MrFlibble

Personally I'm unaware of any such attempts, I'm afraid there were too many "opportunities" for the old materials to get lost, unless someone of the employees had enough foresight to archive whatever they could. I wish there were more people like Joe Siegler of Apogee/3D Realms who'd be both enthusiastic and responsible about their home company's/studio's legacy.

Great find, the sniper alley cutscene in its entirety! (sans sound, however). I also wonder what Kane is angry at in the briefing cutscene - I'm sure his speech was of the Large Ham variety ^_^ BTW, notice how Kane is actually very calm usually in the full version's briefings. Even when talking with scorn, it's more of a cold through the teeth speech filled with resentment, rather than the shouting and waving of hands as seen in this beta cutscene I think his calm demeanor does add to the character, as he shows that he's above the minor setbacks he might have, and has confidence in his plans. I wonder what the "liquid Terminator" sequence with the Apache was all about Most other scenes are rather familiar, and the flak APC one is even in the game files. BTW, I also remember another trailer (not sure if it was the original or a reconstruction) where the interior of the Temple of Nod was shown briefly, with screens on the sides and also bald-headed acolytes (?) standing in alcoves.

All the files have gone missing for whatever reason An archived copy of the MicroProse FTP can be found via the Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/19980222073538/http://www.microprose.com/ftp/ However, not all files are available - hopefully this is fixed sometime in the future. The forum can be now found here: http://www.elzee.co.nz/amulets/index.php

Yep, I also posted it at CNCNZ Forums

S&F Prod. A neat site about oldies, with various interesting and useful info about classic games (and, in some cases, utilities like game data extractors).

RGB Classic Games has moved to another domain: http://www.classicdosgames.org/

Actually, the scenario file name is shown in the bottom right corner of the options menu, so you can easily check that. The name should be SCB09EA.INI

I've seen mentions of a Covert Ops demo having been published on various gaming magazine cover CDs, for example here: On the other hand, there's a small downloadable file called COVTDEMO.ZIP (you can get it here among other places), which seems to be official but is somehow missing from Westwood FTP. It contains a small version of the add-on MIX with two Nod missions and two multiplayer maps, and requires C&C v1.22 to play. I'm just wondering, is it the same thing, or had there been a stand-alone, CD-exclusive demo of the add-on too?

My memory is a bit faulty on this, but it it's mission #9 where you start with a single Commando and have to re-capture a small Nod base to the south, then destroy a huge GDI base in the north, then there's only one variant of this mission. You can always check the number of variants by looking into GENERAL.MIX file on the CD.

Here's a few more nice sites: http://www.ftp.funet.fi/index/msdos/games/ [ftp=ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/msdos/games/]ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/msdos/games/[/ftp] You can find there "clean" versions (original file names, no additional BBS comments) of online shareware distributions of games by big publishers like Apogee or Epic MegaGames, along with some other stuff.

A truncated version of the MCV transformation animation with what appears to be GDI logo is still in the game data. Even more interesting, the number and sequence of frames in this version is not identical to the final version of the animation.

I've asked Siberian_GRemlin, he thinks its' the Mac version (pre-release or not, I don't know; it is my understanding that he is not familiar with the Mac version either).

The camo patches on the roof are yellow; those were changed to grey in the final release.

Got into retro gaming mags recently, here's an article from a French magazine called Génération 4: http://download.abandonware.org/magazines/Generation%204/generation4_numero079/Generation%204%20-%20079%20-%20Page%20046.jpg http://download.abandonware.org/magazines/Generation%204/generation4_numero079/Generation%204%20-%20079%20-%20Page%20047.jpg Not sure if all of those screenies are already documented somewhere, I think I haven't seen the one with a Mammoth attacking the Nod ConYard with the Nod logo on it before.

Wow, those are some awesome screenies! I wonder how and were they were released initially. Could this actually be the screenshots for/from the Mac version (Mac games generally used higher resolution graphics)? [Edit] I've checked the site and haven't found any info on those screenshots so far.

I think the license from Dine De Laurentiis under which Dune 2000 was created had expired quite some time ago, but the exact details of the situation with copyright around the game are unknown to me. I suppose it is possible that EA won't take steps towards liberating the game simply because the copyright issues are not cleared up.

Well, I must say that if they really decide to release the game into public domain, that would be an awesome accomplishment

I meant that the demo missions in the CD shareware version have voice-overs. The demo missions in the shareware version are in fact different from the retail version's missions, and briefing text is also not the same. The downloadable version of the shareware does not have voice-overs, meaning that those in the CD shareware version are unique. You can read more about the demo missions here. Again, I mentioned the fully animated intro only in comparison with the downloadable demo, as it has a slideshow version of the intro, obviously to reduce the size of the distributive. As for the CD Audio music, IIRC the Battle.net edition does not have CDA, it uses 22 kHz WAV files like Starcraft. Also, there's a little difference in that all music tracks that have MIDI counterparts (briefing, win and lose themes, and the first four in-game themes) were originally supposed to be looped (as they do when you use MIDI music in the DOS version), and the CDA tracks reflected that in that each tune loops once and then fades out halfway before finishing the second loop. In the Battle.net edition, these tracks are identical to the original MIDIs, in that there's actually no loop. For comparison, here's the CDA version of the second Orc theme, and here's the MIDI version (recorded on a Roland SC-55). The music in the official MP3 soundtrack released by Blizzard is also based on the original MIDIs and lacks the looped parts of the tracks (it also doe not include the tracks that do not have MIDI counterparts - it's one track per side for Tides of Darkness, one addition track for each side in the expansion, plus the bonus track; the latter can be downloaded separately from Blizzard).

Quite simple, the game was never officially released as freeware, but since it is no longer sold by EA, Abandonia considers this abandonware. In short, distributing the game without official permission is not allowed.

There was a DOS demo of Warcraft II included on the Battle.net CD? Anyway, here's some info on the actual CD: http://www.amazon.com/Warcraft-Tides-Darkness-Shareware-Version-PC/dp/B000MTRSUY I've heard both Starcraft and Diablo had boxed shareware CD editions, but the extent to which they are different from the respective electronic distribution releases is unknown to me. Perhaps the Starcraft one had the two extra missions that are included with the Precursor campaign, but that's just a guess.

Just found this interesting video: http://youtu.be/bCLPrnrUQtM It appears to be an enhanced version of the Warcraft II shareware (most probably distributed on a CD) with mission briefing voice-overs, fully animated intro sequence and CD audio music. The main menu screen (visible at 02:07) identifies this version as WARCRAFT 2 SHAREWARE v1.08sh. Two other versions of the Warcraft II shareware - WARCRAFT 2 DEMO BETA v1.02elc and WARCRAFT 2 DEMO v1.20elc (both can be found here) - only have MIDI music, a static slideshow version of the intro, and no briefing voice-overs. [Edit] Found a download at a German website: http://www.warcraft-akademie.de/warcraft2/files.htm?PHPSESSID=0627e36805f40e03e990177f850fab8a It's not an ISO though, just the files in a folder, so I'm not sure if the high-quality music audible in the video is actually included.

Heh, I had the very same feeling, and even searched some of the forums I visit thinking that I've seen posts from a user with the same name... but found nothing. I guess it's just that when you search for DOS game related videos on YouTube that user's stuff gets listed rather often

Here's a nice YouTube channel dedicated to classic PC games: http://www.youtube.com/user/CuteFloor Has a large section of videos from unreleased DOS games, as well as alpha and beta versions.

Welcome home Commander Manuel

Nice!