Woody Woodpecker And Friends Volume Two

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Disc Archaeology

Findings from a byte-level analysis of the US retail disc image (524,599,296 bytes / 256,000 blocks; 152 filesystem entries).

The /Screens folder contains a complete, finished episode-selection menu for a Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon volume that was never released on 3DO: Casper_Menu.img (Casper presenting four episode thumbnails around an "ALL FOUR" button), an earlier revision Casper_Menu4.img.old (before the "ALL FOUR" button was added), and the menu's selection highlight Casper_Red_HiLite.cel. The shipped executable loads Casper_Menu.img by name — the player was built to serve both titles, but no Casper volume ever shipped.

Warner Bros. material on an MCA disc

Two further screens belong to neither Woody nor Casper:

  • Batman_Menu.img — despite its filename, the image is a disclaimer card in Batman-style lettering: "This presentation is used with permission from Warner Bros. — for promotional purposes only."
  • Warner_Logo.img — the Warner Bros. Family Entertainment shield, complete with Bugs Bunny.

Neither file is referenced by the shipped executable — they are working-directory leftovers from a Warner Bros. promotional presentation built with the same player, pressed onto a rival studio's retail disc. The "Batman" filename and lettering point to promotional material for a Batman cartoon volume that never appeared on the platform (see Speculation).

Other development leftovers

  • launchme references $boot/Woody_Intro.stream — a file that does not exist on the disc.
  • Superseded menu revisions ship alongside finals: Woody_Menu1.img.old, Woody_Menu2.img.old, Help.img.old.
  • Development utilities memtest and symanim sit at the disc root, and /vspics holds leftover test images (TestO.cel, test3.cel, testd.cel with 50%-scale twins, and a stock photo reef.img).
  • The player's disc-locking routines are named performElKabong/initElKabong, after Quick Draw McGraw's alter ego.

Structure notes

Four ~100 MB cartoon streams with chapter markers; only two root-directory copies, placed adjacently. A full-image sweep finds no text credits anywhere on the disc. All 51,797 unallocated blocks (~101 MB) verified as 100% iamaduck filler. The likely origin: the 3DO's pack-in Interactive Sampler discs included a Batman: The Animated Series cartoon presented under exactly this kind of Warner Bros. permission disclaimer. These screens are evidently production leftovers from that sampler segment — the same player and production environment served both MCA's retail cartoon volumes and the sampler's Batman presentation, and the sampler assets stayed behind in the working directory when this volume was mastered.

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