"A Dungeons & Dragons Adventure" part 5, 1981.

Another weekend, another instalment of the comic strip advertisements for the D&D pen and paper game... this one featuring the first episode of a new adventure for our crew!

OUR HEROS RELAX AT GAVIN'S INN AFTER RESCUING INDEL THE ELF FROM CERTAIN DEATH!
S: THAT WAS A CLOSE CALL EH VALERIUS?
V: NOT NEARLY AS CLOSE AS OUR FIRST ADVENTURE SAREN.
G: IT SEEMS LIKE ONLY YESTERDAY WHEN WE WERE INTRODUCED BY MY MENTOR, GRINDAL...
G: (... A HEALER, AN ELF AND A FIGHTER. THEY WILL BE YOUR COMPANIONS ON THIS QUEST GRIMSLADE.)
"WE HAD TO OVERCOME MANY PERILS TO FIND..."
"THE FABULOUS HEART OF MEKRON!"
G: (YOU HAVE ALL DONE WELL! YOU WILL MAKE A FINE WIZARD ONE DAY, GRIMSLADE!
JUST THEN AT THE INN!...
G: HELLLP MEEE!
V: WHO?
I: URK!
THUD!
G: IT IS I...
S: GRINDAL!
G: GASP!!

Sorry for the dip in activity this week ... I've got no lack of posts to make, but the sameness of my current backlog is proving somewhat numbing. I suspect I'll be dialing down the D&D theme for a while shortly. Cheers!

"Shadow Sorcerer", 1991.

I gush over Westwood's Forgotten Realms AD&D games for SSI, but vomit all over U.S. Gold's Dragonlance AD&D games for them. Was it the companies' different corporate cultures that resulted in such a strong divergence of opinion? Is the problem just the subject matter -- as with Dragonstrike, could Westwood have made better Dragonlance games than U.S. Gold did? These and other questions... have no answer.

A whole new look!
A whole new way
to play!

SHADOW SORCERER
AN ANIMATED FANTASY ADVENTURE

SHADOW SORCERER combines elements of role-playing with strategy, exploration and animated action. It's an exciting new way to play computer AD&D fantasy gaming!

Control four characters at the same time -- even during fully-animated real-time combat! All in 3-D isometric perspective!

Select your party from 16 different heroes, each with pre-made attributes. You've got nothing but trouble ahead: hundreds of refugees who desperately need your help to find safe haven.

Strange monsters that inhabit the vast wilderness, caverns and dungeons. An army of Draconians led by a red dragon!

When the spells and weapons start flying, you'll love the simple "point-and-click" interface!

SHADOW SORCERER. It's a whole new experience in fantasy gaming!

[screenshot]
Control four characters at once even during real-time combat!
[screenshot]
Play in the DRAGONLANCE game world -- in 3-D isometric view!
[screenshot]
One of the many colorful characters who can help you on your quest.

The screenshots don't entirely sell me, and the captions just reiterate points made earlier in the copy. I see an isometric view reminiscent of Populous or (if you like) Knight Lore, but (I bet) less fun. The bottom screenshot tells me that this is a game for babies -- this game's Tom Bombadil moment, I suppose, a mismatch with its intended tone of refugee salvation.

They keep harping on its "animated" nature. "Animated action"? Is it possible to have an action game with no animation? Still Life: The Arcade Shooter. (I suppose you can have non-animated sprite movement, like eg. the textmode sprites in ZZT.) Touting a combination of role-playing, strategy, exploration and action concerns me, colouring with all the crayons but ending up with brown rather than rainbow. But no, they reassure me, "[i]t's an exciting new way to play computer AD&D fantasy gaming!" More fun than Pool of Radiance? The box isn't gold, to that's not a good sign. Here's the deal, U.S. Gold -- this is your third kick at the can, and your previous two were duds. Why should I trust you now? Well, they did change their approach -- this game is a plot sequel to Dragons of Flame, but the gameplay is very, very different.

Then we get this shopping list: control 4 characters simultaneously -- fun in Syndicate, but this is no Syndicate -- during fully-animated (there they go again) real-time (uh-oh) combat -- sounds like a headache to me! -- in 3-D isometric perspective ... wihch is a design decision, not a selling point. Congratulations, SSI, you've compounded my concern with more concern. I suppose they're just trying their hardest to talk up the game they have to sell, rather than coming up with misleading or deceptive claims about it.

