The Bard's Tale (1985 video game)
Lead a party of adventurers to defeat the evil wizard Mangar.
The Bard's Tale, a fantasy role-playing game from 1985, was created by Michael Cranford for Interplay Productions and released by Electronic Arts on the Apple II. Players form a party of up to six adventurers to explore the cursed city of Skara Brae, trapped in eternal winter by the wizard Mangar the Dark. The goal is to defeat him by navigating streets, sewers, and dungeons. The game was later ported to many platforms, including the Commodore 64, NES, and MS-DOS. It launched a series of games and books. Early editions used the series title Tales of the Unknown, later dropped. A remastered version arrived for Windows in 2018 and Xbox One in 2019.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- Interplay Productions; Krome Studios (remaster)
- Publisher
- Electronic Arts (NA)
- Ariolasoft (EU)
- inXile Entertainment (remaster)
- Designer
- Michael Cranford
- Released
- Apple II, Commodore 64 NA, December 1985 Windows; 2018; Xbox One; 2019
- Genre
- Role-playing
- Modes
- Single-player
Facts from the source article.
Plot
The evil wizard Mangar the Dark threatened the small town of Skara Brae, causing evil creatures to ooze into the town and join his shadow domain. Mangar froze the surrounding lands with a spell of Eternal Winter, isolating Skara Brae from help, and the town militiamen disappeared. Only a handful of unproven young warriors, junior magic users, bards, and rogues remained to resist. The player forms a group of up to six characters and progresses by advancing them to defeat increasingly dangerous foes, obtaining items relevant to the quest, and gathering information. Skara Brae consists of a 30x30 map of buildings and streets, with gates and magical guardian statues blocking certain areas. Access to towers in the northeastern and southwestern corners is blocked by locked gates, and the main city gates to the west are impassable due to snow. One street teleports the party back to its beginning upon reaching where the city walls would be. Special buildings include the Adventurer's Guild, Garth's Equipment Shoppe, the Review Board (the only place to advance experience levels), taverns, temples, and dungeons. The dungeons are mazes full of monsters and riddles, some guarded by magical statues that attack trespassing parties.
Development
The Bard's Tale was created by Michael Cranford, who handled its concept, design, and programming, with Brian Fargo and Roe Adams III contributing additional design. Cranford and Fargo drew heavily from their Dungeons & Dragons sessions. The game was first called Shadow Snare and followed Cranford's earlier title Maze Master. Cranford, a devout Christian, wove references to Jesus into the game. After a rift with Fargo, Cranford left the series before the third installment to study philosophy and theology. A consultant suggested the city name Skara Brae, which also appeared in Ultima IV, though Cranford avoided other ideas to prevent overlap. Rebecca Heineman wrote data compression routines, a graphic editor, and all platform ports. She later accused Cranford of holding the finished game hostage to force Fargo into a contract granting Cranford sole rights to the sequel. Fargo confirmed this account but still defended Cranford. David Lowery handled graphics, Lawrence Holland composed the music, and Joe Ybarra produced.
Reception
Computer Gaming World's Scorpia in 1985 described Bard's Tale as 'not to be missed!' In 1993 she criticized the starting difficulty and single save location but stated it had many points of interest. The game was reviewed in Dragon #116 by Hartley and Pattie Lesser, who rated it well and recommended it. It was revisited in Dragon #120 and given 5 out of 5 stars. Compute!'s Gazette in 1986 called the Commodore 64 version wondrous, praising its depth and brilliance of execution, and concluded that the greatest danger was not Mangar but the likelihood of never tearing oneself away from the game. Compute! in 1987 called the Apple IIGS version the most graphically stunning product on any Apple computer. The ZX Spectrum version was favorably received, with CRASH rating it 86% and Sinclair User 89%, though noting it would not appeal to general gameplayers. Your Sinclair rated it 9/10. Macworld praised the music and gameplay but criticized monochrome graphics and repetitive combat. Zzap!64 gave the Commodore 64 version a Sizzler award and 94%, calling it the best RPG on the Commodore. Commodore Force ranked it number 13 on its top 100 Commodore 64 games list.
Legacy
The Bard's Tale was both a best-seller and a critical success, producing two official sequels and a Construction Set: The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight (1986), The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate (1988), and The Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991). A compilation titled The Bard's Tale Trilogy was released for DOS by Electronic Arts in 1990. According to Rebecca Heineman, the series was to be called Tales of the Unknown, with the three games titled The Bard's Tale, The Archmage's Tale, and The Thief's Tale, supported by the original cover art proclaiming 'Tales of the Unknown, Volume I.' However, Michael Cranford stated that an Electronic Arts agent came up with the city name and the game's title, and that The Destiny Knight was never going to be called The Archmage's Tale. What was originally going to be The Bard's Tale IV became Dragon Wars (1989) due to rights issues after Interplay parted ways with Electronic Arts. In 2004, InXile Entertainment released a game also titled The Bard's Tale, an unrelated action RPG that pokes fun at fantasy tropes; it was not a proper sequel, and Electronic Arts still owned the original trademarks, preventing InXile from using plot, characters, or locations from the original trilogy.
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