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Star Wars isn't the only one...

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OK, we all know the story: George Lucas made SW, then made a Special Edition with CGI changes which he thinks is better and unleashing it all over the world and refuses to ever release the original version again, even though people don't like the SE because the CGI doesn't fit in with the modelwork, and they're making fan edits of the original version.

Well, Star Wars isn't the only one:

Id Software made DOOM, then made an Ultimate Edition with a fourth episode which they think is better and unleashing it all over the world and refuses to ever release the original version again, even though people (like me) don't like the Ultimate Edition because the fourth episode doesn't fit in with the other three, and they're making patches to downgrade the game to its original version.

Anything else suffering this blasphemy?
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It's nice to hear we're not alone. Although, I think Half-Life 1 & 2 plus the extra versions are the greatest game.
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But video game publishers rarely release old games. I mean, even if there was no Doom Special Edition, you wouldn't be able to walk into a store and buy the original Doom would you? Games are made, released, and then replaced by new versions (better graphics, more levels, more moves, different storyline, etc etc)

I admit this is a vaguely similar situation, but definitely not the same.

And Ingo, I see you have a new favourite game and therefore a new favourite movie. What is the reasoning? Why the change?

War does not make one great.

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Originally posted by: Yoda Is Your Father
But video game publishers rarely release old games. I mean, even if there was no Doom Special Edition, you wouldn't be able to walk into a store and buy the original Doom would you? Games are made, released, and then replaced by new versions (better graphics, more levels, more moves, different storyline, etc etc)
You can still buy old games online. 3D Realms is a perfect example of this. They're still selling their 1990-1996 DOS games for about $15-30. ID Software still sells the DOS version of Quake for about $40!

And Ingo, I see you have a new favourite game and therefore a new favourite movie. What is the reasoning? Why the change?


The only reason I made Episode III my favorite at the time was because it was a prequel like SFA3. But SFA3's final boss (Super Bison) is ridiculously difficult and frustrating. Even worse, in some versions if you lose to him, you can't continue. I got extremely angry trying to beat him without losing, then I thought "To hell with it. Bison's just an over-the-top asswipe." So I ditched SFA3 and made DOOM my favorite game of all time, because I know that game, and it's nowhere near as frustrating as SFA3. I can speed through and beat that game on its easiest difficulty, and that's what I want in a game. And with 5 difficulty levels, I can always come back for a challenge. But my favorite is the ORIGINAL version of DOOM, because Ultimate's fourth episode does not fit in with the other three. It doesn't have a world map like is MUCH harder compared to the other episodes. So I'm trying to preserve the original version because that 3-episode game is truly my favorite.

So Star Wars became my true favorite movie, because 1. It's the original like DOOM, and 2. It's to me the only one out of the six that had no offensive parts in it. And its the OOT version, like DOOM, because even though I don't mind the SE, I still think the modelwork is fascinating.

EDIT: There's another reason why I don't like Ultimate DOOM. The original DOOM worked well as a standalone game, even though it was sort of a cliffhanger. Ultimate's Episode 4 was created basically to tie in the first game with DOOM II. So now it's sort of a prequel to the second game. I reject this because I like the original DOOM to be a standalone game. Same with ANH.
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Thanks for the explanation. I also like Doom and the original Star Wars. Just out of curiosity, I would say my favourite game is Zelda for the Super Nintendo. So what, by your reckoning, would my favourite movie be? (BTW I am not trying to make fun of you - I am actually curious to see if this works for me).

P.S. Sorry to derail your thread. Feel free to carry on talking about the original topic.

War does not make one great.

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Lord of the Rings nudge nudge

And no I don't mind derailing the thread (this time). I enjoyed explaining the shift of power within my mind.
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Lord of the Rings huh? I do like that movie (s) a lot.

You crack me up Ingo. Your choice-making is bizarre, but fascinating.

War does not make one great.

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(I'll play along....)

Dude, just get a copy from a friend or an abandonware site, or find a legitimate copy on the secondary market. Computer programs are digital, so each and every copy is reference quality. It's not at all like the situation with Star Wars. There is no legal way and no practicable gray/black market way to acquire a reference quality print of Star Wars. We're at the mercy of the guy who owns it. Doom fans are not.
"It's the stoned movie you don't have to be stoned for." -- Tom Shales on Star Wars
Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived.
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Please tell me this topic is a huge joke. The Doom situation barely mirrors the Star Wars situation.

