The Bard's Tale (1985 video game)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Bard's Tale
The Bard's Tale box cover
Developer(s) Interplay Productions
Publisher(s) Electronic Arts & Ariolasoft (Europe)
Designer(s) Michael Cranford
Platform(s) Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Apple IIGS, Apple Macintosh, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, NES, ZX Spectrum, NEC PC-9801
Release date 1985 - 1991
Genre(s) RPG
Mode(s) Single player
Media Cassette, Floppy disk, Cartridge
Input methods Keyboard, Joystick

The Bard's Tale (Tales of the Unknown: Volume I) is a fantasy computer role-playing game created by Interplay Productions in 1985 and distributed by Electronic Arts. It was designed and programmed by Michael Cranford.

Based loosely on traditional Dungeons and Dragons gameplay and inspired by the Wizardry computer games, The Bard's Tale was noteworthy for its unprecedented 3D graphics and animated character portraits.

It was originally released for the Apple II, and was also ported to the Commodore 64, Apple IIgs, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Apple Macintosh, and NES platforms.

Contents

[edit] Story

The following text from the box cover summarizes the premise:

Long ago, when magic still prevailed, the evil wizard Mangar the Dark threatened a small but harmonious country town called Skara Brae. Evil creatures oozed into Skara Brae and joined his shadow domain. Mangar froze the surrounding lands with a spell of Eternal Winter, totally isolating Skara Brae from any possible help. Then, one night the town militiamen all disappeared. The future of Skara Brae hung in the balance. And who was left to resist? Only a handful of unproven young Warriors, junior Magic Users, a couple of Bards barely old enough to drink, and some out of work Rogues. You are there. You are the leader of this ragtag group of freedom fighters. Luckily you have a Bard with you to sing your glories, if you survive. For this is the stuff of legends. And so the story begins...

The intro screen sports a bard sitting in a tavern. Between occasional sips from his mug, he sings and the text reads:

The song I sing will tell the tale
of a cold and wintery day.
Of castle walls and torchlit halls
And a price men had to pay.
When evil fled and brave men bled
The Dark One came to stay
Till men of old for blood and gold
Hath rescued Skara Brae.

Aided by Garth the blacksmith, Roscoe the magic peddler, Kylearan the archmage — and under the watchful eye of the Review Board — the player's party of six characters set off through mazes of wine cellars, sewers, catacombs, castles and towers. The player must answer riddles, solve puzzles and battle enemies.

[edit] Gameplay

A screenshot of The Bard's Tale on the Commodore 64.
A screenshot of The Bard's Tale on the Commodore 64.
A screenshot of The Bard's Tale on the Apple IIGS.
A screenshot of The Bard's Tale on the Apple IIGS.

The Bard's Tale is a straightforward "dungeon crawl". The objective is to gain experience and advance characters' skills through (mostly) random combat with enemies and monsters. This is done while exploring maze-like dungeons, solving occasional puzzles and riddles, and finding or buying better weapons and armor. Combat is round-based and abstract, described in text rather than shown graphically; there is no notion of moving characters around on a map during combat. The second and third games of the series do have a concept of distance between the player's party and its enemies, so that close-range weapons are not usable until the distance has been suitably reduced; however the only movement available to the party is an abstract "advancing". Cash and experience points are distributed evenly to all surviving party members after a particular encounter is won.

When beginning the game, the player may create up to six player characters, chosen from among the following classes: bard, hunter, monk, paladin, rogue, warrior, magician, and conjurer. The classes sorcerer and wizard were available to experienced conjurers and magicians. A typical well-balanced party might consist of a couple of fighters, a rogue, a bard, and a couple of magic users. On some platforms, the player could import previously created characters from Wizardry and/or Ultima III, which was somewhat revolutionary at the time.

The most important character was arguably the bard, whose magical songs functioned like long-lasting spells and affected the player's party in various ways—such as strengthening their armour, or increasing their attack speed, much like "buffs" in modern day MMORPGS. A number of obligatory puzzles in the game were unsolvable without the use of bard songs. Each bard song triggered corresponding music while he played (some classical, some original).

With only a map of the town of Skara Brae included on the box, it was usually necessary for players to use pencil and graph paper to make their own maps as they played through the game. In the first two games, each dungeon level was set on a fixed 22 by 22 grid.

Magic users were allowed to change classes permanently. The game manual describes a magic user who has mastered all spells from all four classes as "an Archmage, the most powerful being in the world of The Bard's Tale." However, Archmage status had no effect on gameplay other than simply having all spells available.

Casting one of the 85 magic user spells consisted of typing a four-letter code found only in the printed game manual, which perhaps helped limit piracy and contributed to the commercial success of the game.

