The Bard's Tale IV - The Original Trilogy Coming FREE

HiddenX

HiddenX

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Kickstarter update #5: Rebecca Heinemann helps Brian Fargo!

The Original Trilogy Coming FREE

Exciting news today: every backer of The Bard’s Tale IV ($20 or more) will get free digital copies of the original The Bard’s Tale, The Bard’s Tale II: The Destiny Knight and The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate!

Even before we launched the Kickstarter, we were constantly asked "can you do a re-release of the original The Bard’s Tale trilogy" and we heard you. We have been hard at work behind the scenes looking at ways to make it happen! The first step was getting Electronic Arts to sign on as they own the publishing rights to the old games, having originally brought them to the market in the mid-80s. EA very graciously had no objections at all, a big thanks to them for their help in making this giveaway happen.

The emulated versions of the classic games will be released for free at the end of the campaign for every backer at $20 or higher, and distributed through our backer web site. This is our way of giving our thanks back to you for all your support and helping us bring back The Bard's Tale.

Some of you may know that the emulated versions of these games work on most modern machines, but are a little rough around the edges. Thus, we have an agreement with the original The Bard’s Tale III programmer Rebecca "Burger" Heineman and her company Olde Sküül to update the games for modern machines! She will be working to make the games run natively, without needing emulators, on PC or Mac. This re-releases will be primarily based on the Apple IIGS versions of the games, along with updated art.

We’ll get you the emulated versions of the trilogy as soon as the Kickstarter ends and our backer site is up. Meanwhile, Rebecca will be working on the updated versions of the games and if that goes well we’ll get you those as soon as she delivers them to us, also for free! As we’re not working on these versions ourselves we cannot give an ETA or guarantee on their release, we’ll all be waiting for Rebecca to deliver us an upgraded version worthy of the name!

Of course, playing the originals will not be necessary to follow the story of The Bard’s Tale IV, but we hope you’ll jump on the opportunity to experience them as thousands of fans did back in the day!

Deluxe Double Album Soundtrack and Add-Ons!

We've been looking at our plans for the soundtrack and realized that with multiple musicians working on this (including the very talented Julie Fowlis who you heard in the in-engine video) we're simply going to have too many songs to put on one CD. So we're expanding the soundtrack to a Deluxe Double Album!

If your tier already contains the soundtrack (that is tiers $50, $70 and $95 and up), whether digital or physical, you are now upgraded to the Deluxe Double Album! Physical tiers receive two CDs and digital tiers receive both albums digitally.

New Tiers

We have rolled out new reward tiers for you guys to choose from. First up, we have the $33 Guide to Skara Brae tier that includes the Digital Guidebook and Digital Artbook, and by popular demand, we have brought back the Supreme Box Collector tier at $675 for those who want to fill out their shelves!
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More information.
 
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They work together again! To run these games without emulators again - simply great.
 
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Welp, and here I thought Ms. Burger would announce the Dragons of the Rip kickstarter today. Bit of a letdown, because hell who needs to run BTI-III without an emulator?
 
Sacred_Path said:
Welp, and here I thought Ms. Burger would announce the Dragons of the Rip kickstarter today. Bit of a letdown, because hell who needs to run BTI-III without an emulator?
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A parallel Kickstarter would not turn out well - and hey - I for one want these updated Bard's Tale I,II,III versions :p
 
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HiddenX said:
A parallel Kickstarter would not turn out well - and hey - I for one want these updated BT I,II,III versions :p
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I just thought she might be crazy enough to do it. Especially since she has shown no fondness of Fargo - unless her bickering was some kind of PR thing? :juggle:
 
I asked for this....so cool.
 
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That's excellent news, thanks for posting HiddenX. It's great to read of such partnerships working again without the petty antagonisms that some in the past have assumed existed.
Really happy to know updated Bards Tale's are coming to the fans, old and new alike.
Edit:
I still have my boxed originals for the C64 which is the first platform that I played them on.
 
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Once again, Inxile prove that they are masters of generating good will. Well done.
 
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I already have trilogy on iPad as part of the The Bards Tale (the action game) port. No idea how they perform as I haven't played them yet. Presume they are some sort of port that has some sort of touch response or perhaps they are entirely dependent on the virtual keyboard.
 
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Pessimeister said:
I still have my boxed originals for the C64 which is the first platform that I played them on.
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I wonder if mine are in the boxes at my parents house. One day I will get my Father to dig it all out and see what is still in them.

I wish I still had the discs I was handed in grade 9 with Ultima 3 on it and a few other games copied by disk doctor.
 
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I gotta give EA some credit for once too. Classy move allowing them to distribute the titles.
 
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These games really show how pathetic modern gaming has become, with super tiny and simplistic dungeons, telegraphed puzzles and tons of hand holding. If Bard's Tales 1 was released with the gameplay as is but modern graphics in 2015 there would be a class action lawsuit against the company.
 
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Never tried the originals, now it will be a good time. Just hope it doesn't take long for the updated versions to come out.
 
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I'm curious what they mean exactly by "updated art".

inXile said the same thing about the re-release of Wasteland 1, but all they did was make higher-res portraits for NPCs and enemies.

I wouldn't mind trying to play the original BT trilogy, but I'd need more than just updated character portraits.
 
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Pessimeister said:
That's excellent news, thanks for posting HiddenX. It's great to read of such partnerships working again without the petty antagonisms that some in the past have assumed existed.
Really happy to know updated Bards Tale's are coming to the fans.
Edit:
I still have my boxed originals for the C64 which is the first platform that I played them on.
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I also played these games in the 80s on a C128 but the oldest boxed original PC game that I currently have in my possession is a 2007 copy of Hellgate London. Your ability to pack rat your old games is most impressive!
 
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Nice gesture, but it takes nothing for them to make it.

It's trivial getting them to run on emulator, so I can't say I'm excited about this as a bonus. Also, the games are archaic in terms of gameplay.
 
DArtagnan said:
Nice gesture, but it takes nothing for them to make it.

It's trivial getting them to run on emulator, so I can't say I'm excited about this as a bonus. Also, the games are archaic in terms of gameplay.
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This is true. The emulated DOS-versions were also made available to buyers of the 2004-iteration of the Bard's Tale when it released on Steam. What exited me though, was that - apart from the emulated versions - they will be releasing another free version of the trilogy that will run natively, with graphics from taken from the Apple ][-version.
 
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Zerotown said:
This is true. What exited me though, was that - apart from the emulated versions - they will be releasing another version of the trilogy that will run natively, with graphics from taken from the Apple ][-version.
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I guess it takes different things to excite me :)

The Amiga version is my favorite, and I've been able to run it perfectly on an emulator for many years.

I'll never play these games again, though, so apart from the warm nostalgic feeling - I consider it an utterly worthless "gift".

As I said, it's a trivially easy way to hype up the game and play the magnanimous developer.

But it obviously works ;)
 
DArtagnan said:
I consider it an utterly worthless "gift".
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That's a pretty ungratefully cynical kind of attitude really and misses the key point that just maybe somewhere in the world, there are people who might want to experience these games for the first time. Perhaps they are also not so technologically savvy or weren't gaming during the "DOS" days to know any better. Thus, the updated versions by Rebecca Heineman and the Bard's Tale kickstarter could be the inspiration they need.

Worthless eh? I don't think so.
 
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