What is the release date of this game? Everything points to it having been released in 1996, but nothing more concrete than that.
The first disc appears to have been authored on 1996-10-21, at 23:04:20. The second disc appears to have been authored on 1996-10-23, at 02:41:50.
On both discs there are files from 1996-10-19 at the latest, but that's not the release date, that's the point where they go "yep, we're done, let's sort out what goes on the disc".
So this could not have been released any earlier than 1996-10-23.
It was rated one of the best-selling games of December 1996.
The Neverhood, a game released by the same company, has a concrete release date of 1996-10-31.
This'll need more research.
EDIT: Giant Bomb claims the release date was 1996-07-02. This is earlier than the date on the disc images I have. But maybe this was a later batch... and a later version? GB also says it's a UK release. I'm tempted to go with this date...
I'm glad you brought this up! Everything I've seen points to it being released in December of 1996.
This page in Billboard states that Dreamworks was planning on a December release for Goosebumps Escape From Horrorland. Published August 24th 1996
Then we can see in the following magazine: https://books.google.com/books?id=y-hfa6YSVFAC&lpg=PT20&dq=goosebumps%20escape%20from%20horrorland&pg=PT20#v=onepage&q=goosebumps%20escape%20from%20horrorland&f=false
That it's part of the gift guide on PC Mag published on December 17th 1996.
The best I can tell is that was released at some point between December 1st, and December 17th.
Interestingly, I reached out to one of the developers on Twitter, he said he doesn't remember the exact date but he thinks it would be in September of '96: https://twitter.com/DarpaDan/status/1315780652856352768
