Was there a playable demo of Brian Moriarty's The Dig?
 

Your first instinct would be to say "Of course not!" but I'm not so sure.

I have a contact who tells me that LEC put a demo of Moriarty's The Dig in an issue of a CD-ROM demo magazine around 1993-94 (quite possibly it was the US edition of CD-ROM Today, although my source was unsure). The demo featured the asteroid sequence and the planting of the nuclear devices (unlike the final demo, which is confined to the alien plateau, just after the crew are transported to the planet). Plus it had those funky spacesuits with the colored vests. Unfortunately, my informant no longer possesses a copy of this demo.

If anyone has any clues that could lead to tracking this down, post them here! Even more welcome, though, would be the demo files themselves. ;) :)

http://dig.mixnmojo.com/downloads/

Has a demo.

Yes, that's the final demo, mildly notable for its different script and voice acting, but mostly like the finished game. I'm talking about a demo of Brian Moriarty's The Dig, with a crazy different interface and four characters, perhaps even a different game engine. :)

You could try asking Professor Moriarty himself. There's an email address at http://www.ludix.com/moriarty/index.html

Hope it still works.

Good idea, Fienepen. I'll do that (although I don't know how much he'd be willing to help me; he's notoriously tight-lipped about his time spent working on that game).

He talked about it a fair bit in that recent interview with him that popped up a few weeks back.

Yes there was, The demo was included in some game or another that I bought from them back in the early-mid 90's, and the scene you describe is the one I remember in which the demo takes place.

Good to hear I'm not going insane. Can you remember anything else, like what game it might have been bundled with? Better yet, is there any chance you might still have the files? :)

BTW, I emailed Professor Moriarty, but he didn't know anything about the demo. Probably it was released without his knowledge, or just after he left the company, when his design was still considered viable.

Yep. I believe it was Loom though I cannot be 100% sure. I bought a lot of lucas arts games back then. :P

I do not have either loom or the Demo of Dig anymore. Sadly I've moved around so much in my life that a lot of the old games I used to own have been lost.

Hmm. Interesting. Do you recall if it was included on the CD of Loom or on a separate CD?

Thanks for your help! :)

Wow - I never even knew there was a demo of Brian Moriarty's Dig released.

I just checked my copy of the Loom CD, it wasn't on there. I've got a bunch of cover CDs from that era lying around - I'll check thru them later (probably won't find anything, but you never know!)

Hi there,

Here you are AT! I thought you've been abducted.

I knew about that Moriarty demo too, in fact the previous webmaster from dig.mixnmojo.com (Zaarin) used to have it, or still has it in some old pc, in some other house. And I've looked for it for a while... and then I gave up.
But I'll be happy to help finding it, and putting it up on the site.

Oh, and I've just remembered one thing, that demo might have been available in an old site called "Lucas fans" or something like that, that doesn't exist anymore.... but we could try tracking down the guys that ran the site.

And AT, please mail me! (good to know you are alive)

Hey I just checked through my full Mixnmojo.com and hosted site archive from ~2001, which includes both LucasFans and Zaarin's old Dig site, and just to lay any related suspicions to rest, neither of them seem to have a copy of the demo to Moriarty's version of the Dig.

I don't think Lucas ever included demos to other games on a floppy set of disks did they? I would have thought that demos for other games would be isolated to CD games since they essentially had unlimited space (for the time). That may help narrow your search...

Stain

I wasn't able to find anything on the cover discs I've got lying around, only the regular demo. Oh well :(

What you're looking for MAY be on the limited "Passport to Adventure" discs that LucasArts made available for a short period. I have them in my collection somewhere. I don't remember if "The Dig" was on them, however. I know they came on 5.25" and 3.5" media.

I also have a bunch of demo CDs from PCGamer with LucasArts demos on them. I'll check those.

How intriguing!
I checked all my Lucasarts CDs but to no avail.

Passport to Adventure is Indy 3, MI1, and Loom, I think. More likely the demo would have been on a CD. :)

Well that definitely rings a bell with me (in the UK). It sounds a lot like a demo I have a vague recollection of seeing which came with the UK magazine PC Format back in the early 90s. I'm sure I still have that somewhere, so (excuse the pun) I'll see if I can dig it out of my loft!

The plot thickens!

--Erwin