First of all, there's actually a very easy way to get rid of "Thy Flesh Consumed." Download a Shareware DOS edition of the original Doom. After installing it, search its directory for the file called "Doom1.wad" and delete it, and replace it with the "Doom.wad" file from Ultimate Doom. Now run the game. It's now the full game... except Episode Four isn't even an option! Congratulations, you now have the original Doom, just the way you want it (except that the title screen is different, but please tell me that's not going to be a point of contention). And the best part is, you didn't even have to do anything illegal!

In fact, all DOOM level/episode information is contained in the WAD, so if you really don't like Thy Flesh Consumed, all you have to do is find an older WAD file from before "Ultimate" Doom.

And there's an even easier way: Simply don't play "Thy Flesh Consumed." The original "Knee-Deep in the Dead", "The Shores of Hell," and "Inferno" episodes are all there, completely UNCHANGED. For all intents and purposes, all "Thy Flesh Consumed" does is make itself an option when you start a new game (and change the title screen, but if you're running a Windows or source port version you won't even see this).

Doom's situation is NOTHING LIKE Star Wars. You can't watch A New Hope and simply "ignore" Greedo shooting first, or all the banthas that roar into the camera. You can't watch Return of the Jedi and just "ignore" the new ending or the musical number. You CAN play Doom and simply refuse to play episode four, so really, complaining about it is picky.

Again, I hope this topic is some sort of joke.
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Originally posted by: Scruffy
(I'll play along....)

Dude, just get a copy from a friend or an abandonware site, or find a legitimate copy on the secondary market. Computer programs are digital, so each and every copy is reference quality. It's not at all like the situation with Star Wars.


Not exactly true. Many arcade games came with suicide batteries (even in the 80's) that would destroy your pcb board once the energy in the battery died. (Call it murder-suicide.) This is the whole "the company knows best" syndrome all over again. You bought a 2,500 dollar machine, but it's going to die in 5 years... if you're lucky.

Oh, and don't say emulation is the same. It's not.
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Originally posted by: Ingo Sucks
Id Software made DOOM, then made an Ultimate Edition with a fourth episode which they think is better and unleashing it all over the world and refuses to ever release the original version again, even though people (like me) don't like the Ultimate Edition because the fourth episode doesn't fit in with the other three, and they're making patches to downgrade the game to its original version.


You don't need to get Ultimate Doom. If anything, you could find the old program available on the net. You'd just need a DOS compatible environment to run it in.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Originally posted by: ThatArtGuy

Not exactly true. Many arcade games came with suicide batteries (even in the 80's) that would destroy your pcb board once the energy in the battery died. (Call it murder-suicide.) This is the whole "the company knows best" syndrome all over again. You bought a 2,500 dollar machine, but it's going to die in 5 years... if you're lucky.

Oh, and don't say emulation is the same. It's not.


I was talking about computer programs. Not hardware. Programs -- data, information, numbers -- can always be represented and reproduced separate from the hardware on which they may or may not be distributed. (Assuming you have a good source, and sources for Doom are extant.) You can put it on a ROM chip, a floppy disk, or in a book, it's the same thing. And I know for a fact that Doom did not include a suicide battery.

And emulation is the same.
"It's the stoned movie you don't have to be stoned for." -- Tom Shales on Star Wars
Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived.
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So, you're telling me that playing Pac-Man on a keyboard in front of a LCD monitor is the same as playing the game on a full size cabinet, with complete artwork, with the original red controller, and arcade monitor?

Next you'll be telling me that watching a full screen mono VHS version of Star Wars is the same as watching the original 35mm film in a theatre in stereo.
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No -- no more than watching Star Wars on a 55" screen is the same as seeing it in a cinema. I am telling you that the ROM of Pac-Man is safely preserved for future generations, in reference quality. That's what this site is about, remember? Preserving a valuable media artifact of pop culture in the greatest quality possible? It's "OriginalTrilogy.com," not "OriginalProjectionEquipment.com."

And if you're that concerned about standing up in front of a cabinet, you can build one. There's plenty of plans online that show you how to do it.
"It's the stoned movie you don't have to be stoned for." -- Tom Shales on Star Wars
Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived.
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I spent many, many exciting hours playing DooM back in the day, alone or with friends. Tons of fun. Nowadays I run The Ultimate DooM because it works well on my current system. The add-on level is just an optional bonus to me.

