Limited Run's Lucasarts rereleases

Finally, after many many many delays, Limited Run Games have finally shipped out their Sam and Max Hit The Road game box, and thus finally finished actually getting out all the Lucasarts adventure games they'd announced rereleases of. Which means now that I've got all of them it might be a good chance to talk about what they actually contain. Like, not so much the physical extras since these are fairly well documented in like both the announcement pictures and unboxing (although I will talk about that to a certain extent), but in terms of what versions of the games they come with.

For the sake of clarity, I'm just looking at the adventure game releases here. Limited Run had also done a bunch of releases of various star wars games (which I also have most of) but they're something of a separate matter I think.

Limited Run ended up putting most of the classic Lucasarts PC adventure game run out in collector's boxes, with the exception of the two Indiana Jones games and The Dig. I'm guessing Indiana Jones is tied up in licensing since there's like films and all and Disney may want more oversight on things, and as for The Dig it could be licensing (with Spielberg's involvement and such) but it could just as easily be a lack of interest.

For what we do have, we can kind of split them into groups. There's the Monkey Island games, which initially all came in one big box from Limited Run with the later addition of Return To Monkey Island, there's the three Tim Schafer games that Double Fine did remasters of, that each got a boxed release for PC or consoles, and then there's Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, LOOM, and Sam and Max which all got their own boxes too

Starting with Monkey Island, there's the "30th Anniversary Anthology" release that covers most of the games, is filled with all sorts of goodies and a big book and such, and has a fair few shortcomings that have been widely noted but are worth mentioning here. Aside from the misprint on the side of the box that gets the game order mixed up between Curse and Escape, what's more of concern to me is the game disc contents. The discs contain installers for Monkey Island 1 and 2 Special Edition on the first disc, Curse and Escape on the second disc, and then Tales split between discs 3 and 4. This is a slightly odd disc split to me, Tales easily fits on one DVD (and indeed did when Telltale did their own release) but the main issue is that the install file for Monkey Island 2 is corrupted and incomplete - so the game won't install. Limited Run did apparently offer a replacement disc for this at the time, but reports are this replacement was a burned DVD-R, and I apparently didn't request mine in time.

But then Monkey Island also has a USB stick. Not a particularly exciting one, with just a Lucasfilm logo on it, but nevertheless. And mine arrived defective (as did a few others, from what I gather), blank and with a tendency to reformat itself. The solution provided was a link to a zip of the contents, which is what I'm going off. And this contains the same game install files as the CD, although Monkey Island 2 is complete here so that's good - but it also contains a folder full of floppy disk images in various formats for Monkey Island 1 and 2. So we have DOS EGA, DOS VGA, and Amiga versions of MI1, and DOS, Amiga, and Mac versions of MI2. There are problems here too though - aside from some omissions (why no DOS CD or Mac versions of MI1) the image files for the DOS EGA version were corrupted - and would crash at a certain point. This is fixable - as in addition to the image files there is a Kryoflux direct disk rip on the USB that can be reconstructed with some helpful instructions found online, and this produces an uncorrupted image.

Also worth noting some more omissions - the Roland Upgrade for MI1 EGA isn't included so you'll have to find that yourself (Disney kind of weirdly still has it online), and with Tales the included version is the original release with replacement voice for LeChuck in episode 1, and not the later version from the physical disc (and I think also eventually patched into the GOG version) that adds original voice Earl Boen. Curse and Escape are basically the same as the Steam and GOG versions, which means while Escape is basically the original EXE, Curse is just the data files with a somewhat outdated version of ScummVM. There's not really any representation of the original manuals (whether in physical or PDF form) nor are there any soundtracks included.

There's also Return to Monkey Island, which I guess technically isn't a Lucasarts game but then neither is Tales technically. Limited Run did this both in a standalone box (which sits nicely alongside my original boxes for the previous games in the series) and as an "upgrade kit" for the 30th Anniversary Anthology. There were also console versions for the standalone box but that is not so much something that interests me. Both contain a USB stick that's themed like a floppy disk, containing Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of the game. Nice - cross platform! (Although there's several identical copies of some of the games on the stick, which indicates carelessness to me tbh). For what it's worth, there's no installers for the games, just a folder for copying to the hard drive. The upgrade kit also includes a poster matching the posters in the Anthology release, a weird little metal key thing (they did some sort of thing with each platform getting a different little key thing to annoy completionists), and a slipcover for the collection that adds the new game to the game list - and fixes the issue with the misordered games on the original. A cheeky solution but like shrug.

