Changes
/* The present and future */
The practise of some GX4000 cartridge game developers was to put an almost unchanged game from the CPC into a cartridge for the Plus/GX4000.A game which had small changes (often just using the Plus's palette) was called a "Almost Direct Disk to Cartridge Port".
== Disk vs Cartridge ==
== Consequences ==
Of course this practise direct disk to cartridge didn't help the [[Plus]] range at all and was almost as shameful as the [[Speccy Port]] technique, but it was done because it was a cheap and fast way to quickly release games.
These games are identical in look to the CPC versions with no use of Plus features:
*[[Batman The Movie (Cartridge)]]
*[[Barbarian 2 (Cartridge)]]
*[[Mystical (Cartridge)]]
These could have benefited from using the Plus 4096 colour palette as a minimum.
*[[Operation Thunderbolt ( Cartridge )]]
*[[Crazy Cars 2 Klax ( Cartridge )]] *[[Tintin On the Moon ( Cartridge )]]
This was still better than the direct ports, because it could give a more "16bit version look".
Please visit their respective pages to read more about these games.
== Examples of games developed using lots of Plus features ==
All cartridge games should have followed the example of these games:
*[[Pang ( Cartridge )]]
*[[Navy Seals ( Cartridge )]]
*[[Plotting ( Cartridge )]]
All these games were developed with the Plus features in mind, and all cartridge games should have been of this quality.
== Side-by-Side comparison of ported games ==
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20ZBzhKoGdI Batman the Movie, Barbarian 2 & Operation Thunderbolt]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRDlE0f8GaI Klax, Mystical & Super Pinball Magic]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPEeqIEgO_0 No Exit, Panza Kick Boxing & Wild Streets]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LaHwU5A0gk Crazy Cars 2, Fire & Forget 2 & Pro Tennis Tour]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XNDx8A8WUQ Switchblade, Tin Tin on the Moon & Dick Tracy]
== Price comparison ==
It is easy to make a "Direct Disk to Cartridge Port" by using the [[No$cart]] utility by [[Nocash]].
A number of unofficial cartridge games have been made this way and some have been even been sold in nice packaging and sold on Ebay . (Iznogoud, SaboteurSee [[Bootleg Cartridges]]).
It is nowadays a common feature to modify existing CPC games to take advantage of some plus features, mostly the [[Plus]]'s bigger palette, but often these remain on disk.
Most cartridges were the original games released from the GX4000 era so these ideas were mostly applied to games. To apply this to utilities you would need to have drivers to access disc/tape for storage, or include the OS/firmware in your cartridge.
Now that the operation of the ACID protection chip is known, and the development of various home brew cartridge hardware solutions may lead to Direct Disk to Cartridge Port applied to any kind of software or new cartridge games that make fuller use of Plus features(See [[Converted_GX4000_games]]). Since the release of '''[[C4CPC]]''' hardware it is now easy to make a cartridge that can be run on GX4000 or Plus.
[[Category:Games]] [[Category:Cartridges| ]] [[Category:CPC Plus]] [[Category:CPC History]]