Why would I want to select from a pool of characters with pre-made attributes? Then I can't cheat and give them all 18s! (Not such an egregious cheat, since the AD&D games are still quite difficult even with stat-pumped characters.) I suppose this gives the game more of a "turn on and play" feel without needing to go through tedious character generation? Here we have a third concern: hundreds of refugees desperately need my help. That tells me: "you will need to protect countless NPCs with no sense of self-preservation." Maybe it's more fun than it sounds, as broken "accompany and protect" missions weren't yet such an industry cliche at this point. Then I start getting more interested: strange monsters, caverns, dungeons. (Am I leading refugees through dungeons? Doesn't seem the most prudent...) The army of Draconians sounds like an un-fun pain in the ass, but I concede to interest in the encounter with the red dragon. I like that GUIs were sufficiently novel in 1991 that the simple "point-and-click" interface warrants mention and quotation marks rather than just being something gamers swim through like fish in water.

You know what I don't need, Larry Elmore? Dragons with fins for ears, spikes on their nose, and hipster beards. Feathers on dinosaurs I've come to terms with, but when you start making my dragons scruffy and shaggy, you cross a line! I do dig the chain mail over Kitiara's background helmet's mouth -- offering extra protection in an opposite fashion to Lord Soth's lackadaisical helm. I can see that the screenshots very deftly erase Tasslehoff Burrfoot the kender from the scene -- probably an improvement. Now can we get rid of Tanis Half-Elven's hipster First Nations feather earrings? Tika Waylan is looking like she just stumbled off the SnarfQuest backlot, and Laurana has about as much dignity as one can muster with slightly crossed eyes.

"Death Knights of Krynn", 1991.

Critical Dragonlance failure! This ad artwork contains no dragons nor any lances! This ad is actually for a game from the SkullyKnight campaign setting. (Soth was eventually relocated to Ravenloft, where he makes quite a bit more sense.)

DEATH KNIGHTS OF KRYNN
The incredible sequel to CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN!

LORD SOTH HAS THROWN DOWN THE GAUNTLET OF CHALLENGE!

It has been but one short year since the Champions of Krynn claimed victory over the massed forces of evil. Now, the Lord of the Death Knights, Soth himself, is preparing to wreak havoc in an eruption of evil such as Krynn has never witnessed!

As members of the Special Solamnic Order of the Champions of Krynn, you and your party stand as the only force capable of answering Soth's deadly challenge -- and living to tell of it!

DEATH KNIGHTS OF KRYNN takes the award-winning game system used in CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN to new heights! Now, characters transferred from CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN can keep their money and items. Higher character levels, new monsters, new spells and enhanced combat aiming make for AD&D fantasy role-playing beyond anything you've ever experienced!

It's nice for them to tell us precisely which variety of gauntlet has been thrown down; casting the gauntlet after all is such an open-ended phrase that it could imply just about anything.

The party is "the only force capable of answering Soth's deadly challenge -- and living to tell of it!", but there are plenty of other forces who could answer it and die in the process. It's a sign of the scrupulosity of the Solamnic Order that they wouldn't send in troubleshooters they didn't expect to fully survive, just to get them out of their bind.

Apparently this game takes the system of its predecessor further. Now, they can keep their money and items. (Then, there was no prior game for them to inherit goods from. That's not a failure of the earlier game: that's just what it means to be the first in a trilogy.) "Higher character levels, new monsters, new spells" sum up the usual total of improvements, plus the curiously particular "enhanced combat aiming", which I guess reflects a concern that didn't crop up in the Realms-based Gold Box games. Unlike earlier ads, they're not boasting the incredible graphics of the game's 3-D adventuring environment, so I guess they learned something.

Cf. my horse question from the Silver Blades ad post: these are clearly demonic night-mares, and not just because they are so described in the bottom-left screenshot: their eyes glow red and their faces are sinisterly wrinkled. They only dine on Hell oats and apples of discord in their asbestos stable.

OK, undead dragon screenshot: I appreciate that with no flesh on your bones, you're considerably lighter than you were in life -- but with no membrane stretched between your wingbones, with what are you flying? A: magic. Superman's cape doesn't make him fly either, it just helps him to look good when he does.

I've always dug the way Soth's helmet design affords him no nose protection. No nose = no protection needed there! I guess his sinister red eyes are just floating in a giant collapsed sinus cavity. His companions appear to have cloned Darth Vader's lightsaber, but his own mace seems to be secreting some sinister incense like a really evil censer.

What do you think motivates a skeletal warrior in a fantasy realm? Hedonistic pursuits are right out, with the possible exception of pure sadism. What will a skeleton do with riches? (Far-right skelly is wearing a bangle around his upper arm-bone. Bet the bony ladies will be all over that. What? he is a bony lady? Awkward! I should have looked at the hips.) Then again, I suppose it's not like a dragon can take his hoard down to the corner store either: hi, I'd like a carton of smokes and the March issue of PlayDrake.

"Champions of Krynn", 1990.

