LucasArts International Releases

[elTee]

As many of you will be aware, we at Mixnmojo have been helping Aaron Giles track down some of the obscure international releases of the LucasArts games to ensure that they're supported in his brilliant DREAMM emulator. This has been somewhat tricky because some of the LucasArts adventure games have been released in countries as far flung and diverse as Israel, China, South Africa and Brunei, and while in most cases these were released with localised boxes and/or manuals, the games themselves have remained in English. So, as far as DREAMM is concerned, there's no difference between the English release of Escape From Monkey Island and the South African release, because the resource files are identical. However, some lucky countries received these games in a fully localised form, be it either translated texts, or a fully voiced re-dubbed talkie version. These ones of course have different resource files to the English versions, and DREAMM can now identify and run effectively all of them. This is a remarkable achievement and I salute and thank Aaron Giles for taking the time to make sure that these relatively obscure versions of the game work as originally intended.

 

Now, the reason I'm posting this is to share the master list of versions we've compiled, and to request that if you know of any translated versions of games that aren't on the list, to please let us know about them (and wherever possible, to send a copy of the game files to Aaron so that he can check them out and add them to DREAMM's list of recognised titles). I'm not particularly interested in English releases in foreign countries (the list of these is incomplete because DREAMM will always be able to recognise the English versions of the resource files, so it simply isn't a pressing issue), but if you live in say Bulgaria and happen to know that a local distributor did sell eg. Monkey Island 1 with a Bulgarian manual, please feel free to share this in the comments.

 

Also, if anyone happens to have a copy of the Japanese DOS/V version of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis with the Japanese game text, please share a copy with Aaron as we've been unable to find this particular game anywhere outside of extremely expensive Japanese auctions!

 

As a separate project I'm collecting scans of boxes, disks and manuals of any international versions for the Mojo games database, so if you happen to have any images of obscure versions please share them in this thread (assuming you're happy for Mojo to make use of the images in future). I'll share some images and scans of the more interesting versions I've found in replies to this comment.

 

For now, here's a chart documenting what we've found, and thanks in advance for any contributions you can make to this!

 

(Upated 11-Sep-23 with Israeli releases courtesy of Daniel Albu; 12-Sep-23 to correct Fate of Atlantis errors courtesy of Laserschwert).

 

(The below was a separate post, but the forum merged them.)

 

So, as promised here are a few interesting versions I've come across in the last few days:

 

China / Taiwan Soft-World releases

 

Korean Dongseo Game Channel releases (I love these long boxes!)

 

Hebrew MechKat releases:

 

By necessity these images have been acquired from around the web, so if I've used a photo that belongs to you here and you'd like it removed, please let me know.

[Benny]

As elTee said, Fate of Atlantis Japanese is the big remaining missing one but there's also some games for which there are ripped copies but not disk images. (Ripped refers to a copy of the files from when the game has been installed). Disk images are much better for preservation and its easier to tell if they've been modified. If you have any of these games or know someone who does please let us or Aaron know.

 

Do you have any of these?

Disk images wanted for:

• Curse of MI PC Korean
• LastCrusade PC Ega French v1.3 (CD version)
• LastCrusade PC Ega Spanish v1.4 [1990-04-20] 6x360kFloppy (There's a v1.4b version of this from 1990-05-09 but there are already disk images of that)
• Loom PC Ega Hebrew 6x360kFloppy
• Lucasarts Adventure Pack (a Japanese compilation that included Fate of Atlantis, Indy Desktop Adventures and TheDig)
• ManiacMansion PC Enhanced French v1.0 1x720kFloppy
• MI1 PC Ega French 4x720kFloppy
• MI1 PC Ega French 8x360kFloppy
• MI1 PC Ega German 4x720kFloppy
• MI1 PC Vga French v1.0 [SPUTM v5.0.16] 8x720kFloppy
• MI1 PC Vga French v1.0 [SPUTM v5.0.18] 4x1.4MFloppy
• SamAndMax PC Spanish v1.2 7x1.4MFloppy
• Zak PC Enhanced French 3x360kFloppy
• Zak PC Enhanced Italian 2x720kFloppy
• Zak PC Enhanced Spanish 3x360kFloppy

 

[elTee]

Thanks Ben, and I should point out that the Japanese Lucasarts Adventure Pack (Fate of Atlantis, Indy Desktop Adventures and The Dig) was released in two versions, one for Mac and one for Windows PC. I believe the Windows version is the one we need (although Ben will correct me if I'm wrong!) 

[danielalbu]

OK, let me help you out a bit with regards to the Israeli releases.

 

It's true that Loom EGA is the only LucasArts game that has been fully translated.

But many of the games in the list got a localized box with the game itself being the original English version.

