Author: Marco Mollison Sr. (pm3-1fred200.xtraport.net)
Date: 08-03-2003 11:58
The only restictions going from 800 to 400 is how much memory is required for playing the game alot of the 800 games work fine on the 400 since they are only using 8k roms in the cartridges and the cartridges are always marked 400/800 while playing disk based games there would be a bigger problem trying to go backwards because most disk based games required minimum 16k which only an expanded 400 hasand was the maximum it was capable without doing mods to the hardware in the 400.
As for the carts and games running on an XL/XE most do work and many of the others that don't work properly you will need a little program that runs in the background that will adapt the XL/XE to run the older 800 games. but there a re a few that don't convert over and they are the ones that look for and use all 4 game ports on the 800 since the XL/XE's only have 2 game ports it doesn't work. An example is Mule for the 800 will not run on the XL or XE's because it looks for all 4 game ports but they did come out with an XL/XE version of Mule (which was fun to play)
RE: Game Cartridge Compatibility