I have no idea what the differences are, I suspect they were bug related.
- Yes
- Yes of course it is! One of my favourite jokes as a kid.
- Yes
- No it works the same as 1.0
About skipping the codewheel query - thatās neat I didnāt even know that, but running it with the 5.0.19 interpreter version works fine and more convenient since it skips it entirely. Thatās the interpreter used to run the game without the copy protection room (I think itās from the āClassic Collection Adventureā compilation box). Given that came after my version of the game and is still version 1.0 it makes me think the Sega-Ozisoft version is the only version ever to have the IBM/VGA/Eng/Floppy version of the game come out on 7 disks, as well as the only version to contain version 1.1. Thereās also a 5.25" version of the Classic Tales box, but Iām willing to bet that version is the standard 1.0 we all know either on eight floppies or on four.
Well Iāll be damned. I knew this was an Aussie release, but Iāve never seen the internals before and didnāt know it was Sega-Ozisoft until now:
Suddenly a million things just clicked into place. Okay firstly, the āClassic Talesā compilationā¦ here are all the boxed versions I have of MI1 and MI2 showing the disks for both the 1.0 and 1.1 versions of MI1:
I probably should have put the other manual in this pic instead of the reference card, but whatever. Sorry.
Okay flip through to page 37:
This manual looks like it was never used, seriously. I had to hold it open by propping up one side and holding the other down with disk 7. I got a bargain when I picked up these Classic Tales boxed sets! Anyway notice that page 37 is the cover for the MI1 manual and is identical to the cover in the other black-bordered MI1 box version.
The reference card pages alongside an actual reference card:
What is very strange to me is that page 38 in the Classic Tales box is the EGA reference card, and page 39 is the VGA one. Notice that page 38 ends mid-sentence and is then missing an entire paragraph and a half! But I finally understand why now. Itās all because the EGA card has the instructions on it to play from the floppies - and thatās exactly how I played it as a kid. Which of course led to my original disks eventually developing bad sectors from repeated game-play and not working.
With the VGA version there were several floppy versions released, and when compressed it would fit on 3 disks (in fact youād only need 2x HD and 1x DD floppies), for example itās my understanding it came this way with KIXX releases (although they print their own manuals) and the āClassic Collection Adventureā compilation (in fact I think at least one disk would have shared its space with the compressed files of the next or previous game). So it could come on 3 disks, as part of a compilation, on four disks, or even on eight 5.25" floppies as well!
But why is the Sega-Ozisoft version unique? Well given what we know above, I have a theory on that. Sega-Ozisoft probably asked LucasArts to provide them with a version for 3.5" DD floppies. And they likely said they wanted it formatted so the game was playable from the floppies. For some reason instead of just giving them the existing 8-disk version for 5.25" that would have worked fine, and I honestly have no idea how that decision was arrived at. It doesnāt make any sense to me because both 3.5" DD and 5.25" DD disks have the same capacity, so one has to wonder what was the point? Why wasnāt 1.0 sized for 7 floppies in the first place? My guess would be that as 1.0 was the initial VGA release they hadnāt had the resources and time to figure out how properly split the game into playable portions to work on 7 disks, but even so it seems strange they would release the game this way and then with later compilations still release 1.0. The interpreter version of the executable with this release is 5.0.16, but as you see in the video the interpreter version of the copy-protection skipping executable is 5.0.19 which means it comes chronologically later, yet it comes with version 1.0 being an earlier version of the game itself!
And to anyone wondering about the answer-key provided in my reproduced PDF manuals (which I was criticised for 11 years ago on the old Mixnmojo forum), hereās what Ron himself has to say about it:
Not to mention the name of the room itself is ācopycrapā. You need it for the EGA version in ScummVM as they wonāt skip it and you canāt use the debug mode to skip it either. Plus cracks to skip the copy protection were out in the early 90ās, itās not like providing the answer key in my PDF is giving people anything new.
Iām interested to see, although to be honest Iāve never played all the way through the EGA version before.