I wrote a patch a while ago that fixes Obsidian to run from a single DVD. I wonder if there is any interest. 😀

Kelly Stiver wrote:

You mean, Obsidian is that rare? If that's the case, I'm mightly glad that I got the copy that I got! And my copy comes on 5 CD' […]
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Patrick benatar wrote:

holy shit! Obsidian is magical piece of work, I picked up a version of that in of all places a St Vincent de Paul charity shop on Broadway in Sydney Australia for $5, but it is a soft cardboard version in a package format I have never seen before, I thought I was the only person in the world who owned that game.

You mean, Obsidian is that rare? If that's the case, I'm mightly glad that I got the copy that I got! And my copy comes on 5 CD's, it's for Windows 95 which I'm going to run in my Virtual PC under windows 98SE.

Also the copy I got is from SegaSoft and it was published in 1996.

What's the info you have about your copy, Patrick?

Hey, I was only joking! it's probably not that rare, but I have never seen a copy anywhere, and I had never seen the cover that you have on your version, but really, If something is not sold on the shelf, and like me you don't shop online, it automatically becomes somewhat rare, as you can't obtain it. I have been trying to find a solution to trying to run this game on vista but I haven't found anything yet, I wanted to mention in case you didn't know, that this game runs perfectly on XP if you have a dual boot system or run XP, and you would only need Virtual PC for vista. (I think).
My version is dated from 2000 and it ran on XP so maybe yours will too.
I did find this solution with colour pictures if anyone want's to look at it.

http://www.gameboomers.com/wtcheats/pcOo/obsidianSA.htm

Snover wrote:

I wrote a patch a while ago that fixes Obsidian to run from a single DVD. I wonder if there is any interest. 😀

YES, yes there is, there is a lot of interest, and it is coming from me.
This sounds fantastic! Link please!
I had been thinking that this game would be an excellent candidate for one of those great installers like the one built for Phantasmagoria that install onto vista/XP from 5-7 discs and eliminate the need for disc switching, (squirt the cat was it?) I know there was a german one first, then another improved version, & I just found the one for betrayal at antara on this site. I love those things!
I always love to run a game straight from the hard drive, but I'm not sure if this game could be re-engineered in this way, I do know that it is good enough to be worthy of the effort, can your 1 disc patch be run with an ISO through daemon tools? Please tell me where to get it......

Patrick benatar wrote:

YES, yes there is, there is a lot of interest, and it is coming from me.
This sounds fantastic! Link please!

I will need a little while to create an installer that only patches the files instead of including all of them, since it required modification to both the exe-file and the main data file (the one that gets copied to the hard drive). Due to the way the game’s CD presence checking mechanism works, it does require that you run it from a real or virtual disk image, but I can confirm there are no problems using Daemon Tools or similar.

So it can't work without mounting a disc, but can you make it work on vista? Is there any timeframe for the completion of this project?

Here you go: Obsidian CD -> DVD patch

I have no idea if the game itself runs on Windows Vista/7. Probably not since it relies on an ancient version of QuickTime (updating INI files?!?!). The patcher will ask for the appropriate permissions though. 😉

There are some other issues — it forces you to manually set 16-bit colour, and the PDA at the beginning scrolls impossibly fast, but the rest of the game functions fine despite these problems. Don’t expect me to figure out how to fix those issues, it was hard enough to hack the disk label check (it took me like 2 days of solid work).

Let me know if you run into any problems with the patcher. I have tested it here successfully, though. It isn’t very complex. 😀

I'm still trying to find out for certain if it can run on Vista, I haven't heard any definitive answer yet, the version of quicktime installed and played it's intro vid without problems, but the program itself just spins it's wheels when it is run, I had to shut down 3 or 4 Obsidan.exes in task manager.
I don't know what you mean by updating the .ini, updating it to what?
Setting the colour to 16bit is no problem, but the PDA scrolling too fast is more serious, if I was playing Obsidian for the first time I would want to get the full experience and read all the dialogue, maybe someone else will want to try and fix this?
I am going to try your installer on vista 32 and see if it will run, if not I will put it in the pile of things to do for when I get XP installed again, or for when I finally learn to use virtual PC, I'm still waiting to play Manhunt for one, our shithead government banned it, as we don't have a 15+ rating for games in Australia because adults don't play video games, and if they did want to, they certainly can't play any games that a 14 year old couldn't, when I obtained a copy I found out that vista has banned it too.
Thanks for your work on this and for bringing it to my attention. I will let you know if I have any success or problems.

