Merlin's Apprentice (CD-i)

Merlin's Apprentice
Developer: Philips FunHouse Publisher: Philips Media Platform: CD-i Released in US: 1995 Released in EU: 1995 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has debugging material. This game has revisional differences.

Merlin's Apprentice has you solve alchemy-themed puzzles and brew potions in order to locate and become the apprentice of Hektan from Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon the wizard Merlin.

Puzzle Skip

Go to the game piece menu. From left to right, top to bottom, click the pieces in the following order; 11, 12, 4, 3, 8, 6, 12, 3, 6, 9, 5, 2, 10, 1, 7. If any mistake is made, leave and re-enter the menu. A magical chime sound will play once the code is entered correctly.

Once activated, puzzles can be instantly completed by moving the cursor to the top-right corner and pressing Button 1. On the magic potion screens, using the skip once will gather all ingredients, and a second use completes the potion and starts the next section of the game.

In addition, clicking the flower on the main menu while the mode is active will show a set of SMPTE color bars.

(Source: beholdnec)

Development Text

Located within the file cdi_merlin are error/debug strings for two pieces of CD-i development software, BOSS and Traffic Cop:

BOSS_Init:  NumBitsPerVar = %d.  Should be 1,2,4, or 8.            -- using 8.
BOSS: NVRAM is out of date
BOSS: NVRAM is missing or invalid, removing
BOSS: CurrentState = %d
BOSS: Returned from CurrentState = %d
BOSS_EXECUTE: Invalid Help ID
BOSS_Execute: Software Error occurred in state %d
BOSS_Execute: Illegal event %d returned from state %d

BOSS: Unable to play help audio correctly
BOSS: Unable to stop jukebox play
BOSS_NVPack: TokenNum value = %d
 exceeds the number of game tokens
BOSS_NVUnPack: TokenNum value = %d
pack: number of bits to pack into = %d
      should be 1, 2, 4, or 8
pack: number of bits to unpack from = %d

Traffic Cop Could Not Open Animation:%d
Traffic Cop Could Not play Animation:%d
Illegal Animation Definition:%d.
No Menubar should be allowed.
Traffic Cop Could Not Close Animation:%d

Unexpected signal number $%X - Application Terminating

Version Info

The abstract, bibliography, and copyright text files begin with a version number and the date they were last modified:

Abstract/Copyright	Bibliography
1.1 2/25/94	1.2 6/7/94

Revisional Differences

A slightly modified version of Merlin's Apprentice was created for its demonstration/promotional discs. Labeled "Version 1.11" with a build date of February 1st, 1995 - the final is Version 1.10 and dated January 31st, 1995 - the only change made was enabling the puzzle skip (and, by proxy, the SMPTE color bar display) by default.