Direct Disk to Cartridge Port
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 such games had some features removed as the 128KB only cartridge had less capacity compared to a 3" disk (178K with standard DATA format, later disc games used around 210K on each disc).
Of course this didn't help the Plus range at all and was almost as shameful as the Speccy Port technique.
This was a cheap and fast way to quickly release games.
Another problem came from the fact that both the 464+ and GX4000 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 graphical data, sampled sound using the DMA sound, and would have easily enhanced a 64KB only game.
Examples of Direct Disk to Cartridge Port:
- Batman (Cartridge)
- Barbarian 2 (Cartridge)
- [[Mystical (Cartridge))]
Some others looked similar to the CPC version, but did have some enhancements. Some examples:
This was better than the direct ports.
Thankfull 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 and played on the Plus. (Cartridge games were sold at £39.99, while disc versions were normally £15.99 and tape version was £11.99)
Most games with CPC and PLUS version are "Direct Disk to Cartridge Port" with some modifications. Yet the use of the extra PLUS features varied a lot.
Batman and Barbarian 2 could have make great 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", just by modifying the colours palette to match the Plus capability.
Yet heavier modifications can be seen too.
As most cartridges were the original Games release from the GX4000 era, it was mostly applied to games, yet the crack of the ACID chip and production of modern era Cartridges (or multi-ROM cartridges) may lead to Direct Disk to Cartridge Port applied to any kind of software.