Midwinter with box and manual. Dunno if it comes with the map...

CGW March 1996

CGW January 1998

Sigh. Didn't check the pictures' quality before uploading to my laptop from my phone. Anyway, here are a few of my favourites I just got :

Chuck Yeager's Air Combat. Still sealed. Contains a GIANT manual for a game which came with 4 360k 5.25" disks. Ah, those were the days! 😁

Countdown by Access Software Inc. Still sealed.

I'm the first person on earth to open this particular box after 19 years!!. (In case you haven't noticed from the previous sentence, I'm crazy about this game! - It's a nostalgia thing. 😁)

Wow, look at all of those Countdown 5.25 disks! Pity it wasn't released on CD-ROM, hehe.

I must be one of the few with that unit (5 1/4)

retro games 100 wrote:

Wow, look at all of those Countdown 5.25 disks! Pity it wasn't released on CD-ROM, hehe.

Yep, 8 disks! Access Software maintained their reputation even with their last few games - 4, 5 and 6 cd roms for their Tex Murphy series.

Malik wrote:

retro games 100 wrote:

Wow, look at all of those Countdown 5.25 disks! Pity it wasn't released on CD-ROM, hehe.

Yep, 8 disks! Access Software maintained their reputation even with their last few games - 4, 5 and 6 cd roms for their Tex Murphy series.

It's interesting to note that the last Tex Murphy adventure - "Overseer", was released on 5 (I think) CD-ROMs, plus an additional single DVD-ROM, for those lucky folks who had a DVD-ROM reader, back in the day.

retro games 100 wrote:

It's interesting to note that the last Tex Murphy adventure - "Overseer", was released on 5 (I think) CD-ROMs, plus an additional single DVD-ROM, for those lucky folks who had a DVD-ROM reader, back in the day.

The DVD version required you to have one of a few specific hardware DVD decoders. I think they released a patch later that also allowed you to use a software decoder too, but they never actually included any MPEG-2 decoder with the game itself from what I remember.

Sub Culture of US $0.99. Woot!

Haven't tried this game before, but from what I read, almost every aspect of this game got positive reviews save awkward controls.

I've been playing Arena (Elder Scrolls 1, Bethesda, DOS, 1994) recently, and decided to bid on a shrink wrapped boxed version, containing the CD-ROM. I was the only winner, £12 with free postage. The freely downloadable version from Bethesda got me interested in this game. It's the floppy disk based version, which lacks a few minor things such as some animation cut scenes, and a few voice overs. Strangely, the downloadable version doesn't appear to contain the full manual. The boxed CD version contains the full manual, but only as a .pdf file.

A clearer image of the box can be seen on the mobygames website -

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/elder-scrol … meCoverId,3147/

You opened the shrinkwrap! Nooooooo! Nice find though.

HunterZ wrote:

You opened the shrinkwrap! Nooooooo! Nice find though.

I wanted to play it! 😁

I bought this pile of SSI RPGs on ebay (going cheap! 😀 ), because I've just completed Champions of Krynn and have just started its sequel, Death Knights of Krynn - without having the printed documentation to hand.

All 3 Krynn games look complete - Death Knights (shown in the 1st photo) even has a cluebook. A couple of the other games aren't complete however, but I was mostly interested in the Krynn "trilogy".

I've got a minor problem - I want to back up the floppy disks, but I don't currently have a 5.25" 1.2MB floppy drive. I guess it's time to have a browse on ebay, to see if I can get one of these ancient things...

Incidentally, one of the games (Pools of Darkness) had a till receipt (dated '91) in it. The game cost £30.99 (a lot of money really), and came from Leeds, England.