the cutting room mirror

The Labyrinth of Time

The Labyrinth of Time is an adventure game from 1993, loosely based on Greek mythology. It was the only game published by Terra Nova Development, and although wasn't especially financially successful, one of the collaborators on the original game re-released it in 2004 for modern computers and in 2009 for iOS.

Unused Museum Exhibits#

The Museum on the Moon contains graphics and text for two unused monitors for exhibits on display. Unlike all other exhibits, both images are centered rather than aligned to the left or right.

Alien Belt#

Text stored in ROOMS/BELT. Image in SPICT/MON/BELT (or PICT/MON/BELT). Alien Belt

ALIEN BELT

    This unusual object was discovered floating
in Earth orbit during construction of the Space
Station.  Research into its past has proved
inconclusive.

    New Worlds Development (a division of
Terra Nova Development) acquired this exhibit
after keeping it in the company's Lost and
Found department for twelve years.

Alien Console#

Text stored in ROOMS/LEVERS. Image in SPICT/MON/LEVERS (or PICT/MON/LEVERS). Alien Console

ALIEN CONSOLE

    The origins and purpose of this machine
are completely unknown.  It was discovered
during the early stages of terraforming at the
NWD Mars project.  PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH
THIS DISPLAY.  We have no idea what it does
when activated.

Unused Audio#

WEIRD1#

The sound WEIRD1 plays when using a teleportation device (which appear at four different points in the game) or when transitioning into the end credits. However, the game contains four alternate versions of the sound effect. Two of them, CWEIRD1 and CWEIRD1O, are identical to the original.

The other two, CWEIRD3 and CWERID1, have a humming sound in the background and are twice as long.

It's worth noting that in the game, WEIRD1 plays twice during transitions, once when exiting the old area and once when exiting the new one. The longer versions of the sound might've been intended to cover the entire teleportation effect.

Also interesting: do the "C" prefixes indicate that the sounds were "cut"? Or something similar?

BOOM#

There are also two older versions of the BOOM sound effect. The BOOM sound fades out halfway through, while BOOMOLD stays at a loud volume throughout. BOOMOLD1 is a shortened version of BOOMOLD.

BOOMOLD BOOMOLD1

Ziggurat Door Oddity#

In the room in the Ziggurat with the permanently locked door, walking north into the wall with two statue heads will show text associated with walking into a closed door. It is unclear if this is leftover from an earlier layout or just a mistake.

"Unused" Screen#

Entering the Ziggurat without a lantern should display a totally black screen, SPICT/ZIGINT/BLK (or PICT/ZIGINT/BLK for the low-resolution version). The actual filename for the screen is SPICT/ZIGINT/ZIGINT.BLK, so the graphic is not loaded.

However, the game displays a black screen when an image fails to load, so there is effectively no difference even though the file is technically unused. Whoops!