Nostalgia, Gaming, and You!

After finishing Kingdoms of Amalur I decided to round out my May with another retro RPG… Phantasie!
I played it as a kid but never to completion. I think it was one of those games (there were many) where ‘playing it’ mostly amounted to peering over one of my older brothers’ shoulders as they played it.

It’s really fun. The combat system isn’t great but the pixely graphics are charming and battles swoosh by fast enough that you don’t really mind the lack of tactical options. The story has a depth that is still fairly unusual for a circa-1985 CRPG, and there’s a lot of in-game text that fleshes it out (as opposed to, say, the Ultimas of this period, where most of the substantial writing/backstory was relegated to the manuals, NPC dialogue mostly being delivered in little snippets). Granted, the story is silly warmed-over Tolkien stuff (there is literally a Dark Lord with nine rings), but the world feels less abstract than some games of the era.

The dungeons are the game’s strongest element. They are physical real-world locations like an old temple or a city that has been overrun by brigands and monsters. They are full of scripted events and bits of text that give them cohesion and make them feel real. Their layouts are strongly reminiscent of the grid maps you’d see at the back of any pen and paper D&D module. And there is just something so primally satisfying about returning safely to town with a haul of goodies from your latest dungeon exploration, with a little bit of story/main quest advancement to give it all a sense of purpose.

Anyway, glad I revisited this. It’s just an unpretentious, solid, meat-and-potatoes mid-80s CRPG.

Very nice! Phantasie was one of my favorite series, and it’s the one 1980s’ series that I’d most like to return in my dream world. I need to get my ST emulator up and revisit the series along with Rings of Zilfin sometime. I never finished any of them either. Phantasie III had some nice minor improvements to combat as I recall involving missile weapons.

Are you playing with these colors?

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Or this?

It’s also the first RPG I can think of that modeled limb damage!

I started the Amiga version but I found the mid-80s mouse interface kind of annoying. Also, the adventurers don’t do a ‘Happy Dance’ when they win a battle! Fail. (I’ll post a gif of that when I get a chance.)

So I went with the C64 version as it’s the next easiest for me to emulate and I already had the ROM lying about. The interface is mostly designed for joystick a la Questron, which I usually don’t like, but the command menus are simple enough that I don’t really mind.

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As discussed, the Happy Dance that makes every battle worth fighting!

phantasiedance

Haha, adorable

I can’t remember why I did this, because I have never played a Dragon’s Lair game, even when faced with them regularly at the local arcades back in the day, but I watched a video review of an old game called Dragon’s Lair 3D: Return To The Lair, and I must say that the guy narrating the thing had such great enthusiasm for the game that I went and ordered a PC copy from eBay.

Sounds like the dev team went far and above what they needed to do, story-wise, and that’s part of what sold me on it.

That reminded me of one of my favorite pieces of retro gaming news from a few years ago, a Dragon’s Lair port…to the TI-99/4A (my first computer).

FWIW the antiquarian wrote up the (original) Dragon’s Lair phenomenon.

https://www.filfre.net/2013/06/the-laser-craze/

That spinoff sounds more interesting to me than the original, which IIRC removed from its jaw dropping '80s arcade context is a bunch of rather unforgiving QTE’s?

I just discovered this book today and bought it immediately.

I’ll let y’all know how it is.

Meanwhile, my intrepid adventurers combat an Orange Dragon…

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Haha, I remember that very good dragon face.

The monster portraits are rather charming, and there are a lot of them.

Ok, I finally see the dragon. Yesterday I was staring at it for 5 minutes going “how is that a dragon?”. I’m really bad at interpreting pixel art. I had the same problem with the original Master of Magic. “How is that a wizard? What even is that?”

If that dragon stays like that for 4 hours or longer, he should seek medical attention

Pop quiz, hot shot:

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Oh pissonic flayer!

@John_Many_Jars on all fours lurching slightly to the left.