Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 23: Gold Box - Death Knights of Krynn (MS-DOS) - Part 3

This week on Super Adventures, I'm just going to write a little more about Death Knights of Krynn.

I don't usually drag these things out to three parts, because I usually spend the time to properly edit them down! But this is a fairly interesting game so I don't feel too bad about making an exception. I won't be finishing it though, I haven't turned into the CRPG Addict. Yet.

Here have some links to help you get around:

• Death Knights of Krynn - Part One
• Death Knights of Krynn - Part Two
• List of the Dungeons & Dragons games I've played

Going to three parts means that I get to show off the C64 title screen as well. It's nothing that amazing, but I can appreciate how the C64 versions of the Gold Box RPGs all share the same theme and look like they're part of a set. That is not the case for any of the other versions. Not that there are many other versions left at this point, as the game only came out for PC, C64, Amiga and PC-98. I was thinking of showing off the Amiga title screen, but it's just the PC version with slightly better colours.

Once again I should mention that there will be SPOILERS here, for both this and Champions of Krynn.

Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 22: Gold Box - Death Knights of Krynn (MS-DOS) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm going to continue playing Death Knights of Krynn! If you'd prefer to read part one instead, click THIS LINK.

I'm still playing the DOS version you can buy from Steam and GOG, I just decided to show the PC-98 version of the title screen this time. It's based on the game's box art, or at least the painting the box art borrowed. The PC-98 title music is also worth a listen, and if this was 1998 I'd have it autoplaying when you open this page.

The painting is called 'Lord Soth's Charge' and that's him at the front, the leader of the undead army. I don't actually know anything else about him, but I feel like we wouldn't be friends in real life. I do know something about the engravings surrounding the logo though. There are three orders of Solamnic Knights: the Order of the Crown, the Order of the Sword, and the highest of them is the Order of the Rose. So the rose design is probably related to that.

Warning: this is going to have SPOILERS. Not just for Death Knights of Krynn, but also Champions of Krynn, as it's a sequel.

Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 21: Gold Box - Death Knights of Krynn (MS-DOS) - Part 1

Developer:

SSI

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Release Date:

1991

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Systems:

DOS, Amiga, C64, PC-98

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This week on Super Adventures, it's the second game in Strategic Simulations Inc.'s Krynn series: Death Knights of Krynn. There's an interesting use of colour in that title screen. It makes me think of Halloween... or maybe Christmas. Regardless, it's very on-brand for Gold Box art.

I've been playing the Dungeons & Dragons games in as close to chronological order as I can figure out and so far there's been a lot of variety. I've been jumping between action games, wargames, dragon flight sims etc. That's not really the case for this next batch though, as they released three Gold Box RPGs in the same year: Death Knights of Krynn, Gateway to the Savage Frontier and Pools of Darkness - the middle chapter of one series, the beginning of another, and the conclusion to the original saga. Oh, plus there was Neverwinter Nights, the Gold Box MMO.

Death Knights of Krynn is once again taking me back to the Dragonlance campaign setting, and I actually know a bit about the place now. I know about the War of the Lance and the Solamnic Knights and their fearsome moustaches, I know about the Dark Queen Takhisis and the Draconians made from corrupted dragon eggs. I don't think I know anything about Death Knights yet, but I'm here to learn.

I should probably warn you that this is going to have SPOILERS. Not just for Death Knights of Krynn, but also Champions of Krynn, as this is a sequel.

Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 14: DragonStrike (MS-DOS) and DragonStrike (NES)

This week on Super Adventures, I've finally got another excuse to Photoshop together a title image. The weird thing is, I started adding the ripped cover effect to it before I noticed that the Amiga version's cover already uses a torn paper effect (you can see it the top left behind the dude). That's such a weird coincidence. Their effect is better, but I think mine came out looking okay.

Anyway DragonStrike came out in 1990 and is the 10th Dungeons & Dragons game. Meanwhile DragonStrike (NES) came out in 1992 and is the 21st Dungeons & Dragons game. It was pretty common at the time for different systems to get wildly different games that all shared the same title, but in this case it's only the NES release that just had to be awkward.

Covering both games at the same time requires breaking the timeline a bit, but doing it this way means I get to compare them, so you're getting double dragons this week.

Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 13: Gold Box - Champions of Krynn (MS-DOS) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm just playing some more of the DOS version of Champions of Krynn, but I thought you might want to see the PC-98 title screen instead this time.

The game was released on just five systems this time: IBM PC, Amiga, PC-98, Commodore 64 and Apple II, so we've lost the Atari ST and Apple Mac - both 16-bit systems weirdly. The 8-bit C64 is still hanging in there, but this was the final Dungeons & Dragons game to be ported to the legendary Apple II. It had been the main platform for RPGs in the US, giving the world titles like Ultima, Wizardry and The Bard's Tale, but it had its last major hit in 1989 with Prince of Persia. A computer that couldn't run SimCity or Golden Axe didn't really have a place in the early '90s.

In fact technology had moved on so far by this point that the PC version of Champions of Krynn actually has Adlib sound card support! It's also one of the very few Gold Box RPGs to support the Roland LAPC, which is basically an MT-32 on a card (the next few games didn't support it for some reason). It doesn't really change much however, as I think the only music in the whole game is the theme tune at the start.

If you want to go back to part one, CLICK HERE.

If you want to see all the Dungeons & Dragons games I've played CLICK HERE.

Beware of SPOILERS beyond this point.

Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 12: Gold Box - Champions of Krynn (MS-DOS) - Part 1

Developer:

SSI

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Release Date:

1990

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Systems:

DOS, Amiga, C64, Apple II, PC-98

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Champions of Krynn, a 'Dragonlance Fantasy Role-Playing Epic Vol. 1' (Version 1.2). It's the beginning of a brand new Dungeons & Dragons trilogy!

I've already played a few games in the Dragonlance campaign setting, like Heroes of the Lance and Dragons of Flame, but even though they were based on tabletop modules I wouldn't exactly call them RPGs. Champions of Krynn is actually a proper Gold Box RPG however, just like Pools of Radiance... except I'm probably going to have to deal with those annoying dragon men that shoot magic at you and explode when they die again.

This also the beginning of a new decade: the 1990s! I'm on year 9 of my quest to play the first 10 years of Dungeons & Dragons games, and the end is in sight. Though in truth I'm only halfway through them, as SSI were releasing a ton of these games at this point. We got three AD&D titles this year:

• Champions of Krynn - What I'm playing right now.
• DragonStrike - A dragon combat flight sim.
• Secret of the Silver Blades - Chapter three of the Pool of Radiance Gold Box tetralogy.

Plus there was Buck Rogers XXVc: Countdown to Doomsday. It's got nothing to do with D&D, but it's adapted from another tabletop game by D&D creators TSR and it runs on the Gold Box engine, so they basically just swapped the dragons for spaceships.

Okay, I'll be playing the game for a couple of hours, taking screenshots and writing words, so there'll be SPOILERS below.

Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 11: Silver Box - War of the Lance (MS-DOS)

Developer:

SSI

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Release Date:

1989

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Systems:

Apple II, DOS, C64

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm checking out the PC port of SSI's fantasy wargame War of the Lance!

I know what the title screen looks like, but I promise you that this is an official Dungeons & Dragons game that you can buy in the Silver Box Classics collection on Steam. It's even by Strategic Simulations Inc., the folks who had already developed Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds by this point. But there is a perfectly good explanation for why it looks so basic: this is just what wargames looked like at the time, especially when they were made for the Apple II.

Wargames have never really been my thing, but from what I can tell, SSI had been in the business longer than anyone and had earned a reputation for knowing what they were doing. Their first game, Computer Bismarck, had been developed for the Apple II (and TRS-80) way back in 1980, which is about the same time that genre-defining RPGs like Ultima and Wizardry were released for the machine.

But by 1989 the Commodore 64 and IBM PC compatible had taken over as the dominant US computers, and I think this is the last time SSI made the Apple II their lead platform. They were really going back to their roots here. Plus Dungeons & Dragons was originally inspired by tabletop wargames, so they were going back to its roots too. 

You can tell they were going old school with this one as they skipped the 16/32-bit Amiga entirely. Other than PC, Amiga was the only system to get all the regular Gold Box RPGs, but it only got three out of four Silver Box games. Though by the look of the game, the machine could probably emulate it.

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. 6: Silver Box - Heroes of the Lance (MS-DOS)

Developer:

U.S. Gold

|

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.