Lost & Found Volume 3

Taken from the news we made on 2007-11-10:


Today, it's time for the story about the 3rd volume of Lost & Found, released by Oldergames.
If you remembered the stoy of L&F Vol.2 (check the review here), you are waiting for this one.

Lost & Found 3 consists of 3 CDR discs (which is a good news), packed into one DVD case, complete with printed covers and CD labels - but no manual (same as the other volumes). According to the labels on the discs, the first 2 CDs are the unreleased US version of Deep Fear. The third disc is what they call "Duck Video Tools".

Let's begin with the Deep Fear discs.

To answer my previous question: "is it a region-patched copy of the PAL version ?"
My answer is: NO! Great.
This copy is really the US prototype of the game. Its internal date is 07/15/1998 while the one from the PAL game is 07/13/1998, so 2 days later. The internal version is also different: v1.001 for the PAL game and v1.000 for the US game. Great.
So now, let's look deeply. The discs have the same structure as the PAL ones. But all the files have differents date and time. Great.
What about data ? Let me compare both of the discs with the PAL discs. Here is the result of my test:
- CD1: only 3 files are differents: 1ST.BIN (the boot file), ITEM.TXT (list of items, this file is not found on the PAL disc) and NBG3.SPR (in the \SOUND subdir, 320 bytes added and 64 bytes replaced at the end of the file). No other difference! Sounds and movies are all identical to the PAL release!
- CD2: only 3 files are differents: The same as for the CD1. No other difference! Sounds and movies are all identical to the PAL release!

So, this is a real prototype, which has its value for collectors, but which has nothing new for gamers. Nevertheless, it's better than Lost & Found 2 ;)

UPDATE:
--------------
After more testing, it appears that the US version is 60 Hz "optimized" compared to the PAL 50 Hz version:
- PAL games on NTSC 60 Hz Saturn: videos are not centered, they are a little more on the bottom part of the screen (but all the areas are visible) and the ingame part has some lines missing at the bottom of the screen.
- US proto on NTSC 60 Hz Saturn: all works fine, videos are centered and no line is missing on screen in the ingame part.
=> all of this "optimization" is due to the boot file 1ST.BIN
So this version is interesting if you want to have an optimized game for 60 Hz hardware without any loss on screen.
--------------

Now, let me test the third disc, the "Duck Video Tools".
What a surprise! It's a really interesting disc. Just after the saturn boot sequence, what do you see on screen ?... the same video as Rebellion... Wtf ?! Let me compare it to the Rebellion disc... And what do you expect ? It IS the same disc. Oldergames probably made a mistake (another one, some people will think) when burning it.
So this disc is not interesting if you already have one of the previous Lost & Found title.

To tell you the truth, here is what I think: Oldergames planned to put a disc called "Duck Video Tools" which seems to be, according to its title, the same disc as the 2nd disc of Lost & Found 1. Do you understand ?
- L&F1 = Rebellion + Duck TrueMotion disc
- L&F2 = Three Dirty Dwarves prototype (as they think) + CD1 of L&F1 (Rebellion)
- L&F3 = Deep Fear US prototype + CD2 of L&F1 (Duck TrueMotion disc)
==> So, you don't need to buy L&F1 if you buy L&F2 and L&F3. This is great for people who didn't have a chance to get L&F1 and don't want to put a lot of $$ into buying it nowadays. BUT for people who have L&F1, they see its value decreased.

As Oldergames made a mistake for the 3rd disc, L&F1 doesn't loose more value than it already lose after the release of L&F2, but if Oldergames will replace the 3rd disc...
What do you prefer ?

Or maybe I am completely wrong and the planned "Duck Video Tools" disc is not the same as the 2nd disc of L&F1. Maybe another mystery that will never be resolved.


So L&F3 is really interesting for collectors only or american people that can't buy the european version of Deep Fear and want to have an optimized english game running on their 60 Hz Saturn without any missing part.