Floppy and CD-ROM talkie

[f2bnp]

#4145

Just some random thoughts and realizations I came to recently:

I only just discovered that DOTT was released simultaneously on Floppy and CD-ROM. For many years, I thought the CD release came later in the year and that my warez copy from the early 00s was some sort of CD-rip version that included some but not all spoken dialogue.

The way I came to realize this was through my recent (well, more like 2 years ago) acquisition of a boxed copy of DOTT floppy. Unfortunately not the original release, but a somewhat later re-release, but still pretty cool nonetheless.
I was amazed to see that they included quite a bit of spoken dialogue, the entire intro for the game is voiced, as well as some later segments and I suspect this carries throughout the game.
I haven’t yet had the chance to play the game again, but I aim to do so using this version, so I’m somewhat eager to see just how much voices are packed in this release.

And for those that dig these sort of things or are just weird like me, I also have a copy of Little Big Adventure that is on floppy. I thought that both floppy and CD came out together, but surprisingly, the back of the box proclaims that the floppy release came out later!

“The beautiful CD-ROM action adventure is now available on 3.5″ floppy for the first time with fully translated text.”

I find this oddly amusing.

[firefyte]

#4146

The floppy version is also unique by having copy protection, which is absent in the CD version (I mean, who would copy a CD?).

[Tijn]

#4147

Ah yeah, this is a cool subject to not overlook! Back in the day I also played the floppy disk version, which has the full intro voiced. Honestly quite an amazing achievement. I don’t remember how many disks they used, but not an insane amount I think.

I think by now I’ve played the full talkie version more than the partial talkie version, but the voices in the later part of the game still sometimes feel weird to me, because I played it without voice acting first and imagined something different in my head.

Also interesting how Little Big Adventure came out on floppy later than the CD version! I think it shows how the landscape was shifting towards CD-ROM very quickly. I imagine it’s also cheaper to produce a single CD vs having to include many floppy disks. We also talked a little bit about this in the episode on Z, which was intended to be a floppy disk game at first, but the publisher pushed for a CD-ROM release, which meant they had to come up with something to fill up all that space and decided to make some nonsensical cutscenes.

[Pix]

#4149

I also had (and still have) the floppy version. It was fairly standard for intros to have speech by this time so DOTT isn’t that unusual I don’t reckon. Admittedly, there was more than usual here. This sort of thing always made me lust after the CD versions.

It’s curious that they didn’t change anything else like having a rendered intro or the like. Not that it’s a bad thing. Most of the games that did this (I’m thinking particularly of Shadowcaster) have dated worse than the 2d art in the floppy equivalents.

I had Return To Zork on floppy. That actually had full speech throughout the entire game and came on 12 disks if I remember right.