Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 29: Silver Box - Shadow Sorcerer (MS-DOS)

Developer:

U.S. Gold

|

Release Date:

1991

|

Systems:

DOS, Amiga, Atari ST

---

This week on Super Adventures, I've reached the last of the Silver Box games: Shadow Sorcerer. Well, it's the last game included in the Silver Box Classics collection anyway; the box was actually brown in the US and blue in Europe.

The US box calls it "An animated fantasy adventure", which is maybe promising a bit much. The game isn't Dragon's Lair. The European box calls it "A Dragonlance Role-Playing Adventure Vol. 1", which is also a bit weird, because it's not. 

U.S. Gold made three games set in the Dragonlance universe, starting with Heroes of the Lance, based on the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop module DL1 Dragons of Despair. A year later they released Dragons of Flame, based on DL2 Dragons of Flame. Finally we got Shadow Sorcerer, which is apparently an adaptation of both DL3 Dragons of Hope and DL4 Dragons of Desolation. I suppose putting "Vol. 3 and Vol. 4" on the box wouldn't have helped sales.

I can already see one big difference between this and the other two games: it was only released on three systems, none of them Japanese. Plus anyone who'd been playing through the series on 8-bit machines was entirely out of luck here, though that was true in general at this point. The NES held on for one more year and a few C64 and ZX Spectrum D&D games were still waiting for their European release, but I'll not be needing to boot any of those systems up again going forward.

Okay, there will be some SPOILERS below for this and the earlier games, which will also be spoilers for the books. But I don't expect to get very far in it.

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

Developer:

SSI

|

Release Date:

1989

|

Systems:

Apple II, DOS, C64

---

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

|

Release Date:

1989

|

Systems:

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

---

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

|

Systems:

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

---

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.