The forgotten games of yore

Jimmith

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As a grown up gamer I've played a lot of RPG's over the years. In the time before the great Web was spun to every corner of the world one had to find these games through friends, in magazines, or randomly on a shelf in the store.
A lot of these games has been forgotten over the years, at least by the mainstream.

What I want to know is this:
Tell me of a game, or several, that you have fond memories of from. If its one of the better known games then that's cool. If it's one of those games that most people never knew existed, then all the better.
How did you come across this game? What was the best thing about it? Any particular gaming moment you want to share?

I'll start off with a couple of my favourites:

Betrayal at Krondor
(from Wikipedia): "A DOS-based computer role-playing game developed by Dynamix and published by Sierra On-Line in 1993. Betrayal at Krondor takes place largely in Midkemia, the fantasy world developed by Raymond E. Feist in his Riftwar novels. The game is designed to resemble a book, separated into chapters and narrated in the third-person with a quick-save bookmark feature."

This one is fairly well known in RPG circles. I first tried it when a friend of mine had gotten a disk version copy from an older cousin who didn't like it much. The game had (lousy, admittedly) 3d graphics blended with digitalized photos and hand drawn art. The story was amazing for a game at that time, and the characters had depth.
A lot of things was amazing about this game, but one thing that most people remember is the locked chests. These had to be opened by answering a riddle by clicking into place letters to form a word. Extremely frustrating at times but it also felt very rewarding when you managed to get one right. There was no such thing as a online strategy guide or faq at the time (not known to me at least) so you really had no choice but to wring you brain around if you wanted the loot.

I could write about his game for the longest time, but most of you have played it. If you haven't you should try it out. It's abondonware by now and can be found several places around the web.

Mordor 1 The Depths of Dejenol
I came across this game on a demo disk with some gaming magazine some time in the nineties. It was my first real dungeon crawl. I spent almost an entire summer, as far as I can remember, exploring, levelling and looting.
Ah, to have that much free time.
There has been many dungeon crawlers later of course, but this one still is close to my heart.


There, now it's your turn.
 
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My earliest games were Quest for Glory series, Bards Tale series and Ultima series. These were followed by many others like Might and Magic, EoB, etc, all of which remain as very fond memories!!
 
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Afraid my titles arent particularly obscure:D

The first RPG I played was probably Eye of the Beholder, but I didnt really appreciate it much. I went forth to check out the older Goldbox games and they turned out to be much more to my liking. Champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn, and particularly Pool of Radiance gave me many hours of joy. The relatively open Pool of Radiance (you go to the city hall for quests and can pretty much do them in any order) felt fairly close to what little PnP experience I had at the time:)
 
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The first RPG I played, as far as I can remember at least, is "The Faery Tale Adventure" back in 1987 or so. I have fond memories of that one because it was the first game I actually bought (I'll have to admit that back in the very early days PC games were something you got a copy of from a friend). I remember reading through the manual as bed time reading, looking at the map etc... and then of course playing the game. I remember it as a fairly huge open-world kind of game - don't know how impressive the size of it would be today :)

Then I played games like "Heros Quest 1", "Might&Magic 3", "Betrayal at Krondor" and "Lands of Lore 1".

And then of course I discovered the Ultimas... :)
 
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My first 3 RPGs were Lands Of Lore 1 - of which I recently found a well-preserved CD-variant specimen in a second hand shop in Berlin - Albion and [Die] Schicksalsklinge - English: "Blade Of Destiny" (TDE).

I often wonder whether it would be possible to visit the Urbish Mines without any hassle ... without being attacked, mostly.
 
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Long time gamer here too, only my memory is pretty fuzzy and I can't seem to remember which was my first PC RPG.

I do remember playing the 1st two Ultimas but it may have been several years after their release because I think I was playing console RPGs before PC RPGs and my first console RPG was Phantasy Star in 1988 (I remember having an after-school job at an electronics/game store and being psyched because I got it there with my employee discount for like $48 and I think it was $75 at release!).

But my fondest and earliest PC RPG memories came from the Gold Box games, particularly Secret Of The Silver Blades because it was my first one (didn't play them in order). And I had 3 of them in the original packaging and like a fool threw them away shortly after getting married. :(
 
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Oh! Also played some of the Kings Quest games but those were more adventure games than RPGs if I remember correctly.
 
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Actually, Betrayal at Krondor was released as freeware. So everyone should be able to play it now.

And it is not hardly a "forgotten" game of yore; just old.

My first game period, and RPG, was the Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unknown. However, I spent far more time on Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus than anything else back in those days.

I liked how you could actually solve combats by greeting the monsters or threatening them instead of just the standard flight or flee. Also, I liked random decapitations and dismemberment.
 
