it due to rather mediocre review scores - this was back in the days when pocket money constraints meant I could only afford two or, at a push, three games in a year, so I didn't want to risk accidentally buying a shit game). I also had a demo of the first level on the ZX Spectrum 128k, which was admittedly pretty impressive considering the hardware limitations, but ultimately the gameplay still left me a bit cold (and the horrible tinny noise the turbo made was an aural assault on the eardrums). From screenshots alone, I always thought the PC Engine version looked like the king of the home console ports and side-by-side it certainly looks a lot better than the Master System version, but I personally think the SMS version plays better. Trying to avoid the oncoming traffic in the PC Engine version seems to be more of a matter of luck than skill when you're going around a corner, as the cars seem to take up so much space on the road. This also makes the car bashing 'boss' bit at the end of the level seem extra difficult, far harder than the other versions I played.