Some clarification about this obscure version of the game.

As far as we know at this point, the Towns version saves a good six seconds over the DOS version. 4-ish, because the stage scene with Sophia at the beginning is pretty buggy and then 2-ish, because it takes less time to turn on the lights underground at the Sahara dig site.

All of this only saves time if you use the ScummVM-provided mod, that lets you disable "smooth scrolling" anyway. Without it the Towns version is minutes slower.