『 Goblins Quest 3 』

★ - A small update. Due to YouTube idiocy that caused the deletion of my account, videos posted in this entry no longer work. I was careless enough to delete the originals once the upload to YouTube was done, so there's no easy way of restoring these. I am planning on uploading these again, this time to Nico Nico Douga. Please, check back later if you're still interested.

Few weeks ago, I have finally managed to track down a copy of Goblins Quest 3, and a CD version at that. I already own the disc version but if you have played both disc and CD versions of, let's say, Lucas Adventures' games, you know that the difference can be quite big. That is also the case with Goblins Quest 3.


The place I found this shiny gem was, of course, eBay. Believe it or not, I was the only one to bid on this item and I bought it for just $4.95. An incredibly low price, considering the fact that Goblins Quest 3 hardly ever shows up. You can always find the first game of the series, the second one is quite common aswell, but not the third. Oh well, my gain is everyone else's loss and I'm fine with that. Who wouldn't be?


While my Gobliins 2: The Prince Buffoon CD is an european release and was published by Coktel Vision themselves, Goblins Quest 3 CD that I purchased was published by Sierra. It was Sierra who decided about the name change, thus changing the title from the original Goblins 3 to Goblins Quest 3. If you spot a release with Goblins 3 written on the box, it's the one released by Coktel Vision, most likely european.


So what's the difference between the disc version and the floppy version? Actually the difference is quite big. The CD versions of previous games didn't add much besides the CD Audio track. Gobliins 2 for example, is still just 4.5 megabytes of data on a CD, plus four demo versions of other Coktel Vision games, including Inca and Ween. These take up to 7.5 megabytes. The rest is an audio track, without which the game will have no music, other than ocasional sound effects.


Gobliins 2, the CD version, was basically the floppy version plus an audio track. Goblins Quest 3 however differs from the floppy version alot. First of all, we have animation. When the game is started, an animated Coktel Vision logo will appear, followed by an introduction movie. After the intro sequence we see a start screen and we can begin our adventure. The floppy version doesn't have any of the animations and jumps directly from the start screen displaying credits, to the first location of the game.


Coktel Vision did try to make the gaming experience complete for the owners of each version. While the compact disc features both speech and a high quality CD soundtrack, the floppy version features synthesized music. Speech was however replaced by on screen messages. The addition of intro and other animations dramatically increased the overall size of the data contained on the CD. While the floppy version is about 7.5 megabytes, the data on the CD, not counting the audio track, comes down to about 113 megabytes.


Goblins 3 / Goblins Quest 3 is to this date my favorite game in the series. Packed with tons of humor it will entertain you aswell make you laugh and think. The gameplay in Goblins series is based on a concept that won't appeal to everyone. You simply have to think, combine things, think again and combine again. The puzzles are logical but it will take time before you crack this title. I always thought about it this way: If it's hard and you're still having fun, try to finish it and don't give up. Finishing a hard game is much more rewarding than speeding through an easy one, which you forget within a week from the day you've played it.


I have included two videos in this blog entry, so that you dear reader, could compare the CD version with the floppy release. The video at the top of this entry is a quick play-through of the first location and was made using the CD version of the game. The other video, just under these very words, shows the same quick run-through and was done using the floppy version. Both recordings are made from the moment the game executable boots.