ADG Episode 201 - The Dig

Channel:

Pixelmusement

Subscribers:

23,000

Published on January 7, 2017 7:16:47 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFQcGq2heGE

Game:

The Dig (1995)

Category:

Show

Duration: 21:38

196,255 views

433

And so begins Season 5 of Ancient DOS Games! :D

...with a highly requested game I ended up having mixed feelings with... go figure. :P

Today on Ancient DOS Games, Gemini's taking a look at The Dig, an inventory-based adventure game created and released by LucasArts in 1995, even though development of the game began all the way back in 1989!

This game's actually serves as a good example as to how nostalgia can taint one's opinion about something. Once you know how to play through this game, many of its flaws can be forgiven, but as someone who never played through it before, its flaws are so incredibly apparent that it made it extraordinarily difficult to make progress and revealed just how poor the story was despite the incredible visuals and music everything is set to.

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Additional Information and Corrections:

* I actually DID read the manual... eventually... around the 3/4 way through mark not long following starting to use a walkthrough; that's how I found out about the period key for skipping dialogue. I meant to phrase that paragraph in the script to reflect that it's only a major issue IF you don't know about the period key, but for some reason I failed to do that and it only occurred to me a full 20 hours after this video went up. Guess I should start TRIPLE-PROOFING my scripts or something. :B

* Turns out the Steam release does actually work in ScummVM by default now without any extra effort, but my initial testing showed it didn't. The trick is that you have to tell ScummVM where "The Dig.exe" is located, as opposed to the game data as you normally would when setting up a game to run in ScummVM. The hex editing trick to recreate DIG.LA0 still works too. :B

* If you'd like to get the Steam release of the game, navigate your way here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/6040/

* If instead you want the GOG release, follow this link: https://www.gog.com/game/the_dig/?pp=91dfde1d6e005e422f64a59776234f1f4c80b5e4

* I wasn't too clear on this in the video as I intended to be, but the main difference between the GOG and Steam releases are that the GOG release is designed specifically to work with ScummVM, whereas the Steam release utilizes its own separate program for processing the game's data files. I don't know if the GOG release includes everything needed to run the game in DOSBox or not.

* For those unfamiliar, "SCUMM" stands for "Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion" and was the scripting system LucasArts originally created and kept updating for their adventure titles.

* For some incredibly bizarre reason, this game's save files are over 100 KB large... How in the world does a game like this require save files THAT big?! o_o

* One oddity in the game I didn't elaborate on is that whenever you engage a conversation with someone using a com system, Boston Low's voice becomes that of someone on the com, even though he's standing right there in front of you without a spacesuit on. This was doubtlessly intentional, but an odd design choice all the same.

* I also failed to elaborate on the game's PDA feature, which is used to communicate with your team members when you're not in the same room, plus it has a Lunar Lander styled mini-game you can play.

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