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[Maxor127]

Return to Zork for Mac has full motion video character dialogue, while Return to Zork for DOS appears to only use the equivalent of animated gifs in most instances.

The 3DO port of Wing Commander I (aka Super Wing Commander) is also on the Mac. I think they're identical, although it wouldn't surprise me if the Mac version had higher resolution.

I believe Dark Forces for Mac has a higher resolution than the DOS version. Screenshots on mobygames seem to confirm my suspicions, though. The loading screen is noticeably better on the Mac. And the gameplay graphics appear to be much clearer.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/st...eShotId,29545/

http://www.mobygames.com/game/macint...ShotId,460752/

[MrFlibble]

Originally Posted by Maxor127

I believe Dark Forces for Mac has a higher resolution than the DOS version. Screenshots on mobygames seem to confirm my suspicions, though. The loading screen is noticeably better on the Mac. And the gameplay graphics appear to be much clearer.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/st...eShotId,29545/

http://www.mobygames.com/game/macint...ShotId,460752/

Yep, there's an article about the Mac version at ATMachine's House of LucasArts and Sierra Oddities:
Screenshots of Dark Forces for Macintosh

[Maxor127]

I wish I could find something about the differences between the Mac and DOS versions of World of Xeen.

Some character portraits replace DOS portraits and almost look like digitized actors' faces that don't seem to match the other stylized faces. I have no clue why. Wondering if it's an easter egg of the designers' faces or something.

The Darkside of Xeen intro music is different, and the intros themselves play a little differently than the DOS versions. I like the Mac version's music better, but maybe because that's what I'm used to. The intro and ending videos on the Mac version run at a lower resolution with marble borders to fill up the screen. And the game itself only runs windowed and includes an option to hide the background with a stoney border of NPC engravings.

The Mac version comes on 1 CD while the DOS version comes on 2, but it seems the Mac version retains most if not all of the digitized speech.

There's more nitpicky differences that I noticed, like changing your party at a tavern doesn't play the unrolling/rolling scroll movie in the Mac version, but that's enough for me.

Pools of Darkness:
This just popped in my head from when I played around with it last year. It seems the Mac version uses whatever engine they used to make Unlimited Adventures and Dark Queen of Krynn, because the interface and sound effects match those more, but still retain the icon creation of the DOS version. The DOS intro seems to use more fancy graphical techniques, though.

[MrFlibble]

BTW, Mark Knight, composer of the soundtrack for the Play Station version of Duke Nukem 3D, has made the entire soundtrack available for download from his website.

[MrFlibble]

Apparently, the Spanish and Italian releases of Tzar: The Burden of the Crown got a whole load of add-on campaigns that weren't released elsewhere, recounting the stories of El Cid, King Arthur, Genghis Khan, as well as one magic-themed campaign. This Tzar Anthology is only available in Spanish and Italian.

[Dhar]

Originally Posted by Maxor127

I wish I could find something about the differences between the Mac and DOS versions of World of Xeen.

Oh, there are lots! I'm the developer for the Mac version of World of Xeen. We retouched almost all the art to run at higher resolution on the Mac, but we didn't go so far as to change the movies, so we added the marble borders just to fill out the window. We also didn't scale the graphics if you ran in a larger window or full screen, so....more marble borders!

Originally Posted by Maxor127

Some character portraits replace DOS portraits and almost look like digitized actors' faces that don't seem to match the other stylized faces. I have no clue why. Wondering if it's an easter egg of the designers' faces or something.

Several of the original faces in Xeen were replaced with scanned images of some of the people who worked on the Macintosh version. My face came from a scan of my driver's licence. It just so happened that the embedded hologram in the licence cut across my face and interfered with the scan...so my in-game face has a scar running across one eye. Very badass looking.

Originally Posted by Maxor127

The Darkside of Xeen intro music is different, and the intros themselves play a little differently than the DOS versions. I like the Mac version's music better, but maybe because that's what I'm used to.

The original DOS music was MIDI music played through the horrible MIDI software synths available at the time. MIDI wasn't a big thing on the Mac, so Presage's audio guys played the Xeen MIDI files through a real MIDI synth and captured the output. The Mac Xeen music is actually large streamed SND files. It's not just your imagination that it sounds better...it actually IS better. BTW, some of the files converted incorrectly but were included as invisible easter egg files on the original CD, if you still have it...

Originally Posted by Maxor127

There's more nitpicky differences that I noticed, like changing your party at a tavern doesn't play the unrolling/rolling scroll movie in the Mac version, but that's enough for me.

I forget why we didn't do the scroll animations...maybe it was just too much work changing all that art, or maybe it animated too slowly. *shrug*

-g.

[MrFlibble]

Cool, thanks for input! So you're one of the development team, eh?

[Dhar]

Originally Posted by MrFlibble

Cool, thanks for input! So you're one of the development team, eh?

For the Mac version of Xeen, I was pretty much the whole development team. We had artists and audio engineers, but I was the only software engineer on that project, which was interesting because it was my first video game project. Ahhh, good times, good times.

-g.

[MrFlibble]

Heh, cool What other projects did you work on (if it ain't no secret, that is)?

[The Fifth Horseman]

Lost Vikings 2: The SNES version has different graphics, more similar to the first game. The actual level design appears unchanged.
Also, there is a cheat mode with additional abilities for the characters that is apparently an exclusive feature of the SNES version. To access it, you have to have one of the characters die in the first level (the very first one).