Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 10: Silver Box - Dragons of Flame (MS-DOS)

Developer:

U.S. Gold

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Release Date:

1989

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Systems:

DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, C64, ZX Spectrum, CPC, FM Towns, PC-98, NES

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm checking out the next Dungeons & Dragons game on my list: Dragons of Flame. Though you don't need me to tell you that, you can see it yourself on that beautiful title screen up there.

Dragons of Flame was the second of the 'Silver Box' Dragonlance games... or maybe the third. I did the research for this, I tried to pin it down, but it was released so close to War of the Lance I really don't know which comes next. At least I can be sure that it's the second chapter of the story that began in Heroes of the Lance, and that it's by the same developer, U.S. Gold.

I also know that the game was ported to many of the same systems, though not quite all of them. Fans with 8-bit machines like the MSX, Master System, PC-88 and Sharp X1 would've had to upgrade to see what happened next. Either that or bought the novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight. It did get a ZX Spectrum port though! In fact this was the second and final D&D game released on the computer, and on the Amstrad CPC as well. I'm experiencing the end of an era here.

Okay, I'm going to put the game on and see how far I get. It's probably short, but it's probably also really difficult, so don't get your hopes up.

Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 7: Hillsfar (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Westwood Associates

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Release Date:

1989

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Systems:

DOS, Amiga, C64, Atari ST, PC-88, PC-98, NES

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This week on Super Adventures, my Dungeons & Dragons quest has reached the year 1989 and I'm playing... whatever this is. It's not a Gold Box game, I know that much, but it is an official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons licenced product and it is linked to Pool of Radiance, so we're back in the Forgotten Realms again for this one.

The game's called Hillsfar and it's by Westwood Associates, the guys who would later go on to make real-time strategy legends like Dune II and Command & Conquer, along with adventure games like Legend of Kyrandia and Blade Runner. I'm considering this to be a good sign. Though at this point Westwood were mostly in the business of porting games to other systems, typically 8-bit titles to 16-bit machines like the Amiga and Atari ST, and they were apparently quite good at it.

Hillsfar itself was ported across to a fair number of computers, though it was released on fewer systems than Pool of Radiance (9) and Heroes of the Lance (13). This means that we've already said goodbye to the Master System, MSX and Sharp X1, which never got another D&D game, and the PC-88 is dropping out here as well. The Apple II and Mac aren't out yet but they both skipped Hillsfar, so their owners missed out on its big selling point: it can import characters from Pool of Radiance and export them into the next game in the saga, Curse of the Azure Bonds. 

All the major Western computer RPG franchises of the time let you import saves, it was nothing exclusive to the Gold Box games. In fact The Bard's Tale lets you import from Wizardry and Ultima III, and then you can import from that game into Deathlord or Centauri Alliance. But what makes Hillsfar different is... actually I have no idea, I haven't played it yet.

Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 6: Silver Box - Heroes of the Lance (MS-DOS)

Developer:

U.S. Gold

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Release Date:

1988

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Systems:

Atari ST, Amiga, DOS, C64, ZX Spectrum, CPC, MSX, PC-88, PC-98, Sharp X1, FM Towns, Master System, NES

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm still in 1988 playing Dungeons & Dragons video games. In fact I've barely moved, as this apparently came out almost simultaneously with the first Gold Box game, Pool of Radiance. This time though I'm playing the first of the Silver Box line... it's Heroes of the Lance, by British developer U.S. Gold!

I didn't even know that U.S. Gold had made any games themselves, I only know them as a publisher. It turns out that they released hundreds of titles (not all of them gold from the US), but only ever developed eight of them themselves, including this and its two Silver Box sequels. Hang on, I need to turn the volume down, as its beepy PC Speaker music just scared the crap out of me. It sounds better on the Atari ST, which was apparently the lead system this time. In fact it sounds better on a lot of computers, as I believe this had the most ports of any of the D&D games.

Heroes of the Lance was released on 13 systems over 4 years, beating Pool of Radiance and Dragons of Flame, which each only made it onto 9 of them. It didn't matter if you were a European with a Speccy or Amiga, a Japanese gamer with a PC-88, or if you preferred Sega or Nintendo consoles instead, there was a version of Heroes of the Lance for you. Except for Americans with Apple IIs who were somehow left out! The system was getting on in years, but it had been the lead RPG platform throughout the '80s, so I don't know what publisher SSI were thinking there.

