Putt-Putt Joins the Parade (Macintosh Floppy Version) Walkthrough

No, your eyes don't deceive you. You heard me right. I said FLOPPY. Would you ever believe these games were originally released on floppy disks, and not CDs? I had been on a lookout for this version of the game for such a long time, and it's an EXTREMELY rare version -- it comes from the days when Humongous was still a little-known startup company trying to make a dent into the computer game market. Their fame didn't quite rise until the release of Freddi Fish 1, long after the floppy versions went extinct; as such, finding these at all is a pain and a half. Although this is the Macintosh version rather than the DOS version I would have liked to have, it's still really cool in its own right, and besides, when the heck was I ever going to find this version again?

Now, for those sitting here thinking, "Isn't this just the same as the CD version? Why even bother with this?" No, no it's not. You see, this game originally shipped on 5 floppies -- floppies are only 1.44 MB each, leaving you with a measly 7.2MB to squeeze all the data onto as opposed to the near limitless 600MB. As such, much of the dialogue has been cut down and/or altered. There's a greater usage of mad libs in this version, and a lot of the less useful dialogue (such as "Now I can cross.") has been removed. I only came across two visual changes -- first off, the movie theater was slightly shortened, so you cannot see the screen anymore. Second, and a change I'm pretty sure most people already know about, is that the puzzle cube and the joke tellers are totally absent in the toy store, this time replaced with another click point in the form of the "Box o' Blocks". One particularly bizarre difference is that this version of the game completely lacks the ability to save and load (though apparently CD version 1.0 also lacked it too. I wouldn't know about floppy v1.1 though). The game isn't exactly long enough to really be affected by that, but it's still a pretty jarring difference. I'll detail more of the changes via annotations.

That's about all I have to say gameplay-wise. The Macintosh version has never been seen on YouTube before either, and it has a few changes all of its own, such as the ability to filter the graphics (ewwww) and an "about" dialogue box. I would have played this on a more era-appropriate OS like System 6.0 or System 7.5, but unfortunately Basilisk II (the other Mac emulator that's more suited to the task of emulating said OSes) crashed every time I entered the movie theater, so it was a no-go and I had to settle for OS 9 instead. Oh well.

Enjoy the walkthrough! I for one am very privileged to finally let everyone see this rarely-seen version of the game.