In hindsight, you can probably pass fair judgement on arcade conversions for home systems, but back in the day, you were often promised a more or less accurate experience, but often you'd get something else entirely (whether good or bad). However, users of the ZX Spectrum (like I was) quickly realized that a even a close approximation of most arcade games was in most cases an unattainable goal for the modestly specced (geddit?) machine. Add to that the fact that a lot of people simply didn't have access to the real arcade games, and I think most arcade conversions were actually judged on their own merits. Having read a few articles on how the conversion process actually worked in those days, I think the word "interpretation" is more appropriate.

Gamertag: Custardo