Recently, I learned that Winnie the Pooh had support for Tandy/PCjr. graphics and 3-voice sound. However, whoever was responsible for the colorization either must have had cloudy memories of the Pooh cartoons or problems with perceiving colors. I took a screenshot for each character and tried to make them closer to their colors from the Disney films. I made sure to only use the 16 RGBI colors available to the Tandy/PCjr. and not to do violence to the backgrounds.
The real graphics are on the left side, my retouched graphics are on the right side.
The Pooh Bear doll only needed to turn the shirt from light magenta to light red.
Rabbit's correct fur color is somewhere in the yellow range, but there is only one yellow available, so he blends into the background.
Kanga needs to be brown. As with Rabbit, the brown makes her blend into the background quite a bit.
Again, only the color of Pooh's shirt needs to be changed. The CGA composite color graphics gave a good color here.
Piglet is mostly colored in hues of pink. His shirt is alternating pink and black stripes. If I were the line artist, I would have drawn the green area thinner. I went back and forth whether to use light red or light magenta, but light magenta seems somewhat closer in hue to most Piglet drawings.
Christopher Robin's hair is usually some shade of brown, not blond. To make him less Aryan-like, I redid his hair so it would brown with black for its contours. Unfortunately there was nothing good I could do for a flesh tone, RGBI is lacking in this area.
Roo almost always wears a blue shirt, so in addition to the brown skin, I used the best blue in the palette.
Owl needed his beak adjusted to yellow. Owl's eyes are a two-tone brown, but since I only have one brown, I decided to use light gray to distinguish the area around his eyes from the rest of his body.
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Eeyore can appear in blue or gray tones, so I give you an alternate Eeyore. I would have used dark gray for his main color, but it blended too much into the background, so I used light gray instead and magenta for his inner ear.
Like Pooh, Tigger uses an inappropriate light magenta color. Light red is by far the better choice and was used for CGA composite color.
All in all, I can understand that Sierra wanted to make this game more colorful for younger children. Given the limited palette they had available, their colors are decent choices for the most part, except for the strange substitutions of light magenta for light red for Tigger and Pooh.
Very interesting. I actually played the game a bit with my kids using ScummVM and they enjoyed it. Maybe it would be worthwhile to configure DOSBOX.
ReplyDeleteI also tried running the Amiga version, but since I have no experience in Amiga emulation I couldn't get it to run.
I have a question about this Winnie the Pooh game and "Mickey's Space Adventure." If I find, let's say, these two games being sold, and it says "Tandy" on the box, will those games run on a PCjr as long as I run them through DOS?
ReplyDeleteYes, they will work on the PCjr. The boxes for these games had round stickers stating "For Tandy 1000/1200". The 1200 is an XT clone. Most should also have a triangular sticker stating "Requires 128K, Color/Graphics Adapter, and Double-Sided Disk Drive IBM PC, PCjr Compatibles".
ReplyDeleteAre you sure? I just received a copy of "Mickey's Space Adventure" and I can't get my PCjr to run it. You mentioned a triangle sticker. This copy of the game does not have that on the box. Only the big round silver sticker which states "Tandy Color Computer 64k" and that's all it says in terms of compatibility. Were there some versions that were meant to be "only" for the Tandy? This game is dated 1986. I read on the internet that the game's initial release was in 1984. Does that mean I would need one of the earlier versions in order to have a chance of getting it to work on a PCjr? That would make sense because the PCjr went out of style after being on the market for just a year and a half. Seems to me like the versions of these games (mickey, winnie the pooh, etc.) you usually find on ebay would be the versions that came a year or so later, rather than the first releases.
ReplyDeleteI found a box art picture on the internet for "Mickey's Space Adventure." You were right. this picture of the box had "Both" of the stickers you mentioned and both stated what you said they do. Guess I just happened to buy the wrong one. I guess it must be rare for the version you mentioned to show up on ebay. The only ones I usually see have a round silver sticker that says "Tandy Color Computer 64K." Perhaps that's because more of those were manufactured than others were.
