The Bard's Tale ( Tales of the Unknown: Volume I ) is a fantasy computer role-playing game developed by Interplay Productions and first published by Electronic Arts in 1985 for Apple II [1] . The designer and programmer of the game was .
| The bard's tale | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Interplay Productions |
| Publisher | Electronic Arts & Ariolasoft (in Europe) |
| Part of a series | |
| Date of issue | 1985 - 1991 |
| Genre | role-playing game |
| Creators | |
| Game designer | |
| Technical details | |
| Platforms | Amiga , Amstrad CPC , Apple II , Apple II GS , Apple Macintosh , Atari ST , Commodore 64 , MS-DOS , NES , ZX Spectrum , NEC PC-9801 |
| Game modes | single player |
| Carrier | cartridge , floppy disk |
| Systemic requirements | Amiga : Amiga 1000, Kickstart 1.2, 512 KB of RAM; DOS : 8088 , DOS 2.0, 256 KB of RAM, CGA / EGA / Tandy , built-in speaker |
| Control | keyboard , joystick and gamepad |
The game has been ported to a large number of other platforms, including Commodore 64 , Apple IIgs , ZX Spectrum , Amstrad CPC , Commodore Amiga , Atari ST , MS-DOS , Apple Macintosh and NES .
The game partially uses the traditional gameplay Dungeons and Dragons and was inspired by the Wizardry series of games. The Bard's Tale is notable for high-quality (at the time of release) three-dimensional graphics and animated portraits of characters. In addition, innovation for the genre was represented by the bard as a game character, casting spells, singing melodies [2] .
Content
Gameplay
Gameplay is reduced to a consistent "sweep dungeons ." The goal of the game is to gain experience points and skills improvement, which mainly occurs during random battles with enemies and monsters. The player explores the labyrinths of dungeons, sometimes solving puzzles and puzzles, as well as finding and buying new weapons and armor.
The fight is step by step and is not shown graphically. Instead, a text description is used. The money and experience points gained for winning are distributed equally among the surviving team members.
Perception
The game was reviewed in the 116th issue of Dragon magazine in 1986 by columnists Hartley and Patti Lesser in the column “The Role of Computers”. Observers appreciated the game well and recommended including it in their computer library [3] . A repeated review was published in the 120th issue of Dragon [4] . In another review, the game was rated 5 out of 5 stars [5] .
The version for the ZX Spectrum , released in 1988 [6] was received favorably. Crash magazine stated that the gaming environment is so difficult and includes so many different factors that it is extremely difficult not to be completely immersed in its task, and assigned the game a rating of 86% [7] . Sinclair User assigned the game a rating of 89%, but clarified that the game might not like the average player [8] . Your Sinclair magazine also rated the game positively, giving it a rating of 9/10 [9] .
Versions for Commodore 64 by ZZAP! 64 in the 1986 Christmas special edition was awarded the 'Sizzler' award and a 94% rating. Browser Sean Masterson called the game the best RPG for Commodore.
Proceedings
Three official sequels have been released for the game:
- The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight
- The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate
- The Bard's Tale Construction Set
The collection, which included all three The Bard's Tale games called The Bard's Tale Trilogy , was released by Electronic Arts for DOS in 1990.
In 2004, InXile Entertainment released The Bard's Tale game, which is a “reboot” of the game series. Along with the game came the original trilogy.
Novelization
Baen Books was released in the 1990s with a series of books based on The Bard's Tale . Although the books follow the general spirit of the games, the storylines of the game and the books have little in common. The series includes the following books:
- Castle of Deception , by Mercedes Lackey and Josepha Sherman (1992, ISBN 0-671-72125-9 )
- Fortress of Frost and Fire , by Mercedes Lackey and Ru Emerson (1993, ISBN 0-671-72162-3 )
- Prison of Souls , authors Mercedes Lackey and Mark Shepherd (1994, ISBN 0-671-72193-3 )
- The Chaos Gate by Josepha Sherman (1994, ISBN 0-671-87597-3 )
- Thunder of the Captains , by Holly Lisle and Aaron Allston (1996, ISBN 0-671-87731-3 )
- Wrath of the Princes , by Holly Lisle and Aaron Allston (1997, ISBN 0-671-87771-2 )
- Escape from Roksamur , by Mark Shepherd (1997, ISBN 0-671-87797-6 )
- Curse of the Black Heron by Holly Lisle (1998, ISBN 0-671-87868-9 )
Notes
- ↑ Barton, Matt Part 2: The Golden Age (1985–1993) (not available link) . The History of Computer Role-Playing Games . Gamasutra (February 23, 2007). The date of circulation is March 26, 2009. Archived February 25, 2007.
- ↑ Bagnall, Michael R. Quest for Clues. - New Hampshire: Origin Systems, 1988. - P. 27. - ISBN 0-929373-00-6 .
- ↑ Lesser, Hartley and Pattie. The Role of Computers (English) // Dragon . - 1986. - December ( no. 116 ). - p . 69-76 .
- ↑ Lesser, Hartley and Patricia. The Role of Computers (English) // Dragon . - 1987. - April ( no. 120 ). - P. 79-82 .
- ↑ Lesser, Hartley and Patricia. The Role of Computers (English) // Dragon . - 1987. - October ( no. 126 ). - P. 82—88 .
- ↑ Bard's Tale, The . World of Spectrum . The appeal date is December 11, 2007.
- ↑ The Bard's Tale (Unknown) // CRASH . - 1988. - August ( No. 55 ). - pp . 55-56 .
- ↑ Bards Tale (unknown) // Sinclair User . - 1988. - August ( No. 77 ). - pp . 88-89 .
- ↑ Gerrard, Mike. The Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unknown (Unknown) // Your Sinclair . - 1988. - September ( No. 33 ). - p . 28 . Archived December 21, 2007.
Links
- The Bard's Tale on GameBase64
- The Bard's Tale (1985) in the links directory of the Open Directory Project (dmoz)
- The bard's tale compendium
- Box images, tutorial and screenshots of The Bard's Tale on C64Sets.com