 

The games are: Escape from Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Curse of Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island 2, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

 

I'll try to find photos of each one of these boxes and I'll share them below.

 

Sam & Max Hit The Road:

 

 

[elTee]

3 hours ago, danielalbu said:

OK, let me help you out a bit with regards to the Israeli releases.

 

It's true that Loom EGA is the only LucasArts game that has been fully translated.

But many of the games in the list got a localized box with the game itself being the original English version.

 

The games are: Escape from Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Curse of Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island 2, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

 

I'll try to find photos of each one of these boxes and I'll share them below.

 

Sam & Max Hit The Road:

 

 

This is fantastic! Thank you, I'll get our master list updated with these this evening 👍

[elTee]

I've updated the original post and managed to find a few images of the Monkey Island 2 release via YouTube - the video is worth a watch as you get to see some of the box contents in Hebrew  

 

[danielalbu]

Here's Monkey Island 2 and its floppy disks

 

[Laserschwert]

These are great. I should really start working on those international logos and add them to the poster project.

[elTee]

2 hours ago, Laserschwert said:

These are great. I should really start working on those international logos and add them to the poster project.

That would be really cool 😀 Although finding high quality images of some of these boxes is extremely difficult! 

[AndywinXp]

Great thread! Are you folks absolutely sure that there is no Japanese translated version of CoMI? I seem to recall that we had an entry for ScummVM for a version with Jap text... and the executable for Chinese and Korean seems to support Jap as well.

[elTee]

13 minutes ago, AndywinXp said:

Great thread! Are you folks absolutely sure that there is no Japanese translated version of CoMI? I seem to recall that we had an entry for ScummVM for a version with Jap text... and the executable for Chinese and Korean seems to support Jap as well.

The only Japanese release of CMI I found had a translated manual but the game was in English. However, anything is possible! That's one of the main reasons for this thread. Sadly there turned out to be lots of bogus information floating around - forum posts of people alleging eg. fulled dubbed Brazilian / Portuguese releases where the discs we found were translated text and English talkie. The only way to be truly sure is via a disc image, and that's where this gets so difficult 😕

 

I also found lots of images of games with translated text that turned out to be fan translations. The passage of time has made identifying some of these difficult, too. We've often had to delve deep into the resource files to figure it out 🙄

 

Despite all this, I'm generally open to the possibility of there being Korean and Japanese versions out there that we're currently unaware of, so any information anyone can share is always welcome! 

[Laserschwert]

By the way, I'm pretty sure there was no German version of "Fate of Atlantis" with English voice. The talkie version was never released in Germany. Can somebody back this up? Anyway, it's a separate case that would require another color in your chart 😉

Edited September 12, 2023 by Laserschwert

[elTee]

1 hour ago, Laserschwert said:

By the way, I'm pretty sure there was no German version of "Fate of Atlantis" with English voice. The talkie version was never released in Germany. Can somebody back this up? Anyway, it's a separate case that would require another color in your chart 😉

There seems to be one here? The version I tested from our collection is a "re-release" CD and it was in English with the German subs. However, it's possible it's some kind of weird version cobbled together on the internet... I'll need @Benny to confirm if the disc I used was legit or not.

[Laserschwert]

The cover even says "Original floppy version on CD-ROM" 😉

null

 

There are fan-made patches for most LucasArts games that patched the German subs into "better" versions of the games, so I guess it was just one of those versions. https://www.la-patches.de/patches.php

Edited September 12, 2023 by Laserschwert

[elTee]

6 minutes ago, Laserschwert said:

The cover even says "Original floppy version on CD-ROM" 😉

null

 

There are fan-made patches for most LucasArts games that patched the German subs into "better" versions of the games, so I guess it was just one of those versions. https://www.la-patches.de/patches.php

Good point! 😂 DREAMM currently recognises the disc we have as legitimate so we definitely need to double check this one. Thank you! 

[Sopabuena]

Being from Argentina, we always got the Spanish releases, I have many of those. I also managed to get a copy of CMI from Brazil. Will post some photos later

 

 

[elTee]

24 minutes ago, Sopabuena said:

Being from Argentina, we always got the Spanish releases, I have many of those. I also managed to get a copy of CMI from Brazil. Will post some photos later

 

 

This would be amazing, I haven't been able to find much information about the Argentinian releases at all. I assumed they might well be the Spanish versions of the games with an Argentine distributor - if you're able to confirm any info about game languages (eg. subtitle language and talkie language where applicable) that would be extremely useful! Thank you 🙂

[elTee]

2 hours ago, elTee said:

There seems to be one here? The version I tested from our collection is a "re-release" CD and it was in English with the German subs. However, it's possible it's some kind of weird version cobbled together on the internet... I'll need @Benny to confirm if the disc I used was legit or not.

