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showing 23 games

name	publisher(developer)	year	description
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar	Origin (Origin Systems)	1985	Comes on two 5.25' disks. In 1997 the full version of this game was 'made available for free download' at selected sites by Origin. However, it remains proprietary and not defined as "freeware" or "public domain" (these downloads can disappear or the priced raised at any time at Electronic Art's option). Several homebrew upgrades exist for this game that add features such as VGA graphics and Midi sound. The xu4 project allows this game to run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS 8, Mac OS X, and other operating systems. xu4 Also allows extensive modding of the graphics, enemies, items, and certain game logic. The Ultima series continued to innovate with the release of each game in the series. With the 4th game released for Apple ][ and then ported to IBM-PC, the genre was taken to bran new places. There is no evil big bad enemy to defeat, and the point of the game is not to take advantage of people to get stuff to go defeat the enemy. Rather, the point of the game is for the main character to become a champion of virtue. The goals are literally honesty, humility, honor, spirituality, valor, justice, compassion, sacrifice, courage, truth, and love. Actions, inactions, even words can have less than apparent unhelpful or helpful consequences. Yes, there are still monsters to fight and treasures to find, but this makes up less than 1/8th of the game and the care and purpose in handling these things is more important than the end result. [Zerothis]
Swords of Glass	Keypunch Software	1986
Rush'n Attack	Konami (Banana Development)	1989
The Dark Heart of Uukrul	Brøderbund (Digital Studios)	1990	[49]*This game has some interactive fiction, adventure and not yet defined elements. Players can visually search the room or listen find secrets, to get descriptions of the room, find riddles that hint at solutions to puzzles, and/or find clues to events in the nearby area. These are returned as text as the game has no sound whatsoever. Advancement must be confirmed by player actions. Crosses are not just symbols in this game, they are apparently melee weapons. Equipment can require a minimum level of experience and/or a minimum character attribute. Clerics must pray to cast spells (all one action). The petitioned god can grant the cast, not answer, or punish the character. These random responses seem to be based on the character's previous actions but the mechanism is unclear. The game is automatically saved much the same way as typical rogue-likes but a bit less often. Simply walking from one place to the next does not prompt a save, but reading a clue or resolving an encounter does. There is also a game "backup" save system. When a player is in a "sanctuary" they may manually create a second save. Experience is shared but most of it distributed unequally based on a character's participation. The mechanism is unclear. Killing blows and attacks delivering significant damage have the most reward. Other actions are rewarded as well no mater what the result. Every character still gets something even if they did not interact with the battle at all. For example, if the first move of a battle is the player's fighter killing a single foe with a single blow, all other party members will get at least 1 XP or more for a stronger enemey.If a character sacrifices their life to save their fellows, they lose piety. Dying is heresy, how [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oran_of_Iona]Oran[/url]ic¡ [63]* [52]*** [37]
Vampyr: The Talisman of Invocation	author	1990	In character creation, race choices are as follows: * [b]E[/b]lf * [b]D[/b]warf * [b]C[/b]orantir * [b]H[/b]uman***Published and developed by its authors, no specific company involved. The game never was sold itself (released in public domain, actually), but the authors sold the manual and hintbook separately (by money order).
The Punisher	MicroProse (Paragon Software)	1990	Murder, vigilantism, revenge, bloody shootouts, family massacres, orgies, animal and human sacrifice, satanism... This was published by Microprose boys and girls. Sure, they do a lot of war simulations with implied violence (killing billions), but I can't recall them ever using so much up-close and personal depictions of so many mature subjects. Apparently the copy protection questions the game asks about the manual are based on an entirely different manual.
Eye of the Beholder	SSI (Westwood Studios)	1991	[22]* [63]* [52]* [37]*You control a party of four heroes tasked by the lords of Waterdeep to investigate some foul stuff going on by entering the vast sewer system below the city. Saved games can be loaded into a new game in the sequel ([game=#40320]EOB2[/game]); minus the special items. [Zerothis]
The Gold of the Aztecs	U.S. Gold (Kinetica)	1991
The Summoning	SSI;Softgold Computerspiele (Event Horizon Software)	1992	Yes, the character has limited capacity _and_ the game world has limited supplies _and_ there is no back tracking. Forcing players to choose very carefully which items they want to carry to the next level and exactly when to use said items or not. Failure to have the right items can put the game in an unwinnable state. Magic regen is extremely slow. There is a cheat patch for this game that does nothing except speed up Magic regen. Many consider this game to be near unbeatable (even with the regen cheat) yet magic regen is the only cheat anybody has bothered to create.* [22]* [52]*** [37]
The UnReal World	Enormous Elk	1992	Development was moved to Windows at some point. Project originally started in 1990 but first public release was in 1992.
