I noticed that the version of "Gold Rush!" available on Abandonia is sadly the poorly-cracked version with the messed-up title screens (starts with "and Sierra" rather than the correct "MacNeill Bros" opening title).
I actually found a patch online many years ago that that will FIX the version uploaded here (remove protection but fix the glitches of the old crack), but I don't know how to contact the people here to get this uploaded properly... so I've attached it below. Hopefully nobody minds that I've made it available this way (if so, let me know and I'll remove the attachment right away).
To use the patch, unzip the file ("grpatch.exe") in the same folder/directory as the game (e.g. "c:\sierra\goldrush") and run grpatch.exe. You likely need to do this in DOSBox (via the prompt, in the right directory, type "grpatch" <enter>), as just double-clicking on "grpatche.exe"
will not work in later versions of Windows (such as Windows 7 x64).
The site I got the patch from seems long gone... there's still a (rather broken)
thread on the "Sierra Gamers" forum about this (which includes a savegame file that is supposedly another "workaround" for crack-induced bugs), but not the actual patch itself. There's also detailed info on the problems
here, but no advice on fixing the issue.
As far as I can tell, the buggy pre-cracked version uploaded here is the ONLY one available on every single abandonware site I've ever come across; I've
never seen an uncracked version
anywhere... since my original floppy disks no longer work, I'd
love a "clean" copy if anyone has one (I remember that getting the copy protection wrong in the original version shows you getting hanged!).
DISCLAIMER: Since I didn't make this patch (all credit goes to "HWM"), I can't promise it works and is bug-free. I just wanted to make it available since it was so hard to find, few people seem to know about it, and the uncracked original seems impossible to find!
FOR
NAGI USERS (if you don't know what NAGI is, just ignore this):
You can get your patched version of Gold Rush to show up correctly by adding the following to NAGI's "standard.ini" file using a decent text editor (not Notepad!):
Quote:
;submitted by Banjo
;Gold Rush v2.01 1988-12-22
;Cracked version of Gold Rush v2.01 5.25" with HWM's patch applied
[grhwm]
name=Gold Rush 5.25" Fixed v2.01 1988-12-22
inherits=pc_3_002_149
protection=gr
id=GR
crc_object=0x6F8E1901
crc_words=0x6F42A9A1
crc_vol_0=0xE6CBCDAE
crc_vol_1=0xD0C013D0
crc_vol_2=0x1BFE2E52
crc_vol_3=0xCBE53112
crc_vol_4=0xE2DD97D8
crc_vol_5=0xBE407CF8
crc_vol_9=0xEA07285B
crc_vol_10=0x127E2CBB
crc_vol_11=0x395BF1D8
crc_vol_12=0x95D58783
crc_dir=0x6DFFF5B6
|
... and add "grhwm" to the crc_list as below:
Quote:
|
crc_list=gr,grcr,gr35cr,grhwm,kq... etc.
|
DOWNLOAD FOR THE PATCH IS BELOW: