Porting of video games

Porting of video games

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).