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss	Origin (Blue Sky Productions)	1992	Historical note: This game was the first, first person 3D game (it preceded Wolfenstein 3D by two months). Also the engine is much more advanced than the Wolfenstein 3D engine was. Not just in the RPG elements but the 3D environment, dynamic lighting, curved surfaces, real bridges and tunnels, texture resolution and variation, and vertical variation in the terrain. However, the system requirements of UW are higher than Wolf 3D. [Zerothis]
Ultima VII: The Black Gate	Origin	1992	Review for the French version of the game. [22]* [22]French version [37] [37]Came with six 3.5' disks. The original release included a demo of Ultima Underworld on a 5.25' disk. U7 was rerealsed both by Origin and Electronic Arts in many packages that included the sequels/add-ins for U7 (Forge of Virtue, Serpent Isle, The Silver Seed) Tags: The 7th canonical game in the Ultima series and the first game in Ultima's Age of Armageddon. The player and party can use crossbows and bows. Ingredients can be mixed to bake bread and other things. Cheese is available as food. A variety of items can be crafted into other items. There are pumpkin fields in the game, from which pumpkins can be harvested. Flight of the Bumblebee is played at one point, Rule Britannia is overplayed. There are several prisoners in the game and its this plays into the plot more than once. An addictive medicine in the game is abused by characters and can be abused by the player's character and party, with consequences. Unicorns are mentioned in in-game books and by characters[spoiler=and;and]one can be found by the player also.[/spoiler] Origin once again attempted to create a game engine as they had done before with Ultima IV and Ultima VI. Arthurian Legends was the game they would attempt to create using the U7 Engine. AL was not completed and the source code of the Ultima VII games was later lost. A game engine called Exult allows the game to run on a wide variety of platforms [Zerothis]**Still one of the best RPG's ever made IMO. The Forge of Virtue was a small expansion released with some packages. Ever wondered how to get this baby to run on Windows? Check here: [url=http://exult.sourceforge.net]exult.sourceforge.net[/url] [cjlee001]
Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor	SSI	1993	Saved games from the prequel ([game=#40320]EOB2[/game]) can be loaded into this game when starting; minus the special items. [Zerothis]
Heirs to Skull Crag	SSI (MicroMagic;SSI)	1993	Heirs to Skull Crag is the game, exclusively available in no other package game, real game, actual game, existing game, playable game, completable that comes the the Unlimited Adventures game creator which is in every other videogam database with tools to create AD&D based adventures, or even other types of adventures based on the Gold Box Engine. The executable is "FRUA.EXE" and the letters stand for "Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures". But UA is by no means limited to the Forgotten Realms setting. Materials from other settings are included and players are free to create their own or download UGC from the aforementioned site.
Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos	Virgin Interactive (Westwood Studios)	1993	[59]*CD-ROM version [37]Floppy disk version [37][media=youtube]DKdBs7Pc1JE[/media]Latest version: 1.23 (as of 1994-04?), 1.02 for CD release White Label CD release is pre-patched to "1.02D".*[b]Minimum:[/b] 386SX / 25 MHz CPU * 4 MB RAM * VGA or MCGA GPU * 5 MB free HD space For voices: Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, AdLib Gold, or AdLib Gold Standard. For music: Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, AdLib Gold, AdLib Gold, Roland MT-32/LAPC-1 or General MIDI. The CD-ROM (White Label) version mentions Win3.1, but this is only for compatibility info.*1993 original floppy release 1994 CD-ROM - full speech and additional narrative history of the lands by Patrick Stewart 1996 CD-ROM - "special" white label European release. No idea what's so special about it, even though I have this. Doesn't appear any different from the '94 release, except maybe the box art.*A Legend has been born...Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos is a fantasy, role playing adventure like no other. "Scotia, the hideous hag wants it all... power... riches...lland...THE WORLD! Can she be stopped? The truth stone must be found before her evil can be defated" The sheer scale, superb art animation and incredible special effects, will transport you through over thirty unique areas. As one of the seven characters that you can choose from, you will face over fifty intelligent and believable monsters in mortal combat. Fantasy and reality become one, in lands where the only law is survival. [Box blurb]