(Whoops, missed a 1990 D&D title!) OK, enough messing around. Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds had been moving more units than the rest of SSI's product line altogether (that's right: more than Battles of Napoleon and Germany Turns East combined), so it's time to cut their losses from the weird Dragonlance action-adventures and give the world a tactical Dragonlance Gold Box CRPG instead. I don't know for a fact that things were informed by those particular motivations, but this seems conspicuously follow-uppy.

CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN

The first fantasy role-playing epic set in the AD&D DRAGONLANCE game world!

CHAMPIONS OF KRYNN improves on the award-winning game system used in SSI's mega-hits POOL OF RADIANCE and CURSE OF THE AZURE BONDS. For the first time ever on your computer, you'll enjoy fantasy role-playing adventure in the legendary AD&D game world of Krynn! Your quest: Defeat a vile plot by the forces of evil to establish the Dark Queen, Takhisis, as undisputed ruler of Krynn!

Improves on the award-winning game system used in SSI's mega-hits? (Mega-hits? And which awards?) This game adds complexity: Dragonlance races and classes, plus tidal magic influence caused by the movements of Krynn's moons. Do those, however, make for a better game? As much richness as kender, gully dwarves and gnomes add to the novels, improvements they may lend the CRPG conversion remain unclear. "For the first time ever on your computer, you'll enjoy fantasy role-playing adventure in the legendary AD&D game world of Krynn!" Have they already so baldly conceded that the action-adventures were no fantasy role-playing adventures at all?

Free poster? Sign me up! Dragonlance's flying citadels seem painfully derived from surreal paintings by Magritte. You know what's truly pathetic? Riding away from a flying, dragon-swarming citadel on horseback. Looking at the screenshot we can see an artist's interpretation of Krynn's dragons hilariously conforming to breed characteristics spelled out in the campaign-agnostic Monster Manual of the prior edition, designating Gold Dragons as in the Asiatic vein.

Where is the light source in this painting, anyhow?

"A Dungeons & Dragons Adventure" part 4, 1981.

My initial intention was to keep the D&D video game posts for the weekdays and these less labour-intensive related D&D comic-book-style ads for the weekends, but I think this is my first opportunity to actually make it happen this way. I don't have much qualifying context for these ads, merely transcriptions -- and lemme tell you, once Google Images has OCR capability, this blog is toast!

DEEP IN THE DUNGEON, INDEL THE ELF COMES FACE TO FACE WITH A HUGE DRAGON!
D: GREETINGS, MORTAL WORM!
I: ULP!

WHILE ELSEWHERE HIS COMPANIONS SEARCH FOR HIM...
S: MY POWERS TELL ME THAT HE'S BEHIND THIS DOOR.

V: THEN WE MUST GET THROUGH!

A MIGHTY BLOW FROM THE FIGHTER'S SHOULDER OPENS THE DOOR WITH A CRASH TO REVEAL...
G: -- INDEL!
G: GOOD WORK, VALERIUS!

V: NOW IT'S YOUR TURN, DRAGON!

D: THE GREAT SWORD NARIL!
D: STAY YOUR HAND, WARRIOR! YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS MAY LEAVE IN PEACE!

I: WHAT A DAY!
S: COME! GAVIN'S INN HAS A WARM FIRE TO RELAX BY.
THE END
WATCH FOR INDEL AND HIS FRIENDS IN UPCOMING DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS ADVENTURES--!

Did I mention GOG's D&D video game sale? For the next two days, you can get basically $100 worth of games for $20... the more you get, the steeper the savings. Times like this I wish I'd followed through on my inquiries about compensation for referral traffic to them, since now I'm just shilling pro bono! Still, it's acutely relevant and I like to think it's of interest to my, er, stonily silent readership.

"Dungeon Keeper", Windows, 1997.

OK, time for a dragon break... but we'll keep the dungeon, thank you. I never played this one back in the day (too busy graduating high school perhaps), but its legacy has stood the test of time, inspiring inheritors to its ideas such as Overlord, Evil Genius and War for the Overworld. "Play as the antagonist" just wasn't a concept that had popped yet in the '90s -- that halcyon, pre-GTA era.

Anyhow, I'm procrastinating here, and the clock is ticking: supposing my calculations are correct, until 2 am Sunday PST, GOG (aka Good Old Games) is offering Dungeon Keeper for free, including the expansion, and its sequel for a buck fifty. Also, steep discounts off of Interplay-era D&D games whose ads I'm still six print-years away from sharing with you. To make up for my getting the word out late, here you go, an unprecedented two posts in one day! But you may not see another until the weekend wraps up.

(And as a totally unrelated giveaway for hip-hop fans, until 8 am Saturday, De La Soul is giving away any and all of its albums for free. Though there are a couple of suitable games, I really didn't have any ads that fit that theme.)

