ElfLand Volume 1 Normal -

ElfLand Volume 1: Gorgimer's Castle DOS version, DOSBox version 0.74-3 on auto (3000) cycles. I like to leave DOSBox at its "default" cycles when reasonable and this game runs adequately, only slowing down a little in a couple places once the game gets started.
"Normal" refers to the difficulty, with the other options being "Easy" and "Very Easy". The other difficulties would be faster for multiple reasons, but I chose Normal for an appropriately-challenging run. You can also select between "Elfie" and "Elfita" but to my knowledge this only changes appearance and the name used in textboxes when referring to the player.
Start time is the first frame of gameplay after the difficulty selection disappears; end time is the first frame of the "Congratulations, Elfie!" textbox. Original video date: 2024/03/28
This run also uses sound only functional with the correct CT-VOICE.DRV file not available with the game (there may be such a file but it's probably the wrong version): searching around should yield a set of these drivers, and any of the 1.X versions can be placed into the game directory.
This is one of those childhood shareware games that I was never good at but found fascinating, and once I made it work with sound effects that don't constantly interrupt gameplay I figured it'd be worth running. It's very, VERY easy to take damage and die on this difficulty, so the player has to be careful around the zooming bats, bouncing springs, and charging elf-eaters. The platforming itself is tight but has some quirks that can make jumps hard to pull off precisely, like in the room with the floating blocks leading to the armor. Overall a pretty good run, but I could also probably drop another ten seconds with better optimization.

[@jimmyBojie]

My favourite part is that the voice that says "ElfLand!" at the beginning is clearly the same voice making the "boing" sound effect of the springs lol

[@Patashu]

there's something really cute about the different ambiences between 'light' and 'dark' parts of the game

[@breakdownhouse]

Oh cool hadn't seen this one before

[@Tippi-ej5uh]

Did this game always suffer emulation problems until recently?

[@CapnClever]

If you download ElfLand from a modern distribution site, you'll probably get a game with PC-Speaker sound effects that constantly interrupt gameplay. These distributions are packaged with the wrong CT-VOICE.DRV file which the game can't use and therefore falls back on PC-Speaker: a correct one (any 1.X version) will play as shown in the video. This has nothing to do with DOS emulation, and even a physical DOS machine would have such a problem.

[@Tippi-ej5uh]

​​@@CapnCleverAh okay, thanks. How did you figure that out? I played the game with the sound effects constantly interrupting the gameplay.

[@CapnClever]

Mostly stubbornness: for a long time I just accepted it (was one of those shareware games I had loooong ago), but earlier this year I wanted to find *some* answer as to how the sound could be implemented so terribly. Bog Turtle Games (the developer's website) has an FAQ related to PC-Speaker and mentions the CT-VOICE.DRV file specifically, which led me to try all versions of that file until I found one that worked. Of course, the PC-Speaker implementation is still bad, but it's good to know the game is far more playable than I originally thought.