Red Crystal	Quantum Quality Productions	1993	Successfulness of an attack depends on the player knowing the height of the enemy. Two players can complete a playthrough cooperatively using horizontal split-screen. The players can be local with non-shared keyboard and mouse or via modem. During character creation, random stats can be re-rolled until, hopefully, a nearly perfect set is achived. This is almost required to play the game. A character can use any spell or weapon with some degree of effectiveness. But specific weapon types or spells can be used more effectivly by certian character classes. Likewise, enemy types are strong or weak to certian spells or weapon types. Charaters may carry up to 30 items. Items may be used, bought, sold, dropped, and picked-up. Equippable items are equiped when "USE"d. Plot items are carried and not useable (and occupy an inventory slot). Dropped items will remain where dropped for a limited time. 'the per-game look-up copy protection took Alen to Page 8, Line 1, Word 1: "bored"' - Petra Schlunk (Computer Gaming World Number 117, Page 66)
Veil of Darkness	SSI (Event Horizon Software)	1993	[b]difficulty[/b] - adjusts only combat difficulty which isn't the main point in this game, so you don't need to bother with it as much as with the real problems (puzzles).***Back in the days when I had the chance to try this I found the puzzles to be extremely difficult, but my English skills weren't up for much anything back then either, so it might be that was the only problem with it. The game had an unusually dark feel to it, but since I never got very far, I can't really tell much of it. The story started with a plane crash though, where the player was stranded in some foggy valley with no way to contact the outside world and there was a small rural-ish village. The gameplay was a mix between action and adventure (not action-adventure mind), with the interface being like that of an RPG game. It had mostly a slowish pace akin to some older RPGs and adventure games, with few but hard battles.
The Elder Scrolls: Arena	Bethesda Softworks	1994	[b]Minimum:[/b] * DOS 5.0 * 25 MHz 386 CPU * 4 MB RAM * 25 MB HD space * VGA display * mouse***The game was formerly commercial, but was released as freeware at some point.
Stonekeep	Interplay (Interplay Productions)	1995	Latest version: 1.2 (as of ?)*[b]sorcery[/b] - requires a magic staff onto which you inscribe combinations of magic runes that produce various effects, modified by meta runes and so forth (in the tag's grey area) --- averted ambidextrous - has no significant gameplay effect. simply determines which mouse button activates it and which hand on the screen uses it. ergo, this is primarily a graphical gimmick. no way to swap handedness without dragging and dropping the tools between hands.The scan of the box art is flawed only because my scanner can't really scan the hologram on it (I'm not sure any scanner can). You can see this rainbowy thing behind and around the front skeleton and another skeleton in the rainbow, but in reality it should be silvery/chrome-white and the second skeleton barely visible.Immerse yourself in an epic experience more powerful and realistic than anything you've imagined. Using innovative new technology, Stonekeep draws you into its dark reaches so completely you'll forget it's just a game. Your feet will walk the ancient corridors. Your hands will wield weapons of metal and magic. You'll battle disembodied foes, rescue your allies from evil, liberate a massive dragon from bondage and discover an experience more realistic than anything you've ever imagined. Step into the mystery of Stonekeep and begin a quest through dark corridors, treacherous sewers and subterranean realms of faeries, magic and the living dead. You'll discover a world where darkness reigns and where you become part of a detailed story line that unfolds to your commands. Defeat evil, reclaim your immortal soul and experience the adventure that is Stonekeep. Concentrate on the experience, not the computer** * An epic production, Stonekeep is the result of nearly 30 man-years for a dedicated team of producers, designers, programmers, artists and other professionals. * Hollywood special effects, state-of-the art sound effects and music, expert scriptwriting and stunning live action cinematic sequences... Stonekeep is an experience like nothing you have ever seen. * 3-D rendered dungeons and creatures combine with live actors and amazing special effects to produce a game play environment of unparalled realism. * Full-Screen graphics let you truly feel the full intensity of your quest. Without distracting menus and icons, you can conctentrate on the experience, not the keyboard. * An intelligent Diary accompanies you in your travels, automatically mapping where you've been, the characters you've encountered and important clues you may have heard. * Includes the first chapter in the Stonekeep saga - Thera Awakening, a limited edition hardbound novella from Steve Jackson and David Pulver. [Box blurb]***The game came bundled with a small novella, Thera Awakening, coauthored by Steve Jackson and David Pulver.
Deus	ReadySoft (Silmarils)	1996	Unofficial sequel to Robinson's Requiem.
Aleshar: The World of Ice	Hypothermia	1997	Originally shareware, but made freeware at some point.
Descent To Undermountain	Interplay (Dragon Play)	1997	Latest version: 1.3 (as of ?)
Baldur's Gate: Edition spéciale	Interplay Productions	1998

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