Fascination

[derSammler]

http://hol.abime.net/503

HOL says:

Based on 1991 Coktel/Tomahawk PC release.

According to a statement by one of the devs of the PC version (listed at Moby Games under "trivia"), this can't be correct. He says:

The programmers at Coktel Vision couldn't play ".MOD" files on the PC back then, so they just sampled the AMIGA "MOD" and played short loops of it :P I know, pretty pathetic :P but it's the same piece of music anyway.

So the Amiga version was worked on before the PC version. And surely they wouldn't have used .MOD files if the PC version was done first, knowing that they couldn't even play them on a PC.

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by pcGTW_Webmaster

http://hol.abime.net/503

HOL says: 'Based on 1991 Coktel/Tomahawk PC release.'

According to a statement by one of the devs of the PC version (listed at Moby Games under "trivia"), this can't be correct. He says:

'The programmers at Coktel Vision couldn't play ".MOD" files on the PC back then, so they just sampled the AMIGA "MOD" and played short loops of it :P I know, pretty pathetic :P but it's the same piece of music anyway.'

So the Amiga version was worked on before the PC version. And surely they wouldn't have used .MOD files if the PC version was done first, knowing that they couldn't even play them on a PC.

The short answer is not necessarily. Moby wasn't the main coder - he simply did sound for the game and did so across all versions (PC, Amiga, ST).

It could be that the PC version was close to release towards the end of '91 (while the Amiga/ST versions were farther away from release), so he was brought in to do sound for all versions at that time. His preference to code the music might have been the Amiga (or ST), which utilised .mod files. Probably a fair assumption as the PC's sound capabilities at the time were fairly primitive in comparison......as attested to by Moby in his comments.

So what to do about the PC music? Well, instead of bringing in another coder especially, why not cheat and simply sample the Amiga mod. Presumably they had some technical limitations or memory constraints with the PC version of the game as they were only able to include a sample of the Amiga music, which needed to be looped.

Anyway, as it turns out, the PC version was released towards the end of 1991, while the Amiga/ST versions were released several months later in 1992. I can't see how the Amiga version could have been the lead and, if it was, why it would have been held back by several months at the risk of losing a lot of money.

TBH we'd need one of the main coders to confirm that the Amiga version was the lead one. Without direct confirmation, the PC version looks to be the most likely of the three releases to be the lead version. Hope that clarifies the thinking behind the conversion info. in HOL!

[derSammler]

Originally Posted by DrBong

Anyway, as it turns out, the PC version was released towards the end of 1991, while the Amiga/ST versions were released several months later in 1992.

May I ask which version (language) you are refering to? The french and german PC versions for example were released in November of 1991, but the englisch PC version was released months later in 1992 (April or May, can't remember exactly).

If you are refering to the english Amiga version, it might be just the same. Keep in mind that the game was done in french first and translated to other languages later, causing different release dates.

//edit:
Looking at the disk scans at HOL apparently proves that. The english (!) US release published by Digital Integration has "1992" on the disk label, the other one (european release, whatever language...) has "1991" on the disk label. That corresponds exactly to the release dates of the different language versions.

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by pcGTW_Webmaster

May I ask which version (language) you are refering to? The french and german PC versions for example were released in November of 1991, but the englisch PC version was released months later in 1992 (April or May, can't remember exactly).

If you are refering to the english Amiga version, it might be just the same. Keep in mind that the game was done in french first and translated to other languages later, causing different release dates.

It doesn't matter which language version was released first......it's a case of first in, best dressed when it comes to the HOL conversion info.

You're right, though - the French/German PC versions were released in late 1991, but from what I can tell the French/German versions for the Amiga were the first releases and occurred in early 1992 or later (Amiga Joker reviewed the Amiga version in the Mar '92 issue, at least). English versions, however, came after the French/German releases on all platforms.

//edit:
Looking at the disk scans at HOL apparently proves that. The english (!) US release published by Digital Integration has "1992" on the disk label, the other one (european release, whatever language...) has "1991" on the disk label. That corresponds exactly to the release dates of the different language versions.

The English version distributed by Digital Integration is the UK release and not a US release (see the boxscans for confirmation). The other scanned disk is probably a non-English release, but it's not uncommon for disk labels to be misleading as to the year of release (particularly if it has already been released on another platform shortly before, like the PC in this case).

When there is doubt, perhaps the best indicator of the year of release for a game is the datestamp on the main exec or startup-sequence file on the game disk.

Anyway, it's way past my bedtime and high time I got some sleep!

I've been looking for the spanish version of this game for a long time...
I've found in another forum that some time ago (about y.2004) it was "zoned" here...
Could you please help me to get it?
Thanks in advance!

[s2325]

You may try from EAB server:
/Commodore_Amiga/TOSEC [2016-01-03]/Commodore Amiga - Games - [ADF] (TOSEC-v2015-12-28_CM)/F/Fascination v1.1 (1991)(Coktel Vision)(ES)(Disk 1 of 2)[cp manual code].zip
/Commodore_Amiga/TOSEC [2016-01-03]/Commodore Amiga - Games - [ADF] (TOSEC-v2015-12-28_CM)/F/Fascination v1.1 (1991)(Coktel Vision)(ES)(Disk 2 of 2).zip
/Commodore_Amiga/Retroplay/WHDLoad_Updates/Games/Final_installs/Fascination_v1.1_Es.lha

Wow! That was great! I didn't know about the server!!! (sorry I was a bit noob here)!!!
I got it!!! Thank you so much for point me there!!!