Changes
/* The 3 levels of Speccy portages */
Of course the level of Fail could greatly depend on whatever strategy the programmers/graphists used to get rid of the poor Video speccy's specificities for the original game...
A monochrome game could remain monochrome or be recoloured on CPC... or only parts of it (only spriets sprites or Tiles but not both... mostly only sprites.)
A coloured game with design-wise graphics (character based design) could be the exact same yet with even less colours...
Or Tiles/sprites could simply be completely well re-done/re-drawn, even in mode0 Mode 0 sometimes...
==Rushed and Lazy==
The game is exactly as on speccy, even displaying graphical artefacts artifacts as Colour attributes, and/or monochrome display for the game's window (a shame on a computer told as Colour Personnal Computer) but not always the HUD, which may even often feature extra colours thanks to Raster colour changes, yet this doesn't really help to see what happens on the game's window.
Also sprites may display Transparency/translucency with background's colour, a typicall typical speccy "Feature" ("not a bug, a feature"... sic...).
Probably achieved by using the almost exact Speccy code and emulating the Speccy specificities (Attributes) on CPC.
It is to notice that it wasn't especially the Programmer's fault, the Game Companies were ordering them to do so... Coders weren't "lazy", it was the Company investment which was lasylazy...
Examples :
*Black Tiger : monochrome game with multicoloured HUD.
*PacMania : same as Black Tiger, yet even displaying Attributes artefactsartifacts/remains.
*Super HanG on : graphics Transparency/translucency
*Enduro Racer : same as Super Hang On, even more displayed as Sprites more often cross the different coloured parts of the screen (while jumping).
Thank god the speccy version was so good this game is still decent on CPC.
Some of those games were still good, as they were yet very good on Speccy, the Amstrad Portage wasn't enough to waste it. But those remained inferior to their original Speccy counterpart (which was oftem often smoother or faster...).
==Semi-lazy==
Examples :
*HeroQuest : still has monochrome feeling (2 blue shades being used) while actually being properly 2 bit re-coded... Ditherings use 3 colours gradiants instead of the Speccy's 2, and the grey add a bit more colour feeling...sort of ... bvut but it fails due to a poor colour strategy.
*Strider has recoloured sprites, displaying no attributes, but Backgrounds remains monochrome, yet the HUD trick enable a 6 colours display on screen.
*Shadow of the Beast : (perhaps...) No real 3-4 coloured ditherings or even "additionnal additional colours" thanks to dithering the 2 medium colours together in many graphics (Exteriors or for many sprites), yet the square speccy attributes are not displayed, while the speccy version remains monochrome (in game window, not HUD) in order to simply advert Colour clashes. Would have needed a few more developpment development time perhaps.
==Good Job==
Graphics, despite sharing a common ancestry, are well redone, and take into account the Amstrad power.
After all, despite being slowlierslower, this is not an excuse to get the same awfull awful looking graphics...
Sometimes those games are not that well "ported", yet its concept and gameplay is such that this is not That important, the game is simply too good to be wasted by such detail as the use of Mode1, and it was still sufficiently re-done.
*Head over heels : no attributes and the no-rastercolourchange policy enable to not waste CPU ressources uselessly, while the only 4 colours are cleverly choosen chosen and used in a cartoon styled madness...
*Deflektor : could perhaps have been better yet the concept of the game makes it a clever port, also details like the Tape version loading parts or the good chiptunes enable a proper CPC experience.
*Switchblade : the GX4000 cartridge version is displaying extra features such as large vertical ditherings in a lot of Red shades (sky) or PLUS Hardwired sprites "patches" as extra coloured tiles...this is more than enough to get a properly coloured feeling.
Some Speccy port "done right" may also use Mode0 instead of Mode1... hence being graphically fully CPC (yet tiles or sprites are still compairable comparable in dimensions).
The result may vary from awfull awful (the code is not optimised enough for CPC) to great (alles ist richtig...).
Example of such games :