A lot of big name publishers had competed to win the Dungeons & Dragons licence, but it was Strategic Simulations, Inc. that had been victorious, thanks in part to their ambitious plans. They had three product lines in mind: role-playing games based on AD&D rules (Gold Box), action-adventure titles (Silver Box), and software to help a Dungeon Master run a tabletop D&D game. That last idea didn't catch on, but there are 10 Gold Box RPGs and this Silver Box Classics bundle I just picked up on Steam has a decent number of games in it too, so two out of three isn't bad.

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.

Marvel's Avengers: The Definitive Edition (PC)

Developer:

Crystal Dynamics

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Release Date:

2020

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Systems:

Win, XBOne, Series S/X, PS4, PS5, Stadia

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about Marvel's Avengers, because it's about to be delisted on Steam and is super cheap right now. Honestly, this fell off my radar the moment I learned they were going the games as a service route with it, so I was very surprised to find myself handing over actual money for it and now I own it I guess!

My curiosity got the better of me when I learned that they'd given players the entire shop's worth of content and freed it from its microtransactions. Plus I had to buy it now or I'd never get another chance, as they've gone and delisted it from online shops. I hate it when they do that.

I was only intending to put the game on for a few minutes and see how it plays, I wasn't expecting to use my screenshots/video to write about it for the internet. In fact, I wasn't even expecting it to run. So the graphics have been left at their absolute lowest to squeeze the maximum FPS out of it. This is as bad as the game can possibly look, at least without some extra effort messing with INI files or whatever. I know people work horrifying miracles sometimes.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to be playing the first few hours, so you may learn a lot of stuff here you might not want to know about the story.

Body Harvest (N64)

Developer:

DMA Design

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Release Date:

1998

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Systems:

N64

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I've always wondered why this space station has a skull painted on it. Up there at the top, next to the dish.

Anyway it's Super Adventures' 12th birthday today yesterday, so I figured I should write about a video game or something to celebrate. It has to be something a little bit special though, so I'm checking out DMA Design's notorious time-travelling alien-slaying action-adventure Body Harvest, on the Nintendo 64.

One thing I like about this era is that console designers were all making the leap to full 3D using different approaches, so you can tell an N64 game from a PlayStation game instantly just by looking at a screenshot. Even multiplatform games look different on each system. Body Harvest is a true N64 exclusive though. In fact it was supposed to be a launch title for the console, but original publisher Nintendo wasn't impressed with what DMA were coming up with. It didn't make it onto the system until two years later, when Gremlin Interactive bought DMA and published it themselves in the EU.

In fact it ended up getting released a month or so before DMA Design's other N64 game Space Station Silicon Valley. Except in America, where the two games were released a day apart! This was a bit of a problem as it meant they both came out right before The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Nintendo fans were saving their pennies for what was certainly going to be the safer bet. Then a year later DMA released Grand Theft Auto 2, which was the beginning of the company's 'making nothing but GTA games for the rest of all eternity' era. Well okay they released Manhunt in 2003 shortly after becoming Rockstar North, but aside from that it's been all GTA as far as the eye can see.

Okay I'm going to do what I always do: try the game for an hour or so, type my reactions under screenshots, and then write a long review at the end with an unearned tone of authority, as if experiencing an hour of gameplay is enough to really get what a game is like.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (PS2)

Developer:

Ubisoft Montreal

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Release Date:

2003

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Systems:

PS2, GameCube, Xbox, Win (HD on PS3)

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing the fourth of the legendary Prince of Persia games, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time! Okay technically it's the fifth of the games, but no one ever talks about Prince of Persia: Harem Adventures and I'm sure there's probably a reason for that.

Sands of Time is the second 3D Prince of Persia and the first of the Ubisoft trilogy, which lasted for four games in the end (after being interrupted by a temporary reboot part-way through). Ubisoft still owns the franchise to this day, but we haven't gotten a new Prince of Persia out of them since 2010. They got a bit distracted after a planned sequel called Prince of Persia: Assassin became too powerful, took on the name Assassin's Creed, and launched its own series.

By the way, my gimmick on Super Adventures this year is that I'm only playing games which have appeared on someone's 'top 10'. Well it took some serious research, but I finally found Sands of Time at #8 on stuff.tv's 10 faithful video game to movie adaptations list! I have the feeling it's probably on a few other top 10 lists too, seeing as it's got 92 on Metacritic. It's in the top 2% of PlayStation 2 titles!

