French Talkie -- Which Lucasarts Games??

General chat related to ScummVM, adventure gaming, and so on.

Moderator: ScummVM Team

Post Reply
zchild
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:20 pm

French Talkie -- Which Lucasarts Games??

Post by zchild »

Greetings all,

I have been looking for information on which lucasarts adventure games are available with french speech. I am currently trying to learn french, and think this would be a great way to learn some vocab.

As far as I understand thus far, the following games are definitely available in french talkie: Sam n Max, Day of the Tentacle (Le jour de la tentacule :-) , and Kyrandia. Here are my questions:

1) Are there any other adventure games available in french talkie?
2) Anyone know how I would go about finding a copy of french talkie games? Are these sound files included on the Lucasarts Classic packages?
3) Anyone know if it's possible to mix speech with subtitles (i.e. french speech with english subtitles, or english speech with french subtitles)? I came across one post about this, but it didn't sound too promising.

Any info would be very much appreciated!

Cheers,
Zchild
SimSaw
Posts: 70
Joined: Tue Nov 01, 2005 11:10 am
Location: Germany
Contact:

Post by SimSaw »

For Sam & Max you are right, but I don't think so for Day of the Tentacle. It's just a version with English speech and French subtitles and French interface.

I also don't think it's easy to mix subtitles and speech; it would require long work which I'm sure you don't want to do.
User avatar
abelthorne
Posts: 43
Joined: Fri Jun 02, 2006 11:50 am
Location: France

Post by abelthorne »

Day of the Tentacle has english speech with french subtitles. Apart from Sam and Max which is fully localized, there are also Full Throttle, Curse of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango (and probably Escape from Monkey Island, though I haven't played it yet).

If you're looking for other games than LucasArts ones, the first two Broken Sword games are in french too (BS1 is named Les chevaliers de Baphomet while BS2 is named Les boucliers de Quetzalcoatl).

And to answer your second question, you'll have to find the french version of each game (there are no multi-language tracks in the english version). Nowadays, they're quite difficult to find.
zchild
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:20 pm

Post by zchild »

Thanks for the help guys, Albelthorn- I had no idea there were this games with french talkie! It's a shame that lucasarts didn't include both talkie versions on the same releases -- seems like it would make sense. It's also a shame they're so hard to find! I've looked on google, ebay (US, canada, UK and france) and amazon (same countries). I can't find anyone who specifically advertises french speech. The search continues...
User avatar
Kaminari
Posts: 275
Joined: Mon Oct 24, 2005 2:25 am
Location: Paris, France
Contact:

Post by Kaminari »

You can add The Dig to your list.
Jorpho
Posts: 79
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2006 2:20 am

Post by Jorpho »

Ubi Soft published most of the French versions of the Lucasarts games.

Not sure about the other ones, but I should definitely be able to purchase a nice sealed copy of French Full Throttle for you, for the right price (and shipping from Canada). PM me.
RBoudin
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Feb 25, 2006 8:44 pm

Post by RBoudin »

Im' not sure, but I think that there's also a french talkie version of Simon the sorcere 2.

If the goal is to learn french, you might also look for games that can't be play with Scummvm.

I've checked the french ubisoft store but lucasart's games can't be bought anymore. These games are hard to find here to (in france).

Bonne chance et bon courage :)
ZPedro
Posts: 18
Joined: Tue Nov 01, 2005 12:56 pm
Location: France

Post by ZPedro »

That's an excellent idea for learning French! Having both text and speech has been especially helpful for me when I learned English (though it was with X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and Starcraft at the time), so it should be for you too. Anyway, as a proud owner of DOTT, Sam&Max, The Dig, Full Throttle, and COMI, I can only confirm what has been said: for all of these there is a French version with French text and speech, except DOTT which for strange reason (they never got around to record the French speech?) has English speech. I also have Grim Fandango, but since it's a PC version from the pack where I got the five previous ones I have not played it (did not get around to get Residual yet). EFMI is also in this pack, but I had already gotten it (for 5€...) for Mac, and it most definitely has French speech.

Anyway, I posted a topic some time ago telling how I got these games, with this as the last part:
By the way, here are the various sites I have checked for used offers to appear - one did evetually, so this could be useful for people looking for them. Notice however, that all the games are French versions (though interestingly enough, DotT has French text, but English speech).
Amazon.fr
priceminister.com (this is where the offer, that I eventually bought, appeared)
alapage.com
RBoudin
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Feb 25, 2006 8:44 pm

Post by RBoudin »

I think there may be the possibility to create "mixed" version of Lucas Arts games like english text with french voices.
The way I've learnt english was school (of course) but also playing english version of games, watching english version movies, and also translating english subtitles into french.
I think that you need good basis to learn french with plain french games because you don't have the meaning of words you don't understand in front of you and may misunderstand some of these. You can play with a dictionary but it can become boring very quickly.
If you have just began to learn french it might be better for you to play with an english talking version with french subtitles (like two languages books).
User avatar
Kaminari
Posts: 275
Joined: Mon Oct 24, 2005 2:25 am
Location: Paris, France
Contact:

Post by Kaminari »

Loom VGA, Indy 4 and DotT were never dubbed in French for the likely reason that they were the very first 'talkie' games from LucasArts, and the publisher didn't believe the additional voiceover would be worth its cost. As a matter of fact, Loom VGA was not even distributed here :)
Grosbill
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2006 1:52 pm
Location: France

Post by Grosbill »

If you are also looking for no-scummVM french talkie games, i can advise you these great games :
- Les Chevaliers de Baphomet 3 : le manuscrit de Voynich.
(Broken Sword 3 : Sleeping Dragon)
Easy to find for 9.99€.

- Little Bid Adventure 1 & 2
It is not an adventure game but there are many languages available for talks and subtitles, and many talks of course.
Probably very hard to find in e-shop, but you can perhaps download them on {link removed due to forum rule #0} (site all in french i'm sorry)
Look for "Full CD" version which probably contains voice.
(The site is down for the moment, it'll be available soon)

- Beyond Good & Evil
All in french action game with many talks.
Easy to find for 10€.
User avatar
Vinterstum
ScummVM Developer
Posts: 580
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 6:59 am

Post by Vinterstum »

Don't post links to "abandonware" sites, please :).
zchild
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2006 3:20 pm

Post by zchild »

Thanks for all the help guys! I've got a much better idea of what's out there now! It would be cool if Lucasarts relased a Classics
DVD with all full speech and subtitles of all languages available for all of their old classics ... but that seems quite doubtful.

RB : I do have the basics of French down, so the level of conversation in adventure games is usually managable for me, but there are new vocabulary words here and there. It is much easier to learn languages (for most people) via the audio-visual route versus, say, all reading and writing, so video games are good. I'm playing Discworld 1 right now in french, but the expressions/language they use in english is sometimes even hard to understand (perhaps because I'm not british?)! (like DOTT, discworld has english speech and french text ... go figure).
Freuni
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2006 9:10 pm

Post by Freuni »

It's funny that you're looking for a french version of the games... When I was little, I also wanted the french version of the LucasArts Games... I didn't speak english and I had difficulties to understand Zak McKraken... I remember that I was so happy to discover that Maniac Mansion had been translated! Ah the memories...
Post Reply