There is another game that's a big favorite of mine that actually saw release a couple years back as a Special Edition of sorts. It's called "Bad Mojo", aka "The Cockroach Game". You play the whole game as a cockroach, seeing everything from a cockroach's point of view. There's nothing else like it. I bought it back when it originally came out in 1996, and though I loved the game, I was always unhappy with the quality of the video cut scene segments. They were state-of-the-art for the time (using QuickTime 2.0 or something), which wasn't very good. Years later I had a really hard time getting the game to run well under Windows XP, but I put a lot of work into it and was able find a way to get it working. Then I found out they released "Bad Mojo Redux" in 2004, with enhanced graphics and video scenes that had been re-encoded to play full-screen and look tons better. It also included a DVD with bonus material and info on how the game was made. I bought it ASAP, and was extremely pleased with it. It looks great and runs like it should, and you no longer have to install an ancient version of QuickTime to make it work.

This is an example of a Special Edition release done well. Nothing was added to the original, nothing was taken away, nothing in essence was CHANGED... it was just made to look better than it originally did when it was first released.

This is what should have happened with Star Wars.

--SKot

Projects:
Return Of The Ewok and Other Short Films (with OCPmovie) [COMPLETED]
Preserving the…cringe…Star Wars Holiday Special [COMPLETED]
The Star Wars TV Commercials Project [DORMANT]
Felix the Cat 1919-1930 early film shorts preservation [ONGOING]
Lights Out! (lost TV anthology shows) [ONGOING]
Iznogoud (1995 animated series) English audio preservation [ONGOING]

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Originally posted by: Ingo Sucks
Originally posted by: Yoda Is Your Father
But video game publishers rarely release old games. I mean, even if there was no Doom Special Edition, you wouldn't be able to walk into a store and buy the original Doom would you? Games are made, released, and then replaced by new versions (better graphics, more levels, more moves, different storyline, etc etc)
You can still buy old games online. 3D Realms is a perfect example of this. They're still selling their 1990-1996 DOS games for about $15-30. ID Software still sells the DOS version of Quake for about $40!

And Ingo, I see you have a new favourite game and therefore a new favourite movie. What is the reasoning? Why the change?


The only reason I made Episode III my favorite at the time was because it was a prequel like SFA3. But SFA3's final boss (Super Bison) is ridiculously difficult and frustrating. Even worse, in some versions if you lose to him, you can't continue. I got extremely angry trying to beat him without losing, then I thought "To hell with it. Bison's just an over-the-top asswipe." So I ditched SFA3 and made DOOM my favorite game of all time, because I know that game, and it's nowhere near as frustrating as SFA3. I can speed through and beat that game on its easiest difficulty, and that's what I want in a game. And with 5 difficulty levels, I can always come back for a challenge. But my favorite is the ORIGINAL version of DOOM, because Ultimate's fourth episode does not fit in with the other three. It doesn't have a world map like is MUCH harder compared to the other episodes. So I'm trying to preserve the original version because that 3-episode game is truly my favorite.

So Star Wars became my true favorite movie, because 1. It's the original like DOOM, and 2. It's to me the only one out of the six that had no offensive parts in it. And its the OOT version, like DOOM, because even though I don't mind the SE, I still think the modelwork is fascinating.

EDIT: There's another reason why I don't like Ultimate DOOM. The original DOOM worked well as a standalone game, even though it was sort of a cliffhanger. Ultimate's Episode 4 was created basically to tie in the first game with DOOM II. So now it's sort of a prequel to the second game. I reject this because I like the original DOOM to be a standalone game. Same with ANH.



Hey Ingo, I don't mean to be offensive but your reasoning for favorites doesn't reason at all. I think it's interesting how you reason your favorite game and movie but that is silly. It seems autistic. Are you in the ASD spectrum by chance?
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Originally posted by: Scruffy
I am telling you that the ROM of Pac-Man is safely preserved for future generations, in reference quality.


