The Bard’s Tale

Publisher: Electronic Arts/Interplay Productions

Designer: Micheal Cranford

Type: Roleplaying Game

Platform: Various

Release Date: 1985

Rating:

I still remember when this game first appeared – it was literally a revolution in the style of the Computer Roleplaying Game. Sure, it is pretty basic, but that is what is to be expected for a game that appeared in the 80s. Also, it isn’t as big as some of the other games, fitting on just a single C64 disk, with one side being for the city, and the boot, and the other side being for the dungeons. From what I remember there are only four (or five) dungeons to explore, so yeah, the game isn’t actually that big, though of course, these dungeons are of a decent size.

I’m not quite sure of the story, but you start in the city of Skara Brae (which is named after a small prehistoric city that is located on an island in Scotland – if it wasn’t for Bards Tale, this rather small town, consisting of only 8 houses, would have gone by the wayside), which has been taken over by some evil mage named Mangar. So, your quest is to basically kill Mangar – something that I managed to accomplish back in my teenage years.

Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend playing this game on a C64 emulator because, honestly, it is really, really, really slow, and there is no what to speed up the combat either, and the combat can get pretty long. Sure, there are somewhat faster PC versions, and the graphics are slightly better as well. However, if you really want to play this game they have recently released an enhanced version, which is available on Steam. Yeah, this is something that I am really tempted to check out sometime, though not right away.

While it certainly doesn’t come close to any of the games that I have played recently, this game still has a charm and a legacy, about it that will keep it in the annals of classic computer games.

Anyway, you can find out more about this game on Wikipedia, or you can even check out a wiki page dedicated to it, and the service. Oh, and if you want some hints then a page has been set up for that as well.