What happened to intros in Rome Total War & B I

[dalver]

All right. I install Rome Total War and Barbarian Invasions from original discs. I patch the game and the expansion and I use a no-cd exe for each of them. Now it was a very long time ago I actually started up a new campaign game, but I distinctly remember that most, if not all factions had a short intro before you were shown the campaign map.
Tonight when I started a new game, I was taken directly to the campaign map. At first I thought it was because I was playing with an obscure tribe so they didn't have an intro, so I started a new campaign with the romans the Julii family. No intro.

The intros are still there in the Rome TW folder but they are not played within the game. Now I want to know why they are not played? Are they only played the first time you start your first game with any particular faction? Or did the subsequent patches (the 1.6 resp. 1.5) remove all intros? Or is it an issue with the no-cd exe (Do I have to reinstall? I'm not doing it unless I'm forced). Or is it an issue with my codecs, an error that only occurs for me on my rig?

How is it for you?