As I understand it, a lot of arcade games had very specialized hardware. That is harder to reproduce.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Pac-Man was just a joystick and a couple of buttons (for choosing how many players) though. Get yourself a big enough monitor (19-21"), a PC, and a large wooden enclosure, and you'd be set. It should be fairly easy to make it look just like the real thing, even though it's just be a ROM running off a PC running DOS. You could probably even run it in windows and just get a USB joystick.
F Scale score - 3.3333333333333335

You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.

Pissing off Rob since August 2007.
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Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

Hey Ingo, I don't mean to be offensive but your reasoning for favorites doesn't reason at all. I think it's interesting how you reason your favorite game and movie but that is silly. It seems autistic. Are you in the ASD spectrum by chance?


DING DING DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!!!

You're right! I AM Autistic! That's why I get offended by stuff so easily! That's why I make decisions in a silly way! Because I'm AUTISTIC!
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Ingo: Did you see my post, where I pointed out that you can have the original, three-episode version of DOOM simply by downloading a demo version and replacing its WAD with Ultimate Doom's?

Really, as far as I know the video games that most mirror the Star Wars situation are probably the Dragon Warrior games. In the mid-1990s Enix made "enhanced" versions of the first three games for the Super Nintendo. Besides having better graphics, they also dumbed down some of the challenge. These versions have been constantly re-released ever since.

And while we're at it, old games in general have a bad tendancy to become unavailable after only a few years... not like the movie industry where everything is always preserved and continually re-released.
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Originally posted by: JamesEightBitStar
Ingo: Did you see my post, where I pointed out that you can have the original, three-episode version of DOOM simply by downloading a demo version and replacing its WAD with Ultimate Doom's?

I think I tried that before, but then it crashed horribly.

However, the patch I mentioned before that can downgrade Ultimate DOOM to Original DOOM 1.1 can be found in certain locations, but NOT on id's webpage.
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Originally posted by: Ingo Sucks
I think I tried that before, but then it crashed horribly.

However, the patch I mentioned before that can downgrade Ultimate DOOM to Original DOOM 1.1 can be found in certain locations, but NOT on id's webpage.


Yea, DOS Doom crashed on me too, but it did it with Doom 2 and Final Doom as well, so I'm not sure what the deal is.

I just hope that "downgrade" patch also maintains all the bugfixes that were present in Ultimate DOOM. For myself, I'm perfectly happy with Ultimate Doom and don't really see what's so wrong with Thy Flesh Consumed.
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Originally posted by: JamesEightBitStar
Yea, DOS Doom crashed on me too, but it did it with Doom 2 and Final Doom as well, so I'm not sure what the deal is.


What OS? Windows XP?

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Originally posted by: Tiptup
Originally posted by: JamesEightBitStar
Yea, DOS Doom crashed on me too, but it did it with Doom 2 and Final Doom as well, so I'm not sure what the deal is.


What OS? Windows XP?


Nope. MS-DOS.

And I mean REAL DOS, not an emulator like DosBox.

Specifically, the DOS that comes with Win98 First Edition.
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Ingo Sucks wins at Internet!

I /bow down before you Sir. You should have your own site or blog if you don't already.


I know I have the first release CD of Doom2 in my huge collection of assorted junk. I'm pretty sure I have the original DOS disks for Doom laying around here somewhere too, if that is of any use. I just threw out by original browser disks, all mint in box with manuals other day too. Quarterstaff or something like that? man, going on the net back then was a nightmare.

I was walking down the street past a PC shop, when they had Doom running. I had no idea PC's could run games like that, and went inside and brought a new PC that day. 486 dx2-66 I think, with 16 mb of ram (I think) and a CD drive so I could run the copy of Doom2 that was due out soon. I think it cost me $2200 back then(australian dollars), and ran Windows 3.1 and Dos6. I keep finding old price lists and stuff from back then, that would make your hair curl . 21 inch monitor...$3k . Anyway..it was state of the art back then. My gilrfriend would try to play, and get motion sickness from running around corners and jump outta her skin screaming.

Ahhh. Those were the days.

Edit: Yep, just went and had a look. I do have it , in its box with all the manuals and lists of other shareware stuff you could buy ( Jazz Jackrabbit!) from the local distributor, plus tips on how to get it running. They say it needs at least 3mb of free memory to run, and gives instructions on how to make a boot disk to free up that much memory! . It's on 4 floppies, version 1.666. I might have to try installing it on another comp to see if the floppies are still readable.