Alright, this isn't my first time playing the game but it might as well be. I tried it out for 20 minutes or so back when it was new and didn't really feel a need to keep going with it. This time around I'm going to try to stick with it a little longer so it has an actual chance to win me over... or give me a real reason to quit.

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Part 4 - Guest Post

Previously on the Amiga CD32 Zelda-'em-up The Speris Legacy, I permanently ruined my only save file, and so I decided this time to investigate The Speris Legacy and write some Cool Stuff instead.

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Part 3 - Guest Post

Previously on the Amiga CD32 Zelda-'em-up The Speris Legacy, our hero Cho tried to inspect a sinister looking plant and instantly died. What could happen next?

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Part 2 - Guest Post

Previously on the Amiga CD32 Zelda-'em-up The Speris Legacy, our hero Cho left Sharma City in search of revenge. What will he find in the farming town of Gilliards Rhine?

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Part 1 - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, recurring guest poster mecha-neko is back already with a detailed four-part report on what appears to be 'Zelda, but on the Amiga'. It might be good, you never know.

By 1995, the Amiga was done. The CD32 was a year in its grave. All the magazines save for the very nerdiest were shrivelling up into nothing as the games quickly vanished. Darth Vader, Sam and Max and a certain green-clad space marine made sure that there was no place in the computer world for slow moving, ugly games that couldn't talk back to you. Europe was falling in love with the Japanese consoles, every British kid was getting a Mega Drive II for Christmas to replace their Master System II, and Sonic the Hedgehog was appearing in two cartoons at once.

Only the brave, the mad and the heavily invested remained to try to magic up some glory from the abandoned hardware and win the hearts of the Amiga's vast and loyal European install base.

Developer:

Binary Emotions

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Release Date:

February 1996

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Systems:

Amiga 1200, CD32

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Say hello to light-hearted fantasy epic The Speris Legacy, featuring this rather nifty digitised painting of one hopeful adventurer who could easily be Neal McDonough in a blonde mullet.

Amiga Computing magazine described The Speris Legacy as 'pure genius', with its coverdisk demo asking 'The best game of the year?' in bold red letters. Amiga Power dedicated an entire cover to it with a brand new lovely illustration.

The Amiga could still have its hero!

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Guest PostPart 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole (Genesis/Mega Drive) - Replay

Developer:

Climax

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Release Date:

1993 (1992 in Japan)

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Systems:

Mega Drive/Genesis

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing isometric action-adventure game Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole! I've already written about it once before but now I'm playing it again.

This is the second game I've revisited recently, after Nox, so I guess it's finally happened: I've finally played through every single video game ever released on every console and computer and now all I can do is circle around and start replaying them all. Actually wait, I just thought of something else I could've played: isometric action-adventure game Equinox. Though after checking out Nox, AquaNox and Anachronox in a row I'm kind of 'nox'd out at the moment to be honest.

It's been almost ten years since I last played Landstalker and I remember very little about it... though that's probably because I saw very little of it. It seems that the game lost my interest right away and I only stuck with it long enough to find an enemy to hit. In my defence the site was only six days old at the time and Landstalker was my 74th article that week... wait, that's not a defence, that's an admission of insanity! What the hell was I thinking?

These days I try to at least see what a game plays like before turning it off. Plus sometimes I even do research! For this game I decided to research whether the original Japanese version also has a melted version of the Turrican II logo on its title screen, and it does. In fact it has the exact same logo, as the game is called Landstalker in Japan as well.

StarTropics (NES)

Developer:

Locomotive, Nintendo R&D3

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Release Date:

1992 (1990 in NA)

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Systems:

NES

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm thinking about how much StarTropics' title screen reminds me of the title screen of Metroid. They've got the same 'text floating in front of a twinkling starfield' look. Though Metroid has fewer palm trees.

StarTropics is fairly well known among people who aren't me, but I never played it myself. In fact I thought it was a SNES game until I looked it up. I'm still not sure how it plays, but if I had to guess I'd say it was probably going to be a little like that Secret of Evermore game I wrote about in January. The two games definitely share one thing in common: their titles both start with the letter 'S'. Also they were both developed with a Western audience in mind and never got a release in Japan. They even left it off the Nintendo Classic Mini Family Computer (aka the Famicom Mini) despite it being one of the 30 games that came with the NES Classic in other regions.

