Well, for example, I like the music in the floppy releases of Mortal Kombat (which consists of original MIDI tunes) better than the music in the CD version (which is identical to the Arcade).

And in the DOS version of Lost Vikings II I cannot stand the graphics. I'd rather play the SNES version via an emulator.

Most games ported from other systems suffer more or less. C64 and Atari games are reduced to PC speaker. And later, Amiga games were reduced to Adlib music. In some cases, even the Amiga graphics were downgraded for DOS. One rare exception is Turrican II, which has a great DOS port.

On Monkey Island, the EGA version sure has its own art style, but I wouldn't consider the VGA graphics damaging it. The enhanced CD vs. original Floppy VGA is another thing. While I have no problem with the enhancements, it is a pity they introduces so many bugs, and they ditched the MT-32 and Adlib music instead of making it available as an option.

It's possible to play KQ5 wrong by mismatching CD versions to hilarious effect.

dr_st wrote:

Well, for example, I like the music in the floppy releases of Mortal Kombat (which consists of original MIDI tunes) better than the music in the CD version (which is identical to the Arcade).

Definitely!
The nostalgic value of the original Dos Floppy version of MK sound is many times greater than the Arcade (MAME) version for me.

The first game I would mention is TIE Fighter. It has three versions: DOS floppy, DOS Cd (collectors edition) and Windows 95 CD editions. There is an almost global agreement (which I also support) on DOS CD version is the best one to play. The Windows version has better 3D graphics due to using X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter Engine, but It cripples the beautiful interactive MIDI music of the DOS CD version. and DOS CD version has better graphics and sound effects (speech) compared to the floppy version.

I also generally prefer VGA remakes of adventure games (like Larry, Space Quest, Police Quest, etc.).

In some cases, even the Amiga graphics were downgraded for DOS.

And the aspect ratio was usually wrong. I don't know what was the usual Amiga resolution/aspect ratio, but many games were ported to 320x200, which is 16:10, but almost all CRT monitors back then were 4:3.
The result was a distorted graphics, most noticeably when all circles looked like eggs.

Those games actually look better on modern 16:10 monitors with aspect ratio correction disabled.

Some other games, however, were designed originally for PC with this quirk in mind, that is a 16:10 resolution on a 4:3 monitor with non-square pixels.
Or just used 320x240 "tweaked" mode, which is 4:3.

The same problem happened with 640x400 vs 640x480.

Azarien wrote:

In some cases, even the Amiga graphics were downgraded for DOS.

And the aspect ratio was usually wrong. I don't know what was the usual Amiga resolution/aspect ratio, but many games were ported to 320x200, which is 16:10, but almost all CRT monitors back then were 4:3.

Most Amiga games were 320x200, just like VGA. This is the text safe area which is surrounded by a border. The pixel clock is about 7 Mhz, or 14 in 640 pixel modes, thus only slightly higher than DVD resolution. On NTSC, the difference to VGA aspect ratio is not that big. It is very noticeable with PAL resolutions, though, where 256 lines are considered the text safe area.
Also Games on Amiga can use the overscan area at will, and sometimes, they do, resulting in rather unusual resolutions. Those are a lot harder to port to VGA, obviously.
Also split screen resolutions are possible: Lemmings has a 320 pixel wide playfield with 32 colors and a tool bar in 640 pixel mode with 16 colors. That's why the tool bar looks so ugly in the VGA version.

Azarien wrote:

In some cases, even the Amiga graphics were downgraded for DOS.

And the aspect ratio was usually wrong. I don't know what was the usual Amiga resolution/aspect ratio, but many games were ported to 320x200, which is 16:10, but almost all CRT monitors back then were 4:3.

DOS games also use 320 x 200, but there is more to this.

On a CRT monitor pixels simply end up non-square and in the correct aspect ratio. It's more an issue with LCD monitors and emulation. Evidence are the 95% or so widescreen online images and videos of DOS games 😁

Will largely depend on the game. I played DOS games with Sound Blaster 16 card but its value is pretty low as a sound chip beyond pure nostalgia and affinity to its quirky sounds. I also never owned a 3dfx card back in the day so I had no access to Glide.

NTSC-originating Amiga games using 320x200 resolution are drawn for a 4:3 image aspect ratio (about 5:6 pixel aspect ratio) and thus will look correct on the PC. Only PAL-originating Amiga games (which are all the important ones 😉) using 320x200 resolution have graphics drawn for a 16:10 image aspect ratio (about 1:1 pixel aspect ratio).

And I think the original poster was asking about later PC versus earlier PC versions, not PC ports versus original versions on other systems.

On this topic, the CD-ROM version of Space Quest IV is clearly the worst culprit. It made the graphics look worse by accomodating the fact that under Windows 3.1 not all 256 colors were available for applications in the worst possible manner: they modified the graphics resources instead of having just the Windows interpreter remap colors on-the-fly, as earlier Sierra SCI CD-ROM versions did, so DOS players had to look at graphics reduced for Windows 3.1's limitations. Sierra also managed to break a perfectly CPU-speed-tolerant disk version into a CD-ROM version that was unplayable on faster computers. Of course, my patch fixes all of these issues. 😉

Well, the "Ultimate Doom" upgrade dared introducing an episode with a gothic theme a 100% foreign to the trilogy that preceded it, yet without a story of it's own.

The "Shadow of the Serpent Riders" upgrade caused one of Heretic's demos to desync, but they never cared enough to remove it afterwards.

"Shadow Warrior" itself lost demos which the earliest shareware had.

"One Unit Whole Blood", the latest Blood version, lacked the 3dfx capabilities of it's predecessors.

