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The Apprentice Regional Variations

Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 8:59 pm
by Devin
Whilst fixing my LG GDI700 CD-i Player and unwittingly using The Apprentice USA version as my test candidate, I noticed something very unusual. Up rolls the Philips Bumper, followed by the SPC title screen then...then the introduction to the game. Huh!?! this can't be right, turns out the introduction is playing the in game theme music which is rather upbeat as you may recall.

Can my system laser be out of alignment? So I test the same game on another player and the same upbeat introduction music. Then I twig, i've been playing on the European version all this time and that's why it seems odd to me. Sure enough when I play the European version of The Apprentice the music is more in line with the introduction as a more downbeat rythm.

Checking the ISO size from each image made using Clone CD you can see a difference in size to the order of 10MB!!

I wonder why they took out part of the music for the American market, it strikes me as very odd. Perhaps someone can explain, how about CDI DEV do you reckon he'd have any idea why this was cut Bas?

Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 9:30 pm
by Bas
will pass it on, but i reckon these differences are all for stylish reasons. It's why they changed the covers as well, that it is about how they feel it would fit better to the market or something... Strange thing that's for sure! Now it's more interesting to test the differences between other games with more versions like Video Speedway!

Re: The Apprentice Regional Variations

Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2017 8:46 pm
by goldenband
Bumping a 12-year-old thread here (!), but seems as good a place as any to ask: does The Apprentice run properly, then, when you play a NTSC/60Hz copy on PAL/50Hz hardware, and vice versa?

In other words, if I buy (for example) a Dutch copy of The Apprentice, will I be able to play it at the intended speed on my LG GDI-700M player? (Which does have a PAL/NTSC switch, and I have a converter, but I'd rather play it natively.)

Re: The Apprentice Regional Variations

Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2017 10:31 pm
by cdifan
There are no differences in the actual data bits between the EU and US versions.
The only difference is in the packaging and the mastering (leadin and leadout areas).

PS. I have both discs and checked this.

Re: The Apprentice Regional Variations

Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2017 11:14 pm
by goldenband
Awesome -- thanks very much for the quick reply, cdifan. Now to find an affordable copy of the game...