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Cold Dreams (1995 shareware game)

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First post, by MrFlibble

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Recently a person in another forum was asking to identify an obscure DOS platform game, which turned out to be Cold Dreams. I've read about it before and even tried (unsuccessfully) to find the shareware version a while ago. This time I used Hallfiry's magazine cover CD catalogue and found two legit English language shareware releases (w/ installers):

The second one even has an ASP Ombudsman statement, however this version is apparently nowhere to be found on any PsL CDs at cd.textfiles.com. Anyway, I zipped both versions (making sure they had proper date/time stamps) and uploaded them: v1.05, v1.06.

I wonder if anyone has original zipped copies of any shareware versions of this game? It seems to be unusually rare for whatever reason. If that was not enough, apparently, the registered version hosted by certain "abandonware" websites is an unofficial translation into English of the German version (this seems to be a video recorded with this user-made translation, as the intro text is different from the one found in the shareware versions).

DOS Games Archive | Free open source games | RGB Classic Games

Reply 1 of 4, by MrFlibble

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Further to this, I remembered that a long time ago when I was trying to track down the shareware version, there was a page in Google cache which mentioned a file called coldream.zip with the size of 2,167,442 bytes. The page seems to have disappeared since, but here's my post on the matter for reference.

Well, it turns out that compressing the individual files of shareware v1.06 found here (with the exception of the LISEZMOI.TXT file which was added by the CD's authors) with DOS PKZIP v2.04 at maximum compression results in a zip file which is exactly 2,167,442 bytes in size, confirming the authenticity of this distribution.

One thing though, if the original shareware zip is ever found, there's a chance that it will not be byte-by-byte identical to the restored version because the order in which the files were added to the archive may be different.

DOS Games Archive | Free open source games | RGB Classic Games

Reply 3 of 4, by VileR

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Thanks for the heads-up. Are there any concrete clues that the registered version floating around is a 'fan translation'? I suppose that they could always have changed the intro wording between versions, so it'd be nice to know for sure (I'm the one who added that Moby entry).

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Reply 4 of 4, by MrFlibble

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VileRancour wrote:

Thanks for the heads-up. Are there any concrete clues that the registered version floating around is a 'fan translation'? I suppose that they could always have changed the intro wording between versions, so it'd be nice to know for sure (I'm the one who added that Moby entry).

This is mentioned on the Abandonia game page, and their copy has certainly been tampered with (there are some external files, presumably with translated text, that need to be "appended" to the game; I didn't manage to get it running anyway, but I didn't really try). I didn't check any other pirated versions though so maybe there are legit English releases out there as well.

I can tell you though that the intro text in your version (assuming that it's the same as where this screenshot comes from) is identical to the shareware version intro. The intro text in the video I linked to is different, and sprawls across three screens as opposed to just two.

DOS Games Archive | Free open source games | RGB Classic Games

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