[edit] Critical reception

The ZX Spectrum version of The Bard's Tale, released in 1988,[1] was very well received. CRASH said that "the Skara Brae environment is so complex and involves so many different factors that it's hard not to get completely enthralled in your quest" and rated it at 86%.[2] Sinclair User rated it at 89%, but noted that it would not appeal to general gameplayers, saying that "The Bard's Tale will enthrall diehard pixie fans [...] but there's too much text, and not enough graphics and animation, to convert the uncommitted."[3] Your Sinclair were similarly positive about the game, rating it 9/10.[4]

[edit] Sequels

A magazine advertisement for The Bard's Tale.
A magazine advertisement for The Bard's Tale.

The Bard's Tale was both a best-seller and a critical success, and produced three official sequels:

(A later Interplay game, Dragon Wars, used an upgraded Bard's Tale software engine, and many fans[citation needed] thought of it as a fourth Bard's Tale game in spirit, if not in name.)

In 2003, Brian Fargo (who created maps for the first two Bard's Tale games and directed the third) left Interplay Entertainment and began a new game development company named InXile Entertainment. In 2004 they released their first game, also titled The Bard's Tale — an irreverent console-style top-down action game which pokes fun at fantasy role-playing games such as the original Bard's Tale. It was not a sequel to the classic Bard's Tale series — although a legal loophole allowed InXile to use the name, Electronic Arts still owns the original trademarks. InXile was not legally allowed to use any of the plot, characters or locations featured in the original trilogy.

[edit] Novels

A series of novels based on The Bard's Tale were published by Baen Books during the 1990s. Although the books had little in common with the storyline of the games, their existence is a testament to how influential the Bard's Tale brand had become. They include:

  1. Castle of Deception, by Mercedes Lackey and Josepha Sherman (1992, ISBN 0-671-72125-9)
  2. Fortress of Frost and Fire, by Mercedes Lackey and Ru Emerson (1993, ISBN 0-671-72162-3)
  3. Prison of Souls, by Mercedes Lackey and Mark Shepherd (1994, ISBN 0-671-72193-3)
  4. The Chaos Gate, by Josepha Sherman (1994, ISBN 0-671-87597-3)
  5. Thunder of the Captains, by Holly Lisle and Aaron Allston (1996, ISBN 0-671-87731-3)
  6. Wrath of the Princes, by Holly Lisle and Aaron Allston (1997, ISBN 0-671-87771-2)
  7. Escape from Roksamur, by Mark Shepherd (1997, ISBN 0-671-87797-6)
  8. Curse of the Black Heron, by Holly Lisle (1998, ISBN 0-671-87868-9)

While they are listed here in the order they were published, some books in the series connect together more than others, such as Castle of Deception and The Chaos Gate, Prison of Souls and Escape from Roksamur, and Thunder of the Captains and Wrath of the Princes.

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

According to Bill Heineman (programmer of The Bard's Tale III) the name of the overall series was to be Tales of the Unknown, and the three games were to be entitled The Bard's Tale, The Archmage's Tale, and The Thief's Tale. However, the immense popularity of the first game prompted Electronic Arts to re-brand the series under the more well-known name, The Bard's Tale.

Michael Cranford, the designer and programmer of the first two Bard's Tale games, was a devout Christian. He included references to Jesus Christ in The Bard's Tale, and all but one of the city names in The Bard's Tale II are taken from the New Testament. In fact, the reason he was not involved in The Bard's Tale III was because he decided to go back to university to study philosophy and theology. He went on to found a web site for Christian outreach called Sundoulos[1].

Lawrence Holland, who composed the music and programmed the music interface for The Bard's Tale, went on to create the renowned Star Wars: X-Wing series of games for LucasArts. He founded his own game company, Totally Games, in mid 1980's.

Skara Brae is the name of a real historical settlement on the west coast of Orkney (off northern Scotland). The town name is also used in the popular Ultima series of computer games. As Ultima IV, the first Ultima to use the name, was released almost at the same time as The Bard's Tale, this is probably a coincidence.

Some shield spells in the manual are described to have been invented by a wizard named Ybarra, and upon giving the correct answer to a riddle question at one point in the game the party receives a powerful magic item: The Ybarra Shield. This is in reference to one of the game's developers and founders of Electronic Arts, Joe Ybarra, a producer responsible for M.U.L.E., the original Madden NFL and many groundbreaking games. Ybarra claims to have had no idea that his co-workers had slipped his name into the game at the time.

"Death and drek", one of the more memorable (and obscure) battle cries from the series, may have been borrowed from The Chronicles of Amber. In Roger Zelazny's 1970 short story Nine Princes in Amber, the narrator Corwin declares, "Death and dreck", precursoring a melee encounter. "Dreck" is a (somewhat impolite) German word for dirt.

The name of the mad god "Tarjan" could possibly stem from Robert Tarjan, a famous computer scientist.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Bard's Tale, The. World of Spectrum. Retrieved on 2007-12-11.
  2. ^ "The Bard's Tale" (August 1988). CRASH (55): 55–56. 
  3. ^ "Bards Tale" (August 1988). Sinclair User (77): 88–89. 
  4. ^ Gerrard, Mike (September 1988). "The Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unknown". Your Sinclair (33): 28. 

[edit] External links

[edit] Fansites