I see, so in the case of minimal funding post-release sales would be a necessity to recoup the costs. I guess I thought of the Kickstarter-type business plan as more or less breaking around release, since many of your potential customers might have already “bought” the game.
Except for the first game they all have decent PC ports. You can even run all the games in HD (and possibly UHD) using fan-made patches: Widescreen Fixes Pack - Plugins to make or improve widescreen resolutions support in PC games, add more features and fix bugs
Getting modern controllers to work can be a little more challenging or perhaps impossible in the older games. In the newer games it’s not especially challenging, but the onscreen prompts can be very cryptic.
I actually got into Pro Skater with THPS 2 & 3 on PC, although it’s on PS2 that the game truly shines because of the Dual Shock 2. Everything else is probably better on PC. Even back in the day when I was forced to play it in 640 x 480 on my TNT2 (or 800 x 600 with lower quality/distance) that was basically no worse than the PS2.
Now that I think about it, some of the Devil May Cry 5 controls that seem a bit annoying on the Xbox One controller may be better with the Dual Shock 4.
The secret is in the pressure sensitive d-pad. The tl;dr is that it’s much easier to do something like a quick up/down action in a d-pad context than it is with a stick. But if you do it on a keyboard or a regular d-pad then you don’t have the analog pressure sensitivity, so you can’t just press it a little. This makes it harder to balance, while sticking manuals in between your tricks is key to reach the really high scores required in later levels. You probably can’t even reach a million points if you don’t make it into one or two giant tricks.
Alternatively you could argue the PS2 makes it too simple, I suppose. On PC you absolutely need a certain amount of balance stats if you play by keyboard, but on PS2 once you get good you can afford to ignore those completely. Mind you, you probably won’t be that good until you can finish the game in an under an hour or so.
None of them are on anything. It’s pretty sad.
It’s like being unable to play the original Tomb Raider or something, except even worse because the Tomb Raider 1-3 controls are outdated & awkward while THPS feels as good as ever. Perhaps one of the old Mario games would be a better comparison.