Try emailing Janus Anderson.

I did years ago, and although there was a mild interest about it from himself, there's no official statement about its legal status except it for being shelved into publisher limbo since the old TheCan interview. There is no freeware release at this time.

Also, the stupid 'abandonware' release which is the hybrid rip is actually missing music files so it's a crippled experience. I advise holding off on any review of A&A until there is a full complete copy obtained, whether from some collector (HAH GOOD LUCK WITH THAT) or from a pending rerelease.

Ideally it'd be great if you and/or DOSGuy could poke and nudge enough for that to happen even if it's a 'second chance' on GoodOldGames.

leileilol wrote:

Try emailing Janus Anderson.

*looks through sent message history*

...that's actually the person I tried contacting. ^_^;

You said it was "shelved into publisher limbo"... Do you know who actually has the rights to the game at the moment, or if no one's sure, who the candidates are?

The .NFO I could find for the game lists this for what was ripped:

³ RIP NOTES ³
³ ~~~~~~~~~ ³
³ The Shittier Music, And a 372 Meg Useless CD Check File.

Never played it so don't know how shitty the music is myself but it seems the game had MIDI and Redbook.....the Abandonware copy just has the MIDI files I assume. Would seem kind of odd to delete a few MIDI files since they don't take up much space so I assume it's talking about the Redbook.

Some MP3 music tracks: http://janusanderson.com/?page_id=10

The said missing tracks are actually 22050Hz 16-bit Mono PCM files, and have no relation to any of the midis.

Ironically the rip still has two music tracks that were never used by the game (the rock and disco tracks). I've emailed about that (was an A&A trivia email about stuff that was cut) and it's said they're easter eggs just by being there - nothing triggers them.

IDEA! :O

If I do an episode covering the shareware version, maybe I can renew interest in the game, get more people to take notice, and perhaps spark a desire in the people who have control over this entity to do a free release or a paid release on GOG or such a place?

The only catch is that I still only have a few hundred regular viewers, so I dunno how much power that's gonna carry...

It's kinda sad how many of the people who have control over these old games just don't care enough about them anymore to even respond to messages about them. That said, I'd say about half of my messages to original game authors go unanswered and half get a response, so at least for every person who doesn't seem to care (or doesn't have enough time to respond), there's someone who does. :)