The standalone ReMI box in addition to the USB gives us proper discs for the game on all 3 platforms (although only Windows merits inclusion in the jewel case, the other two are just floating in sleeves) as well as a soundtrack and a proper honest to goodness manual! Plus various inserts and toys and whatnot (including a different key). This is a fairly decent box, but my one gripe is that, on previous Monkey Island games, the back of the box has had a quotation from the "Memoirs of Guybrush Threepwood" - but no such quotation here. Sadface.

One thing with ReMI, at least the version on the disc is the latest version as of time of writing - there haven't been any patches in a while so it will likely stay that way. It annoys me when physical media ends up with outdated versions and no updates.

Anyway, with my Anthology set I ended up assembling my own USB on a more reliable stick with all the versions of the games I had handy (although I left off the Mac ReMI for space reasons) including official soundtracks (for the Special Editions and ReMI), like three different versions of Tales, original CD images, and patches where relevant. I'm thinking it may be worth sourcing some PDFs of manuals for this, but that's a task for the future.

Wow, that's a lot of focus on just Monkey Island and there's a whole the rest of the games to consider.

Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango all kind of go together since they're all the remastered versions from Double Fine. So I'll treat them all together. All three have the latest build of the game DRM-free on a DVD and on an entertainingly-themed USB stick. Plus a soundtrack CD, a poster, and various toys/goodies/tat. The game itself is just the files sitting in the root of the disc/stick - no installer or anything. There's no manuals, but like these being modern games never really had manuals so I guess that's fine. It would be nice to see some representation/availability of the original pre-remaster versions of these games (including their manuals) but that is a broader issue I think.

If you bought all 3 of the Double Fine releases, you (eventually) got sent a "triangle box" for all 3 games, presumably inspired by the triangle box that Day of the Tentacle originally came in. It's cool but I'm not entirely sure what to do with it - it looks like it was designed with built-in disc sleeves? But then the games are already safely in their jewel cases in the regular boxes. Anyway, it's a fun if somewhat awkward doodad.

Now there's the four remaining releases - Maniac Mansion, Zac McKracken, Loom, and Sam & Max. There's some commonalities in how these are presented but also some specific stuff, and I want to structure this in a way where I'm not just being repetitive, so bear with me if it feels a bit of a mess.

All four games include a disc with a game installer, and all except Sam and Max include a USB stick with the same game installer and a soundtrack CD. There are various goodies.

The game installers essentially install the same versions as on Steam. Which means for Maniac Mansion you're getting both the original and enhanced MS-DOS versions, but with no original EXE files, and somewhat haphazard patching out of the copy protection that apparently breaks a bunch of other stuff. Zak McKracken gives you the enhanced MS-DOS and the FM-Towns version, again with no original EXE files. Sam and Max gives you the standard CD-ROM talkie version, but, you guessed it, with no original EXE files. All of these come with the somewhat outdated ScummVM 2.0 - at time of writing they're up to 2.9.

Loom is a bit more interesting - since on Steam the version of the game isn't ScummVM-based, it's Aaron Giles' native Windows port. Which on Steam is stuck with Steam DRM, but the version here is free of that! Making this something of a unique release, and the first release of this port unencumbered by DRM. Neat!

The other interesting thing about Loom is that while the USB in the end just replicates the disc contents, it was supposed to have more! As originally announced, the plan was to include an archive of different versions, like with Monkey Island 1 and 2, but for some reason that fell through or was forgotten about (I'm inclined to say forgotten, TBH). But since it was advertised, after some campaigning people were able to get Limited Run to make the files available if you contacted support, and as such we're able to get hold of the contents. And it's... a bit of a mess. Mostly there's a large mess of zip files in the root, including a fair bit of redundancy. There's subfolders with some attempts to organise things (including PDF scans of manuals, the Book of Patterns, and the hint book, as well as several languages of the Audio Drama) but the impression I get is this organisational task may have not quite been finished when the decision was made to can the inclusion of the game images (assuming that was a decision and not just an oversight). But yeah, we've got disk images of the PC floppy, PC CD, Amiga, Atari, PC Engine, and FM Towns versions, in multiple languages. It is a fairly comprehensive collection, and it's a shame it wasn't properly included.

