Changes

The practise of some GX4000 cartridge game developers was to directly put an almost unchanged game from the CPC into a cartridge for the Plus/GX4000.

Some times Sometimes such games had some features removed as because the 128KB only cartridge had less capacity compared to a 3" disk (178K with standard DATA format, with later disc games used around 210K on each disc, compared to 128KB used for most cartridge games)and in addition there was no way to store game state (i.e. the cartridge contained an EPROM and the ACID protection chip only, no EEPROM or RAM). It is worth noting that 256KB and 512KB (max capacity) can be used with cartridges but most used 128KB ROMs.

Of course this practise didn't help the [[Plus]] range at all and was almost as shameful as the [[Speccy Port]] technique.

This It was a cheap and fast way to quickly release games.

Another problem came from the fact that both the 464+ 464Plus and GX4000 (essentially a cut down 464Plus) had 64KB ram. As a result using the Plus features to the full was not so simple if the game was to run on these systems. If 128KB ram was the minimum then this would have allowed additions of more flexibility for graphical data, sampled sound using the DMA sound, etc and would have easily enhanced a 64KB only game.

*[[Mystical (Cartridge))]]

These could have benefited from using the Plus 4096 colour palette as a minimum. Some others other cartridge games looked similar to the CPC version, but did have some enhancements. Some examples:

Thankfull Thankfully most of those games were known as good games on the CPC. The bet was that it would still be a good game on [[Plus]].

Yet people were not interested in buying an expensive cartridge with no or few advantages when the CPC version could be bought for cheaper and played on the Plus.

Most games with CPC and PLUS version versions are "Almost Direct Disk to Cartridge Port", a "Direct Disk to Cartridge Port" with some small modifications.Yet the The use of the extra PLUS Plus features varied a lot. Batman and Barbarian 2 could have make great Some didn't use of 2 button paddles and a 4096 colours palette... It is nowadays a common feature to modify existing CPC games into "Almost Direct Disk to Cartridge Port"much, just by modifying the colours palette to match the [[Plus]] capabilityothers used more.

Yet heavier modifications can be seen tooIt is nowadays a common feature to modify existing CPC games into "Almost Direct Disk to Cartridge Port", just by modifying the colours in game to use a better choice of colours from the [[Plus]]s bigger palette.

As most cartridges were the original Games release games released from the GX4000 era, it was mostly applied to games, yet . Now that the crack operation of the ACID protection chip is known, and production the development of modern era Cartridges (or multi-ROM cartridges) various homebrew cartridge hardware solutions may lead to Direct Disk to Cartridge Port applied to any kind of softwareor new cartridge games that make fuller use of Plus features.