Discworld (videogame): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:21, 17 June 2023

Discworld is a 1995 point-and-click or graphic adventure game based on the Discworld novels. It was released for DOS and Mac, and later the Sony PlayStation and SEGA Saturn consoles.

The player controls Rincewind, who must save the city of Ankh-Morpork from a dragon in a plot largely based on Guards! Guards!, but with elements drawn from other Discworld novels as well, notably Sourcery and

It was developed by Perfect Entertainment, the company formed by the merger of Teeny Weeny Games (previously Beam Software) and Perfect 10 Productions. It was published by Psygnosis. The CD-ROM version of the game featured audio dialogue for the whole game, still quite a novelty in 1995 (the disk-based version had on-screen text only). While not the first Discworld game, it was the first to be a commercial success, and is still remembered fondly by fans of the point-and-click genre (even if some of its puzzles were, like many from this era, fiendishly hard). Discworld made enough of a splash to spawn a sequel and later another third Discworld game, both from the same developer.

Blurb

“You'll find here wizards, dragons, heroes and household hygiene specialists. There is danger here, but there is also custard around the place. Because Discworld is a fantasy world with a low reality threshold. The real world keeps on breaking through - but Discworld changes it.

So you'll find here things that you sort of recognise.

Discworld has got photography (tiny imps paint the pictures) and movies (tiny imps paint really fast) and it is even getting its second generation of computers now that the old stone circles don't work fast enough.

However, because it is a fantasy world there are some things that it has to have, and one of them is a certain tendency to experience some trouble with dragons.

Unfortunately, a dragon is now ravaging Ankh-Morpork, the world's leading city. Many people would consider this falls under the heading of civic improvement, but what Ankh-Morpork needs now is a hero. All it's got, however, is Rincewind the wizard, whose only talent is that he is not in fact dead yet. He also has the Luggage, the nastiest piece of travelware in the Universe. With that at his side, there is probably no limit to the things he can fail to do...

Oh, did I say he? I meant...you.

Beware of anyone who TALKS LIKE THIS and carries a scythe, and remember that a loaded pun sometimes goes off...

...and have fun.” - Terry Pratchett (himself)

Creative Team

Crew

Produced by Angela Sutherland
Written and Directed by Gregg Barnett
Tinsel Game System by Mark Roll and John Young
“Game Creation”^[1] by Gregg Barnett and David Johnston
Dialogue by Paul Kidd
Art Direction by Paul Mitchell
Background Artwork by Nick Pratt
Character Design by John Millington and Simon Turner
Animation by Simon Turner (Lead) with John Cassells, Karl D’Costa, Warren Hawkes, Paul Mitchell, Steve Packer, David Swan and Ben Willsher
Music by Rob Lord
Sound by Mark Bandola and Rob Lord
Voice Sampling by Mark Bandola, Karl D'Costa, Steven Thompson, Rob Van Deven and Richard Wright
Additional Programming by Owen Cunningham and Dominic Jackson
Quality Assurance by Guillaume Camus, Karen Cox and Colin Fuidge
Talent Casting by Angela Sutherland
Cover Art by Josh Kirby
Manual Illustrations by Stephen C. Briggs and Damian Rochford
Package and Manual Design by Richard Turner, Keith Hopwood and Mark Hillman

Colin Smythe is credited as “Agent for Terry Pratchett”, and Pratchett himself as “Original Author and Creator of Discworld”. Of note: the German translation of the dialogue and manual was done by Andreas Brandhorst, who also translated many of the Discworld novels.

Cast

The small cast provide voices for all the characters in the game; only major roles are noted below.

Eric Idle as Rincewind
Rob Brydon as the Patrician, Death, Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, Carrot Ironfoundersson, Twoflower, the Lecturer in Recent Runes, the Bursar, Pestilence, War and many more^[2]
Jon Pertwee as Windle Poons, the Librarian, Thomas Silverfish (the Alchemist) and many more
Kate Robbins as Nanny Ogg, Lady Ramkin, Famine, The Lady and many more^[3]
Tony Robinson as Nobby Nobbs, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, the Dean, “Dog” and many more

Terry Pratchett makes a visual appearance in a crowd scene, but does not provide his voice.

Podcast episodes

Major appearances

These are episodes primarily devoted to discussing this game.

Date	Show	Episode	External link
2023-06-16	DOS Game Club	“Discworld”	dosgameclub.com

Other appearances

Episodes where the game is discussed, but not as the main topic.

Date	Show	Episode	External link

External links

Discworld at Wikipedia
Discworld at the L-Space wiki
Discworld at the Internet Movie Database
Discworld at MobyGames

Footnotes

↑ The roles in game production were not standardised in 1995, so it’s not 100% clear what all of these titled mean.
↑ Rob Brydon also supplied some additional lines of dialogue for Rincewind, presumably extra lines required after Eric Idle had completed his recorded session and was no longer available.
↑ Kate is also the voice of the Dragon in the PlayStation version.

[1] The roles in game production were not standardised in 1995, so it’s not 100% clear what all of these titled mean.

[2] Rob Brydon also supplied some additional lines of dialogue for Rincewind, presumably extra lines required after Eric Idle had completed his recorded session and was no longer available.

[3] Kate is also the voice of the Dragon in the PlayStation version.

[1]

[2]

[3]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-'''''Discworld''''' is a 1995 point-and-click or graphic adventure game based on the Discworld novels. The player controls [[Rincewind]], who must save the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]] from a dragon in a plot largely based on {{G!G!}}, but with elements drawn from other Discworld novels as well. While not the first Discworld game, it was the first to succeed, and made enough of a splash to spawn [[Discworld II: Missing, Presumed...!?|a sequel]] and [[Discworld Noir|another third Discworld game]] from the same developer. It was released for DOS, Mac, PlayStation and SEGA Saturn.
+'''''Discworld''''' is a 1995 point-and-click or graphic adventure game based on the Discworld novels. It was released for DOS and Mac, and later the Sony PlayStation and SEGA Saturn consoles.
+The player controls [[Rincewind]], who must save the city of [[Ankh-Morpork]] from a dragon in a plot largely based on {{G!G!}}, but with elements drawn from other Discworld novels as well, notably {{S}} and
+It was developed by Perfect Entertainment, the company formed by the merger of Teeny Weeny Games (previously Beam Software) and Perfect 10 Productions. It was published by Psygnosis. The CD-ROM version of the game featured audio dialogue for the whole game, still quite a novelty in 1995 (the disk-based version had on-screen text only). While not the first Discworld game, it was the first to be a commercial success, and is still remembered fondly by fans of the point-and-click genre (even if some of its puzzles were, like many from this era, fiendishly hard). ''Discworld'' made enough of a splash to spawn [[Discworld II: Missing, Presumed...!?|a sequel]] and later [[Discworld Noir|another third Discworld game]], both from the same developer.
 == Blurb ==