It was produced and written by a Japanese game designer though, Genyo Takeda, who was apparently also responsible for a: putting battery backed-up save RAM in the cartridge version of The Legend of Zelda and making that a thing, b: sticking an analogue thumbstick on the N64 controller and inspiring Sega and Sony to do it too, and c: holding the Wii back so that it was a generation behind the Xbox 360 and PS3. He became the manager of Nintendo's hardware development division in 1980 and didn't retire until 2017, so he was a fairly influential guy during the entire history of video games. Plus he produced Punch-Out.

Outcast: Second Contact (PC) - Guest Post

Today on Super Adventures, I've managed to drag guest poster mecha-neko back again so I get to take the week off! This also means that he's the one who'll be checking out the first few hours of that semi-recent Outcast remake, which makes sense seeing as he's the one who wrote about the original game way back in 2014. It's possible he's even remembered enough about it to make comparisons.

Hello there!

Five years ago, I wasn't as kind as I could've been to a game called Outcast, a PC action-adventure game about a man with a shiny visor and the orangest shirt in the multiverse travelling to another dimension to stop the Earth blowing up.

Developer:

Appeal

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Release Date:

November 14th, 2017

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Systems:

Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

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Now, for PC, PS4 and Xbox One, Commander Cutter Slade is back! Why? I honestly have no idea.

Fancy a look?

Ganpuru: Gunman's Proof (SNES)

Developer:

Lenar

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Release Date:

1997

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Systems:

SNES

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing a game definitely absolutely did not ever get ported to the Commodore Amiga, for a change. In fact this one wasn't even released in English, though it did eventually get a fan translation.

I like fan translations, I think they're a fantastic idea and that everyone who's put their time and effort into making games accessible to more people for absolute zero financial reward is awesome. But I don't play fan translations on my site (it's one of the rules written in the box on the right), so I'm going to be struggling through the original Japanese version of the game for an hour or two. Well, unless it's got a lot of dialogue in it, then I'll be struggling a lot longer than that.

The katakana in the title says Ganpuru, so some people call it Gunple and others say it's probably a compound word formed from 'gunman' and 'proof' (like how Pokémon comes from the words 'pocket' and 'monsters'). Man, if the very first word in the game's giving me this much trouble then that's not a good sign. Google Translate tells me that my two choices beneath it are “From the beginning” and “From the rest”, so at least I don't have an options screen to interpret.

Legends (Amiga)

If my calculations are correct it should be Super Adventures' 6th birthday right about... now. I've been watching it creep up on me for a while, struggling to come up with an idea of what to do about it when it got here.

One idea I had was that I could turn the site around and start going back the way I came, revisiting all the games I've played, starting with Carmageddon, then Spy Fox, and so on all the way back to Deathbringer. Then I had a slightly less terrible idea: I could work through a huge chunk of my game requests all at once! 50 games in one article, each getting a screenshot and a couple of lines of text. It'll be just like the olden days when I'd put up a few dozen half-assed posts a day because I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

But in the end I realised that if I want to go back to Super Adventures' origins what I really need to do is find an old obscure Amiga game I haven't heard of and go into it blind.

Developer:

Krysalis

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Release Date:

1996

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Systems:

Amiga AGA, CD32, DOS

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So this week on Super Adventures I'm playing Legends!

I know about all kinds of games, Amiga games especially; it's a side effect to suffering prolonged exposure to a shelf full of game magazines as a child. But I have never heard of this one in my life and that's kind of weird, because it's by Krysalis, the folks who created Soccer Kid and Arabian Nights.

I've got a theory about why it slipped under my radar though, and that's because my Amiga magazines only go up to 1995. By the time this came out everyone was moving away to SVGA PCs and next gen consoles and I doubt even the DOS port of this low-res Amiga game got much attention. So they left it a bit late there. But then I suppose a game like this takes a while to make... possibly. Depends on what kind of game it is really.

The title screen up there makes me think it's some kind of strategy game with empires clashing across the world, or an RPG with classes from across history, but that doesn't narrow it down much and it's just as likely to be another platformer. All I know for sure is that it's not that classic isometric RPG; that's Legend without the S.

Batman: Arkham Origins (PC)

Developer:

WB Games Montréal

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Release Date:

2013

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Systems:

Win, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U

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This week on Super Adventures, a game about punching people at Christmas!

It's been ages since I've played a Batman game, in fact I think the last one on the site was probably Return of the Joker for the NES, back in April 2015. Though it still seems too soon to play Batman: Arkham Origins, because of how similar it is to the other two. In my Batman: Arkham City article I joked that I'd be able to copy/paste parts of my Arkham Asylum post and save myself some work, and here that's doubly true! But it's a Christmas game and I feel like playing it again, so I am.

