Mutantology + Mutation Gold
 

The CD of Mutantology I got off eBay a long while ago appears to no longer want to work properly with any of my CD/DVD drives, despite me cleaning the underside adequately. :( So does anyone happen to have a spare ISO?


Also, it's recently come to me of late that there were two Mutation Software packs - Epic's Mutantology and Mutation Software's own Mutation Gold (of which a review can be found here). This seems to be extremely rare as I've certainly never seen a copy floating about anywhere online, be it image or physical. It's mentioned somewhat on the Software Amusements site too. Anyone have anymore info on this one besides the AF review?

Thought I'd bump this to see if anyone managed to blag either of the two yet (but especially the latter)? Very annoyingly, I was googling for "Mutation Gold" just now and some google results were pointing to eBay.de, but with no cached pages available. Frustatingly, it seems that the compilation *was* sold on there recently and I bloody well missed it!


Sigh.

Hmmmm, having looked at the seller in question, there's a chance he/she would've only shipped items to Germany anyway. I know there are many german Amiga lovers around, so the following question is aimed at you guys: did any of you purchase Mutation Gold lately? :D

Bumping this to prove that I'm still very much after Mutation Gold if anybody in the world has it.

I'm willing to bet someone in the European region is more likely to have it. What's the best way of spreading my request out to Amiga users in Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway etc? ;)

Hi :)

The Epic release was a complete rip off as far as I was concerned and no I never made any money from it.

The Mutation Gold Compilation release (I have one copy left being the master somewhere here) will only work/load correctly on CD32. It was originally built for Core Design by myself, however the Amiga had died pretty much back then and Core pulled out near the end of it's mastering leaving me with the disk that used RNC CD0:/DH0: IDE disk loader code.

I later released about 500 copies as a limited edition via my own Mutation label back then and had to print a notice regards the CD32 compatibility problem...i.e. it wont work with an scsi CDROM etc.

Given it's all sometime ago I really can't remember the full details but I do have the master (if I can find it) and may do a limited CD32 rerun or something as it did sell out in about 2 weeks back then and then I moved on to other things.

There you have it an no I've never seen one on eBay either come to think of it, so I guess it is pretty rare now - how cool! :)

Found it!...

Here is the last working copy I have of the Mutation Gold Collection CD from back in the day - not sure what I'm going to do with/about it yet :)

This is the first copy of 500 ever made - most went into Germany/Europe in bulk back then.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuzzydweeb/4004754612/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuzzydweeb/4004758200/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuzzydweeb/4004239025/

Here's the original text data pulled from the CD...

---8<---

***************************************
* *
* THE MUTATION GOLD COMPILATION CDROM *
* *
***************************************

IMPORTANT NOTES:

RUNNING THE CDROM ON AN AMIGA CD32...

Firstly you should not be reading this really
if you have run this CD on a CD32, as it
autoboots directly into the game selection
menu !. You should not find any problems
running any of these games on a CD32, however
for enhanced play, some of the games make use
of an optional keyboard, which is useful if you
have one ?.

RUNNING THE CDROM ON AN AGA AMIGA & CDROM DRIVE...

Some SCSI based (and also a few IDE based CDROM
drives) may not be fully compatible with the CD
file system used in our game software.
If you should have trouble running any of the
games directly from the CD itself via MenuCD,
we recommend you do the following...

INSTALLING AND RUNNING THE GAMES FROM HARD DRIVE...

Copy the entire 'CONTENTS' of the INSTALLHD
directory on the CDROM to the ROOT DIRECTORY of DH0:
Then run MenuHD and all the titles should run even
faster from your hard drive. You MUST however only
copy the files to DH0: HD0: TH0: etc. and not DH1:
HD2: TH3: etc. or any other partion device name -
else the software will not funtion correctly !.

In some extreme cases your hard drive may also not
be compatible with the HD file system software,
and in this case you will only be able to play the
games from floppy disk...

