Editing Cabal (video game) (section)

== Ports and related releases ==
[[File:Cabal Amiga cover.jpg|thumb|Amiga box art]]

''Cabal'' was [[Porting|ported]] to several [[home computer]]s of the era, including the [[DOS]] computers, [[Amstrad CPC]], [[Commodore 64]], [[ZX Spectrum]], [[Atari ST]] and [[Amiga]]. It was also ported to the [[Nintendo Entertainment System]] [[video game console|console]] by [[Rareware|Rare]]. A version for the [[Atari Lynx]] was previewed and even slated to be published in April 1992, but was never released by Fabtek.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://archive.org/stream/grey-matters-volume-3-1992#page/n25/mode/1up|title=Upcoming Games: Cabal|magazine=Grey Matters|volume=3|publisher=[[Atari Corporation]]|date=1992|page=26}}</ref>

When converting the game to the Nintendo Entertainment System, Rare were given a ''Cabal'' cabinet but did not have access to the game's source code, so they had to play the game over and over and redraw the graphics from memory.<ref name="RetroQA">{{cite magazine |last=Carroll|first=Martyn |date=December 2016 |title=Developer Q&A|magazine=[[Retro Gamer]]|issue=163|publisher=[[Future Publishing]]|pages=38–43}}</ref> To accommodate the many layers and [[Sprite (computer graphics)|sprites]] of the arcade game, programmer Anthony Ball used a common coding trick: swapping sprites from left to right every other frame. This has the negative side effect of causing the sprites to [[Flicker (screen)|flicker]] when they reach the console's limit of eight per line, but Ball, like many programmers of the era, found this an acceptable trade-off for including all the game's content, and in a 2016 interview he said he is happy with the quality of the conversion.<ref name="RetroQA" />

''Cabal'' was followed in 1990 by ''[[Blood Bros.]]'', though the sequel had a [[Western fiction|western]] theme as opposed to ''Cabal''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s [[Vietnam War]]-era theme.<ref name="Retro163" />