I love these beautiful tableaux of frozen Batviolence behind the menu by the way. Batman's so gritty in this one with his tactical Bat-armour and his permanent bad mood, that I keep expecting the camera to pan across blood and displaced teeth flying through the air.

This used to be the black sheep of the franchise, due to it not being developed by Rocksteady, and the bugs, and the fact that they prioritised releasing paid DLC instead of fixing them all, but I think Arkham Knight's claimed that position now (at least on PC). There's still a bit of an issue with the multiplayer, seeing as it was switched off forever earlier this month, but I didn't even know it had multiplayer, so that shows how much I care about that.

(Click on the images to view my original full size screenshots. DX11 mode, all settings on full... resolution at 1280x720).

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64) - Replay

Developer:

Nintendo

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Release Date:

2000

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Systems:

N64

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Super Adventures is teetering on the precipice of becoming four years old, and it's become a tradition for me to use each anniversary as an opportunity to look back at five or six of the games I played back in the earliest days of the site and give them another try. Traditions are boring though, so this year I'm only replaying a single game, the latest one, and I'm putting it up on the wrong day.

You could argue that I didn't really give Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask a fair chance last time, but I wouldn't bother because I'd only end up agreeing with you. I mean what could I say in my defence, that quitting before I'd even encountered the defining mechanic of the game was justified because I was bored?

It's a game about fighting through dungeons, earning masks, and rewinding time, and I didn't get far enough on my first try to do any of that. I played hide and seek and lost, and then a moon fell on me, the end. But I figured it'd be thematically appropriate to give it a second look, in the hope that we can both do better this time around. I was actually thinking of scheduling this for three days ago as well, but then that would've just been confusing.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64)

Developer:

Nintendo

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Release Date:

2000

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Systems:

N64

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Today on Super Adventures it’s the very last and final game of my year long alphabetical gimmick event: The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask! I couldn't finish off the alphabet without the biggest 'Z' in gaming; the entirety of the ‘Majora’s Mask’ text is taking up about 1.3% of the pixels in that title screen, while the ‘Z’ on its own covers a massive 3.4%! Anyway after this game I’ll be free to play whatever I feel like and I never have to worry about titles again... until I come up with some other dumb idea.

I don't really like talking about these Zelda games to be honest, as I always feel like I'm wrong about them. I've criticised critically acclaimed games before, I'll point out flaws when I see them, but if reviewers were able to measure a game's entertainment value using a universally recognised SI unit, they'd be using kiloZeldas. This series sets the standard that other games are judged against, and if any professional reviewer were to give them a low grade, people would likely consider them to be at fault. I say likely, because I can't even find one single truly negative review for a 3D era Zelda on metacritic.

But I’ve put a few hours into Wind Waker, Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time now and I walked away from each of them unimpressed. I’m not going to say they’re bad games, and I’m definitely not about to start throwing about words like ‘overrated’, but either I’m immune to their charms or they sure take their time getting to the good bit. So I’m coming into Majora’s Mask with zero nostalgia and a little bit of apprehension. I’ll give it an hour or so to win me over, I’m here to learn, not to hate, but there’s a fair chance this is going to end in tears and you should adjust your own expectations accordingly.

Star Wars: Yoda Stories (PC)

Developer:

LucasArts

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Release Date:

1997

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Systems:

Windows, GBC

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1997 was a pretty big year for Star Wars, perhaps the biggest since Return of the Jedi hit cinemas 14 years earlier. The original trilogy of films were remastered and rereleased on cinema screens with Greedo now officially shooting first, the mighty engines of Lucasfilm had geared up to produce a new movie with two more promised to follow, Timothy Zahn released another Thrawn novel, Dark Forces got a sequel with lightsabers, TIE Fighter got a sequel with multiplayer… and then there was the other game.

But Masters of Teräs Käsi is going to have to wait, because today on Super Adventures I’m taking a quick look at a ‘desktop toy’ called Star Wars: Yoda Stories. It’s basically meant to sit alongside games like Minesweeper and FreeCell and give you something to do for half an hour while you’re taking a break from work. There is one subtle difference between Yoda Stories and the games bundled with Windows though: this retailed for £20 in Britain back in the day. That was enough to buy you a third of a Donkey Kong Country game!