joppo: For what it's worth (if you still need an answer), I picked it up at least 4 years ago and at the time I confirmed the patch had come to Gog.
Then I played it and I had no trouble finishing the last level within a dozen attempts. Most of those deaths were due to platforming mishaps (due to keyboard ghosting) in the part where Raz needs to jump over water and grab a suspended chainlink fence.
If it was the much reviled tough-as-nails version I'd expect I'd die a lot more at the beginning of the level where Raz has to escort the stupid lil' Olyander. From what I read that escort section was the most frustrating part of the level.
Unfortunate. Was planning on eventually adding the game to my library despite already having the retail version, but now I most likely won't.
Thanks for answering. They mostly added checkpoints. In original, for the escort part, you had to be on your toes. He could die pretty fast if you let the enemies get to him. If he died, you lost a life and got booted to the start of the section. As for the platforming part, it was just that any time you failed, you got reset back to the start and lost a life. Meaning you had to do it in one go and got booted to the subconscious every time you lost all lives.
Found a reddit thread where someone listed some other changes:
* They trippled Little Olly's healthbar.
* They slowed down the knives of the knife throwers.
* They adjusted the hitboxes of the fires you climb through to be a little bit smaller than the fires themselves, instead of larger.
I got the game from a gaming magazine in 2009 (included for free). The patch with the difficulty change released for the digital version in 2011. Just wasn't sure if GOG had it or not.
joppo: Does anyone know where I can grab the
unpatched version? I want to see how awful the Meat Circus used to be.
Or maybe I want the punishment :-P
Gonna be difficult getting your hands on the retail PC version. I'd imagine any pirate sites are also long running the patched versions from the digital releases at this point. So you're probably out of luck.