RUNNING THE GAMES IN ORIGINAL FORM FROM FLOPPY DISK...

In the event of not being able to play any of the
titles and get past the menu screen, we recommend
that you unpack the games you wish to play from the
DISKS directory to a blank floppy disk.

The original disk versions are all joystick based
also, so you will not require the use of joypad in
order to play DOODLEBUG or CYBERPUNKS.

To unpack the game you wish to play using this method,
you should follow this example...

Change directory or 'Cd' to the DISKS directory on
actual CD, and type the following to play DOODLEBUG
for example...

Dms write DbFD.dms to DF0:

This will unpack the floppy version to disk, and when
finished; reboot your machine and play !.

You should DISABLE any AGA features of your machine,
when playing the original floppy version of DOODLEBUG,
as this is the original pre-AGA floppy disk version of
the game software.

If you find you use the evaluation version of the Dms
utility supplied in the DISKS directory of the CDROM
frequently, you should register with the actual author
- details of whom etc. can be viewed by simply typing
Dms <RETURN>.

Should you have any further queries, please see the
inlay in your game packaging for contact details.

Enjoy :)

Adrian Cummings
Mutation Software.

*** END ***

--->8---

Not sure how long this file will be up but here it is 100% - enjoy!

http://www.mutation.btinternet.co.uk...pilationCD.zip

[Edit: This link now closed as it's on the EAB file server.]

Hi Adrian,

would it be okay if I put it on the EAB file server (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=43633) ? This way it will hopefully be available for quite a long time :)

Please do as you will - all I ask is *nobody* profits from my old work.

Cheers

Awesome.

Of course, the stuff on our file server is 100% free for everyone that finds the access info :) Thanks for the upload and the permission :great

Edit : It's now in the folder 'Amiga CD-ROM'.

No worries :)

This is what I get for being away from this place for a while and not checking back here again before doing random things moments later! :D
(Mainly tracking down the (German) person I believe had bought a CD of MGC when it was sold on eBay.de months ago, and which I had discovered too late through googling to have bidded for myself... and sending him a message asking if he still had it and if so could he make a copy for me pretty please, all the while not knowing if his English is any good at all!)

So thanks very much to Mr Cummings and his geniusness for finding a copy after all these years and successfully coming across this thread without any kind of prompting required! ;) The epic story of resurfacing Mutation Gold is finally over it seems. Although! I noticed you copied the data off the CD onto your HD/stick/whatever, archived the contents, and upped it that way. Is it still possible you could make a proper CD image of it if you get the time? Tools like CDRWin, CloneCD or ImgBurn should do the job as accurately and nicely as possible. :)


In other news, I bought another copy of Mutantology a while ago, this time from SoftHut, only to find it has the same goddamn problem as the last CD I had and causes my drives to go on a neverending seeking craze! The underside looks spick and span as well. Am I just cursed with this knock-off or what? :crazy

Heh :)

Regards the CD... just cut the files to cdr? it was standard ISO format anyway so shouldn't be a problem on CD32 at least.

Have fun anyway.

I believe Amiga ISOs had to be built through special tools on the Amiga before they could be bootable though? Hence just chucking all the files into a new ISO and saving that wouldn't work....

Ah yes you might be right actually but I can't remember for sure now.

I think I still have the tools and possibly the original ISO but I need to check my archives first.

No, I've only got the tools so if you want them PM me your email address and I'll mail the 159Kb rar archive file to you direct.

Tools sent.

Just for the record...

No, I am not recreating/copying/uploading the CD ISO image in any way shape or form sorry, but have provided the data archives and cd tools to allow users to recreate the CD ISO for their own use on their own CD32 system... anyone else can just install the HD install version (provided in the archive) to their IDE HD and play any of the titles that way (you will need a CD32 pad for 2 of them however see link below).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuzzydweeb/4004239025/

Cheers,

Adrian.