ReplyDeleteYou may know this by now, but a Tandy Color Computer is about as IBM PC compatible as an Apple II. Tandy had many computer lines going in the 1980s, the TRS-80, the Model II, the Color Computer, the MS-DOS compatible Tandy 2000, the portable Model 100 and the real IBM PC compatibles, including the 1000, 1200, 3000 and 4000 series. Software with a "Tandy Color Computer 64k" sticker on it will not run on anything that can run on a PC, PCjr or Tandy.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you're saying that it doesn't matter if it says "Tandy Color Computer 64k" on the box. It should still run on a PCjr. Well I've tried and I can't get it to run. The instruction manual keeps referring to an OS-9 system and I have no idea what that is or if my PCjr even has that. When I boot up the computer I get a simple text display and an OK prompt. Instructions say, "when you see the OK prompt, type DOS and press enter." So I do that, and I get "syntax error." I decide to try something else. In the back of the instruction manual it says "starting OS-9 from BASIC" It tells me to type the following program from disc extended Basic. I have know idea what "disc extended BASIC" means. I have a PCjr "BASIC" cartridge 1.0, but it's asking for something called BASIC 1.1 or higher. The instructions tell me to enter a program. Something that involves a lot of codes with letters, dashes and numbers. After I type the codes, it tells me to try this: LIST , computer shows OK, SAVE "START", after several moments I hear a small click and the prompt shows OK again. Then I type LOAD "START". Moments later I hear another small click and I see this message: "device timeout" and "OK" below that. I then type "RUN" and see another OK prompt. I type MICKEY and get "Syntax Error" again. Does this make any sense to you?
ReplyDeleteMaybe I was not sufficiently clear, the program on those disks will NEVER, EVER RUN ON A PCjr.! The PCjr. and Tandy CoCo use different CPUs and very different computer architectures. The "Disk Extended BASIC" and "OS-9" the manual mentions exist only for the Tandy Color Computer. You need a computer that looks like one of these : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer
ReplyDeleteto run your program.
Compare the sticker on the box here : http://www.mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=mickey
vs the box here :
http://www.mocagh.org/sierra/mickey-alt-manual.pdf
and vs the box here :
http://www.mobygames.com/game/mickeys-space-adventure/cover-art
Okay, I see what you're saying. I have one more question. On those pictures from the "Mobygames" link, I noticed a picture of the game disk with a yellow label and Mickey's head on one side of the label. On ebay someone is selling a Commodore 64 version of the game, which has the exact same yellow label on the discs themselves. If someone is selling "only" the discs and not the box, how do you know (just from looking at the discs) if it's meant for the commodore versus Tandy/IBM? I think I might know, tell me if this makes sense. Mobygames showed a yellow label disc that said "Disc 1." A commodore disc tends to show "disc 1" but also shows "Side A/ Side B." The disc picture I saw on Mobygames only said DISC 1. It did not also say "Side A/ Side B." Is that the difference?
ReplyDeleteSeeing "Disk 1" on a label vs an identical label with "Side A" on a 5.25" floppy disk is a good indicator that the game is for the PC. In Mickey's case, the yellow labeled "Side A" could be for the Apple II or the Commodore 64, there is no way to tell which computer it would be for without trying to boot the disk. It won't be for the CoCo, because that version uses a silver label. You will come across a few Tandy 1000 games with a silver label, which may be PC and PCjr. compatible, but most silver-labeled Tandy disks are for the CoCo.
ReplyDeleteI have a question about King's Quest 3 videos I plan to post on Youtube. First, I need to set the stage for you before I ask the question. It's about adding a couple of things to the videos to enhance the viewing of the game. It is not a change to the game itself (like a game hack). The beginning of my first KQ3 video is where the first addition will be seen. I decided I wanted to take the four page story from the KQ3 Manual, dictate the words from the story on a blue background (white font/same font style as the game) using Photoshop to create them, take music from the KQ3 intro itself and add it to the blue background story, and include all of that before the KQ3 logo is shown. Here is one more thing I plan to add during the game. The inventory and help screens in the game are white background with black font. Using Photoshop and video editing, I am constructing blue background screens with white font (same font style as the game). Using video editing, these screens will replace the help and inventory screens you see in the game. Again, the font style is exactly the same as the game, the only difference is blue background and white font. The original King's Quest 1 game, for the PCjr, is what is inspiring me to present KQ3 in this way. My question is this: Do you think anyone would want to put a copyright claim for something like this on Youtube, or do you think anyone would care?
ReplyDelete