It turns out I was wrong - the CD I tested didn't have English talkie at all, and neither did any of the other European CD versions, so I've corrected the chart to reflect this. Thank you Laserschwert! I've marked Fate of Atlantis as "NON TALKIE" for international releases and set all European versions to green. Weirdly, the Japanese version does include the English talkie, so I've made a note on that entry. 

[AndywinXp]

3 hours ago, elTee said:

The only Japanese release of CMI I found had a translated manual but the game was in English. However, anything is possible! That's one of the main reasons for this thread. Sadly there turned out to be lots of bogus information floating around - forum posts of people alleging eg. fulled dubbed Brazilian / Portuguese releases where the discs we found were translated text and English talkie. The only way to be truly sure is via a disc image, and that's where this gets so difficult 😕

 

I also found lots of images of games with translated text that turned out to be fan translations. The passage of time has made identifying some of these difficult, too. We've often had to delve deep into the resource files to figure it out 🙄

 

Despite all this, I'm generally open to the possibility of there being Korean and Japanese versions out there that we're currently unaware of, so any information anyone can share is always welcome! 

Hmm... I took another look at the ScummVM detection system for the SCUMM engine and it seems you are correct:
 

if (id == GID_CMI) {
  switch (size) {
    case 439080:	// 2daf3db71d23d99d19fc9a544fcf6431
      return Common::EN_ANY;
    case 322602:	// caba99f4f5a0b69963e5a4d69e6f90af
      return Common::ZH_TWN;
    case 493252:	// 5d59594b24f3f1332e7d7e17455ed533
      return Common::DE_DEU;
    case 461746:	// 35bbe0e4d573b318b7b2092c331fd1fa
      return Common::FR_FRA;
    case 443439:	// 4689d013f67aabd7c35f4fd7c4b4ad69
      return Common::IT_ITA;
    case 398613:	// d1f5750d142d34c4c8f1f330a1278709
      return Common::KO_KOR;
    case 440586:	// 5a1d0f4fa00917bdbfe035a72a6bba9d
      return Common::PT_BRA;
    case 454457:	// 0e5f450ec474a30254c0e36291fb4ebd
    case 394083:	// ad684ca14c2b4bf4c21a81c1dbed49bc
      return Common::RU_RUS;
    case 449787:	// 64f3fe479d45b52902cf88145c41d172
      return Common::ES_ESP;
    default:
      break;
  }
}

 

So indeed there are Korean and Chinese versions (both translated in text); of those two I only found the full files for the Korean version but no separate CD images unfortunately. For the Chinese version I only found some sort of translation file conversion, which turns the english data files into the official chinese data files.

 

This must be the biggest Mandela effect  I even remember a YouTube video of decades ago picturing a fully translated Japanese version with dubbing as well. If it exists, it has never been found then.

 

And I was wrong as well on the fact that the COMI executable has JAP specific code, it was DIG who had slightly different code for the three CJK languages in the same executable for strings rendering

EDIT: it seems the table image doesn't show up anymore on the first post?
 

EDIT 2: Oh, also, there are DEFINITELY Chinese versions of EFMI and GRIM out there!

Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese for EFMI: https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/11940

Edited September 12, 2023 by AndywinXp

[Benny]

For CMI we have cd images for all except Russian and Korean. I think Russian is a fan translation and as you've found, just a rip for Korean. 

 

We do not have Chinese EMI and Grim. I'm not sure about Grim being an official release. I know there was a Grim Chinese fan translation and it seems unlikely they would have gone to all that trouble if there was an official version available.

[AndywinXp]

4 hours ago, Benny said:

For CMI we have cd images for all except Russian and Korean. I think Russian is a fan translation and as you've found, just a rip for Korean. 

The Russian version is from Akella, whose translations, if I understood correctly, were some kind of middle ground between being unauthorized and being the de facto official way to play LucasArts games in Russia.

 

Oh so you have found the Chinese one for CoMI! Is it archived somewhere?

[elTee]

46 minutes ago, AndywinXp said:

Oh so you have found the Chinese one for CoMI! Is it archived somewhere?

I'm not sure where the files for this version were sourced, but it has been verified in DREAMM. It was probably found online somewhere, I know a lot of online versions of various games had to be tested so Aaron could rule out all the hacked/cracked or otherwise unofficially modified ones.

[elTee]

Tried to find out some further info about Curse and found this cool advert: 

 

[danielalbu]

Did you know that Tim has a copy of the Hebrew big box of Day of the Tentacle?

nullIt's the 4th one from the left.

 

You can see it over here:

 

[danielalbu]

Here's a better view:

 

 

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by danielalbu