Mutantology + Mutation Gold

[MethodGit]

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?

[MethodGit]

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.

[MethodGit]

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?

[MethodGit]

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?

[Adrian Cummings]

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!

[Adrian Cummings]

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/

[Adrian Cummings]

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---

[Adrian Cummings]

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.]

[TheCyberDruid]

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

[Adrian Cummings]

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

Cheers

[killergorilla]

Awesome.

[TheCyberDruid]

Originally Posted by Adrian Cummings

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

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

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

[Adrian Cummings]

No worries

[MethodGit]

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!
(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?

[Adrian Cummings]

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.

[MethodGit]

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....

[Adrian Cummings]

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.

[Adrian Cummings]

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.

[Adrian Cummings]

Tools sent.

[Adrian Cummings]

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.

[Josh]

I have made a bootable CD32 ISO image. Will post the link for download after I've upload them on a Webhoster...


Cheers Josh

EDIT: You can find this image on the EAB tracker. I think TCD will put it on EAB file server too.

[Adrian Cummings]

Superb Josh that will please some peeps here.

[TheCyberDruid]

Thanks to Josh there's now a torrent and it's also on the EAB file server in the folder 'CD32'. Cheers Josh

[MethodGit]

Thank you Josh. Maybe you should make it clear it's a self-made image so that collector types don't get too disappointed in thinking they've come across a rare dump.

[TheCyberDruid]

In the torrent description he did

[cosmicfrog]

think I`ll go for the torrent and try keep it seeded for a bit

[TheCyberDruid]

Cheers cosmicfrog

[Josh]

I've note that two or three games not working after booting from CD on CD32 (thx for report TCD).

So please: Don't grab this file until I've fixed this problem!


Cheers Josh

[MethodGit]

Cripes. And I thought it was as simple as building the ISO with ISOCD and burning that. =[

Still, if Andrew gets any spare time in the future, I'm sure the TOSEC or Redump guys would appreciate a dump of his CD from him, the dumping of which would take literally less than a minute (if not half a minute) considering how small the whole thing is. They're always after obscure stuff and all. I contributed many dumps (albeit much bigger ones) and information to TOSEC in the past and it worked wonders, with lots of new 1:1 dumps that people could trust more.

So what needs changing Josh? An extra command or something like that?

[Josh]

I am not sure yet what's the problem. Until now I only found time to check and confirm TCDs report.

I think today evening I can spend quite little time to search the reason why it's not work after boot from CD32.
(Maybe it's a mistake of me or another small thing like missing file (quess not really). Otherwise any name is not correct. I will try as far as I have time for).


Cheers Josh

[Adrian Cummings]

Try this ISO image ripped from the CD32 master CD with ISO Recorder 3.0 for Windows...

http://bit.ly/MGCISO

[Josh]

Very, very thanks Adrian!

Now it works fine. Seems the game(s) needs the correct disc name...

@all: Sorry, yesterday I haven't found time to fix it. But now Adrian has do it for me, hehe ...).


Cheers Josh

[Adrian Cummings]

I remember the disk being a bit of a pain to build but couldn't recall exactly why even myself - so glad this works and everybody should now be happy hopefully

Anyway no worries and enjoy!

[Josh]

Oops - seems I was to fast because I was so happy because it runs on WinUAE...

Right now I have test it on my real CD32 - and it don't work. Same results like before.

*damn*


Cheers Josh

[Adrian Cummings]

Oh no!? arrgghhh now this is really, really odd?

I know we tested this master disk on an old real CD32 in the past and it was fine, I may try and pickup an old CD32 and have a go myself. I have no idea what else it could be given the original ISO image was built with the CD32.TM file I recall.

Is there a better tool I can rip the master disk with for Windows? as I don't have a CD drive on the real Amiga here.

Perhaps the CD32.TM file is not in the ISO I provided somehow when it got ripped - this is all so long ago I only just remember this file being a potential problem.

Odd :?

[Josh]

I will try it to place a TM file into the ISO. Maybe this helps. But it's more than odd - on WinUAE it works very fine.

On Windows I only use Alcohol for clone CDs.


Cheers Josh

[Adrian Cummings]

Does the menu not even load on the real CD32? (meaning CD32.TM is missing) or does the menu load but none of the actual games do not (meaning the device path is wrong i.e. not CD0: which would be beyond strange on a real CD32 of course).

I tried Alcohol to make an ISO and Clone CD and here is the new archive containing both versions to download if you wish...

http://bit.ly/MGCALC

The TM file is not seen as a standard file if I remember rightly - rather it is written to a fixed place on the disk when the disk was built... hence this 'may' be the problem with the master Amiga CD->ISO rip on PC - I just don't remember.

Other than that I'm going to have to leave it there for now tho as I have Windows 7 to install on several machines LOL - so good luck ok!

[Josh]

On a real CD32 you can boot until the Menu. There you can choose the first two games, they are working. All other what don't need a CD32 game pad don't run. Strange...

Oh, and thanks for new stuff for testing.


Cheers Josh

[Adrian Cummings]

That is really odd then given the first 2 games work and the other 3 don't. I guess it is possible that the CD versions of the games on my master have degraded but I doubt it as the HD versions all work fine taken from the same disk here.

I'll try and pickup a 2nd hand CD32 soon and have a go with the master disk myself as this is really bugging me now :P

May help if you cut at very low speed i.e. 1x or 2x or change recording media as perhaps the CD32 is not so keen on your cdr's - just a wild guess ok.