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I do remember playing the 1st two Ultimas but it may have been several years after their release because I think I was playing console RPGs before PC RPGs and my first console RPG was Phantasy Star in 1988 (I remember having an after-school job at an electronics/game store and being psyched because I got it there with my employee discount for like $48 and I think it was $75 at release!).


I have very fond memories of playing Phantasy Star on the Sega Master System, one of the greatest console RPGs of all time imo. Too bad none of the sequels lived up to the original.
 
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My first would be Temple of Apshai, back in 1986, then Wizardry 1 in 86 maybe early 87 (first game that kept me up all night), both in my spanking new IBM PC Clone with 4.77/8 MHz (I had to press ctrl-alt-+ whenever I turned it on so it turned on the 'turbo' mode (8MHz)). 256K TAM but I upgraded it to 512K in 87
 
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I have very fond memories of playing Phantasy Star on the Sega Master System, one of the greatest console RPGs of all time imo. Too bad none of the sequels lived up to the original.

I may agree with you but I'm going by old memories since I haven't ever replayed Phantasy Star where I've played II and IV in the last 7 years. There was certainly something special about PS and I CAN say that it put Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy (the first couple of games in those series anyway) to shame in every category.

I still think II and IV were excellent.

Gamers always mention Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI (III SNES) as the greatest console RPGs of that era (and of all time, usually) but never mention PS IV which, imo, is just as great.

And to this day I'm baffled that Sega chooses to keep this series dormant. I mean, I loved Skies Of Arcadia but I would have preferred Phantasy Star 5.

Sega should take a hint from SquEnix and remake Phantasy Star for the DS!
 
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BTW, JDR13: Have you played the Phantasy Star Collection? Just realized I never picked this up for the GBA and it contains the first 3 games - I'd love to play the first one again and wondering if this is a solid port.
 
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Nobody remembers Alternate Reality: The City and AR: The Dungeon, yet I do. Many long nights were spent at my Atari 800XL with the floppy drive violently beeping.
 
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Many good old memories here :)

Lands of Lore was one of my very first ones too. I loved that series, with all its flaws.

And since adventure games has been mentioned already I wish to add Loom to the mix. I think that might have been my very first "fantasy" game. Good times, good times.
 
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Mines of Moria on my friend's Apple ][ Plus, followed by one of the Ultimas, which I think we played on his shiny new Apple ][ e. Before that, I played some RPG on my Odessey2, but I don't remember the name. I actually focused on TBS for several years, so it wasn't until MM6 that I got back to RPGs. I've since played some of the games I missed while devouring Microprose titles.
 
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Lands of Lore is superb. I replayed it this summer. I ended up stuck in the same dungeon though- exactly the same as I did in the 90's when I played it for the first time.

The combo of the Dungeon Master style of dungeon exploration with the point n click adventure game puzzles certainly was unique.
 
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I remember being stuck behind a rock in LoL: Guardians of Destiny for a long time before morphing to a size that let me get back out, that random shape change thing could be very annoying. Still that game was really amazing, though the graphics was jarring in a special kind of way.
 
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My first memories are of Intellivision's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons followed a year later with Advanced Dungeon & Dragons Treasure of Tarmin. After playing those two games I was hooked in the D&D world. What I remember most about the first one are the sounds. You heard the monsters before you actually saw them and that demon sleeping sound and the snake hissing always filled me with dread.

Later on I latched onto the bigger known games like The Bard's Tale for the commodore 64, Ultima 3 and finally the single best game that I played when I was a kid, Pool of Radiance. It was so good that I called it 'The Pool of RAD-iance' (this was the 80's and people still used the word rad ;))

While I passed Ultima 3 and Pool of Radiance, I never did pass The Bard's Tale. That game was brutal for a kid. Those puzzles in it were downright hard. I ended up buying the clue book. If I didn't I would of never even gotten into the Mad God's Dungeon. One cool thing about that clue book was that it was written in a first-person POV. It entertained as well as told me how the heck to get past some of these dungeons.
 
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Skaven, I loved that about the BT series clue books. They were literally mini-novels instead of just a dry collection of maps and hints. I also liked that they largely left a lot of stuff to be found.

I have both the GBA Phantasy Star collection as well as the PS2 SEGA Genesis collection (which has PS 2-4).

I never could bring myself to play PS1 much, but I've played the heck out of PS4. Easily one of the best console RPGs IMO. Certainly better than any Final Fantasy I've ever played. PS3 also had many unique aspects that I think have not been used much.

IIRC, there's a new collection which has these games out for the PS3/X360 now, basically the same as the one I have except for the newer systems.
 
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Skaven, I loved that about the BT series clue books. They were literally mini-novels instead of just a dry collection of maps and hints. I also liked that they largely left a lot of stuff to be found.

I liked that as well. They literally were 'clue'books. They gave you clues to how to solve the puzzle instead of hand holding you throughout the game.

If you want a trip down memory lane then try this site. It has a ton of PDF files on all of The Bard's Tale games.
 
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