
The Disney Lion King Disaster (2013) - sdrothrock
http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/01/04/the-disnesy-disaster/
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sdrothrock
Since the title isn't too informative, this is a 2013 blog post about how The
Lion King for Windows 3.1 led to the creation of DirectX.

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ikeboy
I'm assuming this was prompted by the top comment on
[https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/490mjr/not_sure_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/490mjr/not_sure_the_original_source_but_im_31_years_old/)
which was on the front age of Reddit earlier?

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wodenokoto
> Encarta... Bore people

What is he on about? Encarta was the Wikipedia of its time.

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jepler
Article refers to the Windows 3.1 "blu- screen". But was there even a blue
screen that was shown due to a serious error in Windows (not NT) 3.1?
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140909-00/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140909-00/?p=44123/)

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Sanddancer
Yes. I recall one in particular that I got on the family's computer back in
the day that got my sister and I a right proper screaming to by my mother. We
had just gotten a brand new multimedia package, including a Voyetra audio tool
-- the one that tried to look like a component stereo system. Well, we
recorded a sample of some song, and proceeded to hit the double speed button,
because things sped up sound funny. We waited, and waited as the 386 SX/25
worked on this task, creating a massive 30+ megabyte file, at which point the
computer bluescreened, with windows gasping and flailing with all kinds of
errors related to not being able to find files, corruption, etc.

Now, the hard drive itself was about 130 megs. Not huge, but not terribly tiny
either for a computer bought the day the LA Riots started. However, the action
to speed up the song created a new file which filled up that hard drive, and
once at the end of the disk, Windows did the most logical thing it could do.
It started writing from the beginning of the disk, paying no heed to what was
already on it. Over the partition table, over system files, over c:\windows,
everything. I'll spare you the details of the righteous fury we were subjected
to after, but suffice to say, it was non-fun.

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thebosz
Every time a post by Alex St John gets shared I start geeking out. He's one of
the principles involved in the creation of DirectX and has written tons about
it.

If this piques your interest, I would recommend diving in. He's got great
stories.

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bitJericho
This is about the Lion King Storybook CD game, not the beloved, official, "The
Lion King" game.

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masklinn
According to the wikipedia article it is in fact about the actual genuine Lion
King game, the in-article picture is incorrect:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King_\(video_game\))

> The Windows 3.1 version relied on the WinG graphics API, but a series of
> Compaq Presarios were not tested with WinG, which caused the game to crash
> while loading.

> The crashes caused game developers to be suspicious of Windows as a viable
> platform and instead many stuck with MS-DOS. To prevent further
> hardware/software compatibility issues, Direct X was created.

