Leaderboard

I've been compelled to register here to corroborate everything said above; I received my copy of Loom today, and am astonished at the lack of coherence or care in terms of its digital content, particularly after the promises that it would (at the very least) include the EGA release of the game. Shipping with nothing but the VGA version, not to mention the weird half-arsed soundtrack situation, is utterly shameful for the cost, and given the lack of availability of the non-VGA release and accoutrements generally is what made this release so theoretically worthwhile. It really does show up Limited Run Games as a company that cares about packaging up nostalgia for profit, rather than actually caring about what they release. Like the anti-Digital Eclipse. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement.

"Sounds like they got all of this from the FM Towns version. ... So I guess the only thing they didn't include from the FM Towns version was the actual game, and the Zak McKracken theme? " Exactly what you've said. They've split the content of the FM Towns game CD (dropped the FM Towns game itself and moved the audio tracks to a separate audio CD) and deleted the Zak McKracken theme audio track. And they included the Japanese version of the audio drama audio CD (Japanese version with the English version and the mentioned soundtrack audio tracks of the audio drama), and missed all the other international versions of the audio drama. So all in all the collectors edition is an incomplete mash up of the Japanese FM towns release without the FM towns game version itself mashed together with the current Steam/GOG release of the game itself.

Sounds like they got all of this from the FM Towns version. It came on two CDs: One with the game and one with the audio drama. The audio drama disc has six tracks: The audio drama in Japanese and English, and four tracks with music from it. Other than the Japanese drama, the contents is the same as my English audio drama CD, though they seem to have cranked up the volume a little on the FM Towns disc. The game disc has one data track (with the English and Japanese versions of the game), and eighteen audio tracks. The first eight are the melodies from the Swan Lake ballet (the overture isn't used in the game though, as far as I remember?). Then another eight with a different version of the same eight. As you say, they don't sound as good. The way the game uses them seems to be that it first plays one, and then loops the other one. Unlike the EGA version, the music rarely stops. The last two tracks are the Indiana Jones theme and the Zak McKracken theme. They are used for an "upcoming attractions" non-interactive demo included on the disc. (The TurboGrafx-16 version also used audio tracks for the music, but only has one version of each melody.) So I guess the only thing they didn't include from the FM Towns version was the actual game, and the Zak McKracken theme? 🤦‍♂️

Hi there, as one of the guys who actually bought the LimitedRun Loom release, I would like to tell you exactly what is in this package and what not: - USB Stick: There's a "loom.exe" and a ReadMe file on it. The "loom.exe" will install the VGA CD-talkie version of Loom like it is available on Steam or GOG. And only this version. No EGA, FM Towns, AMIGA, Mac, whatever different version on there. - CD-ROM Disc: Exactly the same content as the USB stick. No EGA, FM Towns, AMIGA, Mac, whatever version on it. Only the known CD-talkie release. - Soundtrack Audio-CD: The known soundtrack (probably performed by an Roland MT-32 soundcard) and an alternate version of the soundtrack (sounds like being performed on a lower quality MIDI wavetable soundcard, the quality is also less good than the MT-32 soundtrack). Last song is a short version of the Indiana Jones theme (yes, for whatever reasons). On the jewel case, there is a data track mentioned but there is none on the CD (maybe the label package was simply copied from the original LucasArts CD release where track 1 was the data track. - Audio-drama Audio-CD: On track 1 there is the japanese version of the audio drama, on track2 the English original version. On the following tracks there is the soundtrack of the audio-drama with no speech. There are no other language versions of the audio drama (no German version for example, which does exist). - The original manual - The original Book of Patterns on a more sturdy paper than the original release. - The original red copy protection "glass" (which is btw never needed because this Loom release does not have the old copy protection) - Loom logo patch - A two sided poster So all in all this release is not worth mentioned to be a "collector's edition". It is missing a lot and is looks a bit like being "copied together what is available on the Internet already". It only has the (worse) Steam/GOG VGA talkie release and misses the sough-after original EGA release (not to mention the rare VGA FM-towns floppy version or the releases for other platforms), and it misses all versions of the audio drama. All in all it's not a release worth buying if you still have the original package from 1990.

Nope... iMUSE doesn't have any tempo specific hooks or markers. It's possible to change the tempo from SCUMM, but that was rarely done. All of the MIDIs (just checked) have initial tempo as standard MIDI meta events, as well as tempo changes when applicable (see fourth purple line): iMUSESequencer scan for standard MIDI system messages in all files from FOA - all of them have at least one tempo (initial or change) - labelled "set-tempo" here (excerpt): However, only the first track in an iMUSE MIDI will have an initial tempo - because none of the other tracks are independently played - they will all follow in some kind of sequence from the first track. Hence, Misty doesn't include any tempo in the split MIDI files, except for the file created from the first track - because it has no way of knowing what that initial tempo should be for the others: If the tempo changes halfway through track 1, and iMUSE then happens to jump to track 2, then the tempo of track 2 will be that changed tempo, not the initial tempo. ETA: Haven't checked FOA specifically, because I'm not that familiar with FOAs MIDIs - which ones use iMUSE heavily and which don't. But here's an example from the DOTT opening titles - DOTT uses a different version of iMUSE ("v2"), so it actually also does include initial tempo on all tracks (which Misty would then also include in the split MIDIs). But other than that, this is an example of the tempo being changed, and then conditionally jumping to track ("chunk") 6 (actually, 7 - unlike Misty, iMUSE Sequencer (and iMUSE itself) counts tracks from 0). Tracks 2-5 are used for delaying the theme when a platform is too slow at loading the graphics for the next part of the title sequence.

Mojo opines on the scandal with typical nuance and level-headedness.