Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 4: Gold Box - Pool of Radiance (MS-DOS) - Part 1

Developer:

SSI

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Release Date:

1988

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Systems:

DOS, C64, Apple II, Mac, PC-88, PC-98, Amiga, Sharp X1, NES

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm back with another Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. In fact I've finally reached the first of Strategic Simulations, Inc.'s legendary Gold Box RPGs: Pool of Radiance!
 
Or to give it it's full name, Pool of Radiance: A Forgotten Realms Fantasy Role-Playing Epic, Vol. I.

I'm still learning about Dungeons & Dragons, but one thing I already know is that it features a multiverse of campaign settings made by different creators, like the Forgotten Realms and Planescape, and... other ones. For AD&D's first decade the default setting had kind of been Gary Gygax's Greyhawk, seeing as he co-developed D&D and co-founded its publisher TSR, but he'd just been forced out of his own company so using that would've been awkward for all kinds of reasons. So Pool of Radiance takes place in the newly introduced Tolkienesque medieval fantasy world of Forgotten Realms, a place I actually know pretty well from games like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. That's about as far as my nostalgia goes though I'm afraid. I never played the D&D Gold Box games, I've got no fond childhood memories of them, and I haven't acquired a tolerance for their ancient interface.

I did play a bunch of classic '80s CRPGs recently though, which you can read about in my previous article. Basically what usually happened was that I spent a bunch of time doing the research and putting together a decent six-character party, and then they all got wiped out on the first floor of the dungeon. Or they died on their way to the weapon shop. One time they were killed on the front step of the adventurers' guild you start off in. One time they were attacked inside the building. '80s CRPGs really hated their players.

But I'm sure Pool of Radiance will be different. This will be the one I actually make some progress in!

Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 3: 1984-1987 - Britannia Gnomes and the Tower of Doom - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I've been going through the first ten years of Dungeons & Dragons games, and so far 1984 and 1985 have been real disappointments as I couldn't find any.

I found plenty of legendary RPGs inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, like Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar and The Bard's Tale, but not one of them proudly displayed the official logo of the 'Advanced Dungeons & Dragons' tabletop game:

Not one of them proudly displayed the official logo of the 'Dungeons & Dragons' tabletop game either, which was apparently a different game with different rules and campaign settings:

Personally, I don't mind which one a video game is based on, I just want to play some D&D already.

If you missed the first part covering 1984 and 1985 you can click here: VOL. 2. Or you can go back even further to the two AD&D Intellivision carts from 1982 and 1983: VOL. 1. Otherwise keep reading to see if I do any better with 1986 and 1987. There's got to be a D&D game in this pile of RPGs somewhere.

Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 2: 1984-1987 - Britannia Gnomes and the Tower of Doom - Part 1

This week on Super Adventures, my tour of the first ten years of Dungeons & Dragons games has reached its third year: 1984. But I'd like to keep this moving at a decent pace, so I'm also going to write about every D&D game released in 1985, 1986 and 1987.

Though it occurs to me that I don't really have the context for these Golden Age CRPGs. I'm not old enough or American enough to have ever loaded one of them up on an Apple II, so I have no nostalgia and zero fond memories. I did play a few Amiga and DOS RPGs, but it usually only took me 10 minutes to realise that they were not meant for me. The 2000s are when I got into the genre, with games like Final Fantasy IX, Deus Ex, Dungeon Siege and Knights of the Old Republic. That's the era I'm nostalgic for.

So okay, what I'm going to do is research some of the other influential RPGs of the mid-'80s and I'm going to play them as well. I don't promise that I'm going to stick with them very long, I'm not the CRPG Addict, I'm just some millennial writing a retro blog, but I'm smart enough to know that I need a history lesson.

I'm going to play... 16 games I think. About 4 per year. That seems like a normal reasonable amount. I'll even put a number next to each title so it's like one of those 'top 20' internet lists.

Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 1: Cloudy Mountain, Treasure of Tarmin (Intellivision)

Not actually a real cover, though the illustrations are real

The week on Super Adventures, I had the idea of playing every Dungeons & Dragons game ever released! Or at least the first decade or so. I don't own Baldur's Gate III, so that's not where this is going.

It's not that crazy an idea, I already wrote about the first 10 years of Castlevania and Need for Speed, and I covered 20 years of James Bond games, so a couple of decades of D&D shouldn't be so bad. Unless they're all really long and complicated RPGs with a ton of stuff to study and memorise. That would really slow me down.

I have to admit, all my knowledge of D&D comes from Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and the Chris Pine movie. I've never played the tabletop RPG or watched a stream of other people playing it. I haven't even seen Stranger Things to be honest, or that Community episode. I'm sure that the game involves dice and possibly graph paper though, so I can kind of visualise it being played.