Looking back across all 4 of these releases - they've all got recreations of the original manuals, and copy protection information where necessary. As such, there's red filters for reading the photocopy-proof sheets of information. Zak also includes a hintbook that necessitates the use of such a filter. There are also posters and various fun novelties, some of which are original "feelies" type inclusions and some of which are new. The USB sticks for Maniac and Zak are appropriately themed but for Loom it's a generic Lucasfilm logo. While Maniac and Zak have more like weird novelties in terms of the inclusions, Loom is mostly stuff that would have come with the original game - like the Book of Patterns, and the audio drama CD. Interestingly the audio drama CD included seems to be the one from the Japanese FM-Towns release, as track 1 is in Japanese and track 2 is the English version. It doesn't quite match the track listing on the sleeve.

With the soundtrack CDs, it is a bit interesting what's included. Loom has basically the FM-Towns soundtrack on its included CD. And Zak similarly has the FM-Towns soundtrack with the addition of a few bonus tracks featuring the Tandy and C64 versions of the music. The original release of Zak had a mastering error on the soundtrack that messed up a few tracks, but they sent out replacements automatically (gee would have been nice if they did that for the Monkey Island set). Maniac Mansion has a bit of an interesting mix - the majority of the soundtrack is the NES version, which LRG did release separately as a repro cartridge, and presumably the same OST was included in the deluxe edition of that release. But there are also some PC versions of the main theme, plus C64 and Amiga.

Sam and Max is a bit different packaging-wise - I suspect this is because the packaging was designed by Telltale alum Jake Rodkin, with at least some intent of matching the Limited Run releases of the Skunkape remasters of Telltale's Sam and Max trilogy. The game disc is in a digipak rather than a jewel case, and one of the included bonuses is a case file similar to the ones Telltale did for the first two Sam and Max seasons - which includes a few goodies including a mini-CD that has the tracks that the original Sam and Max CD-ROM had. So it's nice those are included. The manual is somewhat spiffed up, printed in colour and including some artbook material and a walkthrough, and there's a reprint of the Sam and Max "On the Road" comic that inspired the game. The bulk of it is a proper full colour printed board game, which I think was originally a gag in a comic? I forget. But it's a real board game now with dice and game pieces. Plus there's a few stickers.

So yeah, I guess that covers everything. General thoughts time. I have grown increasingly frustrated with Limited Run's internal box packaging style - there's all sorts of funny little cardboard spacer things to keep things in place and fold around stuff, and it's really annoying to get things back in, at times. I am unsure if they really expect me to keep these or if it's just for purposes of padding during shipping. It irritates me though.

But the reason I wanted to write this is to talk versions of the games. It is disappointing that a bunch of these are basically just "the game data with the EXEs stripped out and an outdated version of ScummVM bundled in". Like, they could at least update to a newer ScummVM? Biggest missed opportunity is Loom with the non-inclusion of the USB data on the actual release, but this is also kinda interesting since the version that IS included is technically a unique version.

But also like, this is the problem of these sorts of releases. Like, I already had all of the Steam releases of these games when I ordered them. I got them for the boxes and the doodads and manuals and such. And like there's probably a fair amount of people doing the "keep it sealed for the collector value" which feels fucky to me. So like the carelessness with some of these releases (versions left out, errors in production) kind of feels like people don't actually care about the contents?

And honestly SHOULD you care about the contents? If you want the original version of any of the games included, you can just pop onto some sort of website and find nicely catalogued disc images. We shouldn't be relying on fancy limited edition collector's items to preserve versions of games, because like, they're not really accessible. I'm a bit out of sorts about the book that comes with that Monkey Island set because, well, it's a fair amount of work that goes into something only a few people get to access.

So yeah, this was a look at I guess a bunch of cool toys I got, mostly analysing a component of them that I think a lot of people apparently don't seem to be that interested in.

But then am I being overly critical because that's sort of the view a lot of people have of Limited Run anyway these days? Like if I'm too nice people will just argue with me in comments sections or whatever. Like, most of these I'm pretty happy with and they're largely what I expected except for the quality issues. But I am kinda mad about how long some of them took with the delays and such, which is a bit of a common feature of Limited Run lately.

Am I likely to buy more Limited Run stuff? Well, probably only if it's something I am particularly interested in, but like I'm definitely getting the third Sam and Max season when they get to that! I wanna complete that set! But I think they've kinda shied away from PC stuff, at least PC stuff with physical discs. They've been doing collector's editions of the Yakuza games where the PC versions are just Steam keys, and like as nice as the boxes are I'm not interested in that. And I'm not much of a console person these days, so like while I do like getting Switch games physically, I don't much care for getting Switch games in any form at the moment. I don't think I have quite as much animosity towards the company as others do though?

Maybe people just be mad online?

A correction: the version of Loom included in these boxes seems to be the same as the one that's been made available on Amazon Prime