There's a version of "Carmageddon Splat Pack" out there (apparently improperly pre-patched for 3dfx), which caused the shades on the cars to be displayed as opaque textures when run in standard software mode.

The fonts used for the menus in the full retail version of "Redneck Rampage"' were not an improvement over the shareware's.

It's all superficial nitpicking. I can't really name one that was seriously altered for the bad.

Lo Wang wrote:

Well, the "Ultimate Doom" upgrade dared introducing an episode with a gothic theme a 100% foreign to the trilogy that preceded it, yet without a story of it's own.

It didn't make the original episodes worse, though. You could always just skip the new episode, if you don't like it.
There is one detail though: They changed one of the lost soul graphics in a way that it doesn't fit the remaining frames anymore, for no reason. There should be pictures somewhere at the Doomworld forum. Also, the lost souls are excluded from the kill statistics since v1.666, apparently because they didn't get it right with pain elementals spawning them in the game. The statistic is still messed up with archvile's resurrections and with boss spawners.

I actually happen to like it a lot. I just don't think it belongs there, and there certainly isn't anything "Ultimate" about it, save for the difficulty level which puts the other three to shame.

And I think the original poster was asking about later PC versus earlier PC versions, not PC ports versus original versions on other systems.

PC ports interest me too, but only if -
The PC version has supplanted the original in popularity and/or availability (e.g. GOG selling the DOS version of Sid Meier's Pirates! but not the original C64 version)
The PC version destroys something artistic about the original (not asking about preference or nostalgia, just asking if the original had art in any form that got removed)
And that you have specific examples. Knowing that games meant for Commodore computers tended to lose something in translation is generally useful, but which ones particularly suffered, and how? Just as importantly, which ones were or are currently more popular on DOS in spite of being worse?

All that applies to PC re-releases too. Just replace each instance of "PC version" with "new version."

Lost Vikings II, Lemmings, and Space Quest 4 are really good examples. Lo Wang's nitpicks count too, except Ultimate Doom which AFAIK does not remove anything, just adds something that wasn't needed.

FWIW, I am a U.S. gamer and have only ever owned consoles and gaming PCs that ran DOS or Windows. But I'm sort of on a retro-purism kick, where I'm using emulators to replay my games in a form closer to their original intent, when applicable. Some time ago my philosophy was "Play the best version available!", so my LucasArts would have been Maniac Mansion Deluxe, Zak McKracken FM-Towns, Indy3 FM-Towns, Loom VGA CD, Monkey Island VGA CD, and so forth. But I'm seeing merit in respecting the designers' original intents, not to mention getting a correct sense of progression through the years. So I want to know where they differ from what I'm used to, and replay accordingly. So I replayed Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken in their C64 versions, seeing the artwork as originally intended, and the games actually make a bit more sense this way. Stuff like the layout of Zak's house seem strange when rendered in 256 color high resolution, but make sense as necessary compromises in blocky 16 color composite video. There are little things, like a joke in Maniac Mansion that only works because of a C64 engine limitation. Playing the PCJr version of King's Quest was an interesting experience too; there's ambient sounds like birds chirping and rivers flowing that you don't get in the DOS version. The interface is pleasantly minimalistic, well suited to such a simple game, and shows that the AGI re-release is overdeveloped and more complex than King's Quest really needs. Things like the interpreter's terseness, which I originally found frustrating, make more sense now; the DOS version uses modal AGI dialog windows that were developed for far more verbose titles like Space Quest and King's Quest III, but the original version just printed lines in the console like text adventures did, and the necessary terseness makes more sense presented this way.

Lo Wang wrote:

Well, the "Ultimate Doom" upgrade dared introducing an episode with a gothic theme a 100% foreign to the trilogy that preceded it, yet without a story of it's own.

It makes as little sense as its existence, but just think of it as Ultimate Doom retconning the end of Inferno in Doom 1 and making it so Thy Flesh Consumed is the path the Doomguy takes to the actual portal to Earth.

Lo Wang wrote:

"One Unit Whole Blood", the latest Blood version, lacked the 3dfx capabilities of it's predecessors.

Which sucked anyway: 3D voxel objects replaced with flat bitmaps, weird filtering instead of bilinear (at least on dgvoodoo, haven't tried the real thing yet), slower than software (again, dgvoodoo) and limited resolution support.

The best way of playing Blood is hi-res software rendering.

Azarien wrote:

Lo Wang wrote:

"One Unit Whole Blood", the latest Blood version, lacked the 3dfx capabilities of it's predecessors.

Which sucked anyway: 3D voxel objects replaced with flat bitmaps, weird filtering instead of bilinear (at least on dgvoodoo, haven't tried the real thing yet), slower than software (again, dgvoodoo) and limited resolution support.

The best way of playing Blood is hi-res software rendering.

I agree. Glide support in Build games was generally shite. Shadow Warrior isn't any better either. If you want filtering, use a modern PC with DOSBox.

From what I know Glide didn't add anything except the aforementioned filtering. Didn't make the Serpent God's lazors all shiny and sparkling, nor made the Cerberus' flames glow lighter.

It used an impractical span->poly driver, nothing like the Polymost of later. So many people were entitled to gratuitous 3d support in absolutely everything in 97-99 as if it were a requirement, even if it's a 2d arcade port like Street Fighter Alpha 2 (which btw, got terrible reviews then for not being a 3d game!!!), no matter how inappropriate.

so it wouldn't surprise me if it were done to shut up a string of emails bugging to add 3dfx support.

I remember that era and it was annoying because 2D art was peaking while 3D art was still in its infancy. Street Fighter had a 3D spin-off but the SF3 universe was still 2D and looked glorious with all those clean animations.

Quake, for example, aged really badly IMO. What saved it were its gameplay and continued support. I prefer Doom's graphics to Quake.