I feel a bit bad announcing these here, since it's already taken quite a while for the information to trickle down to me and there isn't much time left -- if you're depending on my video game ad blog for current news, you're pretty hard up. All the same, free is free. (I'm growing a collection of redundant Steam codes which should also yield some giveaways down the road, if I can think of some kind of compelling contest to run.)

The word is out. Dungeon Keeper
is really bad.

"Fiendishly good"

- Computer and Net Player, 10/10

"It brings bad things to life"

- Computer Gaming World, ****.5

"Wonderfully evil and wickedly addictive"

- PC Gamer, 90%

"Hell is bubbling out of your PC"

- Happy Puppy

"The bad guys have more fun"

- Newsweek

And we couldn't be more proud.

Look for the Deeper Dungeons evil add-on at your local retailer.
www.bullfrog.ea.com

It was only in 1987 that Michael Jackson released "Bad", making ofays like myself scratch their heads over the counterintuitive use of the term; 10 years later, I gather we'd come to terms with its use as abbreviation for "bad-ass". (And of course it is a nice play on the player controlling what amounts to an evil villain. Breakdown: the game is nasty, but not poorly-executed. But that's not catchy at all!)

This is a species of the "let the good reviews speak for us" style of ad, one which we haven't seen much of yet... it doesn't make for compelling transcription on my end, but you don't have to hire anyone to pen copy for your ad and besides, gives the ad an air of (curated) objectivity. "We think we're great, but don't just take our word for it... here are some other people who also think we're great, like the highly reputable 'Happy Puppy'!" (whose sound bite here could equally have been used to sell Doom!)

I like the play on GE's slogan, "We bring good things to life". And then there is the peek at the .ea.com URL, a sign of the beginning of the end. Bullfrog founder Peter Molyneux hadn't yet become a punchline to the gaming industry (and, well, inspiration to the indies), though this was his final game at the helm of his company before its vital juices were sucked out and the empty structure shuttered. I don't give EA a lot of love on this blog because it often comes up in association with the final chapters of many of the companies whose great games I report on here, notably the visionary titans of my beloved '90s: Kesmai, Origin, Bullfrog, Westwood, Maxis. A couple of them still live on as zombie labels, but none of them still have the spark of life behind their eyes.

"TWO GAMES THAT PUT YOU IN YOUR PLACE", NES, 1991.

In case you were wondering what the Hillsfar box art looked like, here's a peek at its incredibly generic art. (And here, an incredibly generic ad design: we are selling two games -- here is what their boxes will look like on store shelves.) Yes, three years down the line, these games found their way converted to the NES, for better or for worse. Hillsfar probably suffered less in the conversion, excepting of course that it could not realise its raison d'être, importing characters from Pool to buff for later export back to Pool. Here, as in most games, the grinding would just have to be an end unto itself.

TWO GAMES THAT PUT YOU IN YOUR PLACE

NOW YOU HAVE TWO OFFICIAL AD&D FORGOTTEN REALMS WORLDS TO CHALLENGE!

The Walled City of Hillsfar!

Ride your horse past the gates of Hillsfar and find that it's been conquered by Maalthir, who rules with his powerful magic and his ruthless guards. Stripped of your weapons, you must use your wits to overcome the obstacles in your path.

• More than 2 megs of memory
• Long-life lithium battery saves play positions
• Game missions change depending on character selection

Find the Pool of Radiance!

The legendary pool, said to give warriors tremendous strength, may help your band of adventurers restore the ruined city of Phlan to its former glory. Drive out the terrifying armed guards who have taken over, destroying minotaurs and orcs along the way.

• Over 4 megs of playing power
• Long-life lithium battery saves play positions
• Based on the internationally-known AD&D PC game

The ad copy is strange stuff. The headline suggests punishment, but where is my place? Is my place the Forgotten Realms? The blurbs emphasize the games' plot, something that the computer-version ads really skipped lightly over. But then you hit the virtually identical bullet lists of hardware features: long-life lithium batteries and 2 megs of memory (vs. 4 megs of playing power -- an important distinction that I cannot instinctively unravel.) My recollection of Pool is that the legendary pool gives powers to the game's antagonist, not to the party of heroes: also, how curious to present it as a game in which players destroy minotaurs and orcs, specifically. (Hillsfar is the one most closely associated with minotaurs, as we have seen, and yet it goes unmentioned here. Go figure.)
I do like the way Pool of Radiance's logo is outlined groovily, while Hillsfar gets stuck with a more conventional typography. How can we make these boxes consistent and distinctive?
I'll take a momentary break from AD&D tomorrow to talk up something topical!