What I do know about is video games, as I've been writing about them for long enough that I'm a bit of an expert. Well, except for classic '80s-'90s CRPGs, I know bugger all about them as I've never had the patience to get anywhere in them. The '80s in general is a bit of a blind spot for me when it comes to games (outside of what I've seen in AVGN or Chrontendo videos), so I've only the vaguest idea of what the RPGs of the era were typically like.
 
Anyway, my plan is to play the Dungeons & Dragons titles in mostly chronological order, beginning with Cloudy Mountain and Treasure of Tarmin on the Intellivision. I'm skipping the Dungeons & Dragons Computer Fantasy Game LCD game, along with all the unlicenced PLATO games that were inspired by D&D. If I start adding games inspired by D&D to my list, I'll end up playing every RPG that's ever existed, and that'll make this take even longer.

WarCraft: Orcs & Humans (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Blizzard Entertainment

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

MS-DOS, Mac OS

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm finally playing Blizzard's hit Warhammer-flavoured real-time strategy WarCraft: Orcs & Humans! 

I'm sorry, I know I promised this at the end of April and now it's October, but I suddenly had a new season of Doctor Who to review for my other site and I got sidetracked. Don't worry, I don't think I'll be having that problem next year... or the year after that. (Edit: hours after I published this the BBC announced they're making more Doctor Who, presumably just to troll me).

Blizzard apparently tried to make a deal with Games Workshop to make this an actual Warhammer licenced product for the brand recognition, though it didn't work out. I always assumed that Games Workshop went around to developers and forced the licence into their hands, considering how many Warhammer games there are, but I guess not! Going with a new IP worked out pretty well for Blizzard in the end, considering that the game got a franchise, a legendary MMO and a slightly less legendary movie adaption.

The game also got a shiny new Remastered version in 2024 with high resolution graphics... and Blizzard decided to take the original version off GOG so it wasn't competing with it! I wasn't about to miss out on DRM-free WarCraft, so I grabbed it right before it was delisted and now I want to get my money's worth out of it. So I'll be sticking with the GOG version of the game, which is the MS-DOS CD release v1.22h... not that there's many other versions to check out. The game was heavily inspired by Dune II (which makes sense as it's the foundation of the entire genre), but they decided not to follow its lead and make ports for the Amiga and Mega Drive/Genesis. In fact the RTS genre basically just took off and left those systems behind here.

Okay, this is going to be the same deal as always. I'll play the game for a couple of hours, quit while I'm ahead, and then write a bit about it afterwards.

Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown (PC) (Demo)

Developer:

GameXcite

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Release Date:

2025

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Systems:

PC, PS5, Series X|S

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown! Okay, to be accurate I'm writing about the demo, but I only play games for an hour or two anyway so this is basically business as usual. It's just going to be a little more... unfinished than usual.

Oh, before I start, here's an interesting fact: I promised I was going to write about WarCraft and then disappeared for six months. Then I wrote about this instead of WarCraft. What happened was I got completely focused on writing about Doctor Who over on Sci-Fi Adventures and then afterwards I found it really hard to get back to any of the work-in-progress I'd put on hold for so long.

So I'm writing about something brand new instead. In fact this demo is only days old, part of the latest Next Fest on Steam.

The developer's pretty new as well, as gameXcite released their first game, Asterix & Friends: Remastered, in 2021. They followed it up with Idle Asterix on Android in 2022, and then Asterix & Obelix: Heroes in 2023. That's not a track record that fills me with confidence, but it got them a shot at the Star Trek licence and now they get to show off what they can do with it.

They've already got me sold on the premise: revisiting Voyager episodes and choosing a different outcome. I rewatched Voyager recently and I thought that it was just as entertaining as Star Trek: The Next Generation... as long as you know in advance that it's going to waste its potential and hit the reset button on any storyline that's going somewhere interesting. It seems like Across the Unknown is going to confiscate the reset button and I'm interesting in seeing how that even works.

SPOILERS I'm going to show off all the demo including the consequences of the big choice at the end. This is also going to spoil the first episode of the Star Trek: Voyager series. There'll still be 167 episodes that don't get spoiled though.

Return to Monkey Island (PC) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing a little more about Return to Monkey Island, which is an island I'm not 100% hyped about returning to. Don't get me wrong, I've got a lot of affection toward the Monkey Island games, but Monkey Island itself has never been the highlight of any of them. Plus I doubt I'd find any friendly faces there. I can't remember Guybrush antagonising anyone in particular, but I know what he's like.

I got started with Part I back in Part 1, so now in Part 2 I'm going to see if I can reach Part II. That's as far as I'll be going, I won't be playing through the second chapter. But I feel like I need to at least finish the first chapter to have a proper understanding of how the game is going to play.

That means there will be SPOILERS here for the whole of Part I... which could be a third of the entire game. I won't be giving away anything that happens beyond that point however, especially not the controversial ending, as I have no idea what it is.