https://venturebeat.com/2015/08/20/thaco-is-back-gold-box-dd-games-come-to-gog/
Enough said!
Do NOT play Hillsfar. I cannot stress that enough.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Frs688.pbsrc.com%2Falbums%2Fvv249%2FDreiko%2Ffunny10.gif%7Ec200&hash=b76fdb0540bbe661f61e5d2e3d907de8e6b77a80)
I hope they will also bring the silver box games. So I can finish Champions of Krynn (Disk E was broken for me on C64). :(
I finished Champions of Krynn. I won't spoil it because I was in Jr High and cannot remember anything.
Also, Secret of the Silver Blades had one of my favorite D&D covers. :wub:
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fzone.wallpaper.free.fr%2Fgalleries%2FArt%2FLarry_Elmore%2FLarry_Elmore_02_1024x768.jpg&hash=ca94dfb15789ce837c22c08d54205d214ac11628)
It has to be the biggest continuous dungeon crawl in gaming history. I loved it.
Quote from: Valmy on August 20, 2015, 12:53:36 PM
Do NOT play Hillsfar. I cannot stress that enough.
Elaborate.
I remember playing Champions of Krynn and Death Knights of Krynn and loving them both.
It is not an actual gold box game. It is a first person puzzle game. An incredibly bad one. The feeling of despair and betrayal I felt in 1989 still haunts me.
Quote from: Valmy on August 20, 2015, 01:50:41 PM
It is not an actual gold box game. It is a first person puzzle game. An incredibly bad one.
A what now? :hmm: Like Myst?
Quote from: Caliga on August 20, 2015, 01:52:52 PM
Quote from: Valmy on August 20, 2015, 01:50:41 PM
It is not an actual gold box game. It is a first person puzzle game. An incredibly bad one.
A what now? :hmm: Like Myst?
Sort of. Only with very bad graphics and lame attempts to integrate D&D mechanics and...
Look it is shit and not in any way related to the others in the series gameplay-wise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsfar
QuoteAn even stronger opinion was expressed by the website Console Classix, which reviewed the NES version of Hillsfar, where reviewer John Cooper declared that Hillsfar was the "Worst Role-Playing Game Ever Made."
Trust this Mr. John Cooper. He knows.
I got Pools of Radiance when I was 11 and I did not really know what to name my guys. So I had only played basic D&D so I pulled out my a sourcebook for all my names:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/80/GAZ1_TSR9193_The_Grand_Duchy_of_Karameikos.jpg)
Man the chain mail bikini aesthetic was such a big deal in the 80s.
Anyway what I didn't know was that Karameikos was supposed to be Slavic so all my characters in the Gold Box games always had Slavic sounding names. I had no idea that was ethnic at all, I thought they were fantasy sounding names. Aleksander, Yuri, and Mikhail were pretty heroic adventurers though let me tell you.
Still with Mikhail Gorbachev around you think I would have noticed.
The only game I owned from all the ones listed is Unlimited Adventures. I'm tempted.
I also had Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, I liked that one.
I finished The CHampions and Death Knights of Krynn (before reading the books so I had only a vague idea of what was going on) and the Savage Frontier games. I never finished most of the others. In one case because my mother 'cleaned' the hard drive and cost me Pool of Radiance 75% through the game.
It annoyed me how much the CoK and DKoK borrowed from the books. It was almost as if they were made for fanboys of them. It seemed like you grouped with every major character at least once. My memory could be slightly exaggerating that however :P
So did everybody else go crazy banging their head up against the huge battle in Sokol Keep? That was when I discovered Elves could not be raised from the dead.
That and the fight against the ogres and trolls in the Rope Guild.
Took a lot of sleep spells in both battles.
I never played these back in the day (you think I was kidding about being an Apple fanboy- these games never came out in Apple II or Mac versions).
I have trouble imagining I could manage the graphics today. But can anyone convince me otherwise? Because I am generally a huge D&D nerd.
Quote from: Barrister on August 21, 2015, 11:26:46 AM
I never played these back in the day (you think I was kidding about being an Apple fanboy- these games never came out in Apple II or Mac versions).
Yes they did. I played them on an Apple II. Or at least I did the first couple.
QuoteI have trouble imagining I could manage the graphics today. But can anyone convince me otherwise? Because I am generally a huge D&D nerd.
The graphics are alright because it is the old icon based gaming where the graphics don't matter. It is only the games that tried to have graphics that it is a problem.
Having said that the IE games are much better. This is 1st Ed AD&D man. Every silly thing about the old versions looms large. 'What do you mean my elf wizard can only get to level 8?'
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on August 21, 2015, 11:23:02 AM
That and the fight against the ogres and trolls in the Rope Guild.
Took a lot of sleep spells in both battles.
Hold the line! Toss burning oil!
You could only sleep one of those biguns at a time and it did not always work :(
Stupid trolls would get back up and you couldn't burn their corpses like in Bioware games. You had to kill them with oil.
I am curious about the Savage Frontier Games. They just came out a tough time for me personally. I never played them but generally they are an interesting bridge between the old school AD&D games and the ones from the late 90s.
I liked them. Slicker video, slicker rules. Didn't have the 'epic' feel I got from the mass of plot and world building stuff that came with the original trilogy though. But fun.
The original 'trilogy' was actually four games :(
I never completed Pools of Darkness sadly.
Pools of Darkness was hard as hell. I remember dying horribly many times in the demon lord fights (particularly Tanetal... and navigating the body of Moander to get to him was nasty too).
Quote from: Solmyr on August 21, 2015, 03:55:21 PM
Pools of Darkness was hard as hell. I remember dying horribly many times in the demon lord fights (particularly Tanetal... and navigating the body of Moander to get to him was nasty too).
Yeah that was when I quit. The Body of Moander.
The Krynn, Ravenloft, and Dark Sun games are now also available:
http://www.gog.com/game/dungeons_dragons_ravenloft_series
http://www.gog.com/game/dungeons_dragons_dark_sun_series
http://www.gog.com/game/dungeons_dragons_krynn_series
$9,99 each pack.
I am scared to try. I loved these games when I was 12.
Quote from: Martinus on October 31, 2015, 02:44:28 AM
I am scared to try. I loved these games when I was 12.
They have not aged well.
Tried to play them awhile back. Just couldn't do it. They are old enough and clunky, though awesome in their day. So instead I watched a few hundred hours of Let's Play .