Know your classics - by Jeroen

Lands of Lore - The Throne of Chaos

"Lands of Lore - The Throne of Chaos" is a first-person dungeon-crawler style RPG created by Westwood and Virgin, and released first released in 1993 for MS-DOS. The game works pretty well in DOSBox. Although ScummVM is supposed to support the game, I recommend against using ScummVM for this game.

In-game intro

Let's just kick off with the good stuff. The screenshot above was taken of the in-game introduction animation, which was downright stunning for its time. It was very rare to see such detailed animation back in the 1990s. This made the game very inviting. On top of that for the CD-ROM version of the game, they hired Patrick Steward (famous for his roles as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star-Trek The Next Generation, and Xavier in X-Men) to voice King Richard (left on the screenshot), to make the game extra appealing. The CD-ROM version also contains the history of the world in which the story takes place narrated by thesame guy.

Normally I get very skeptic when I see such beautiful animations voiced by actors that "matter". Normally this promises a very very crappy game hidden behind good graphics and famous actors. Well, it's a rare case when I'm glad something does NOT live up to expectations like that, as Lands Of Lore does also excel on the points that matter most. Let's take a quick look shall we?

The Four Heroes

What may be a bit of a down-side in this game is the fact you cannot "create" a character like you can in Eye of the Beholder. This was done due to the limited resources they had at the time and still wanting to make more interaction with the character himself and his surroundings possible. It was an obvious choice, not all dungeon-crawler fans may be happy with, but give the game a chance. The characters are well-balanced and it's certainly working out in this game.

The four characters are:

• Ak'Shel is a Dracoid and is the most powerful choice when you wish to focus on magic. Very likely you will only be able to use the game's strongest magic if you pick him as your hero.

• Michael is physically the strongest pick. He can hit very hard.

• Kieran is the fastest. He can act twice as fast as all the others and appears to be the best pick when you want to use shooting weapons. Unfortunately, the shooting weapons part is a bit "under-worked-out", as you cannot compare shooting weapons as well as melee weapons. Yes even this game has its weak points.

• Conrad is the most balanced character. Stronger in magic than Kieran and Michael, but not as strong as Ak'Shel. Stronger in normal attacks than Ak'shel and Kieran but not as strong as Michael, and so on.

Ak'shel, Michael and Kieran all focus on one of the three points the game is specifically worked out for and Conrad covers them all in a certain sense, but not as good as the others. It does provide some choices.

You choice does NOT affect the story line in any way. It only matters in combat. Although each hero has his own voice actor (CD-ROM version only), his own animated picture and all other characters you meet in the game will always call him by name.

The Game

The Game starts at Gladstone Keep. The home of King Richard of the Kingdom of Gladstone. Your first task is to see the king, and after that the game will explain what to do next. The game is pretty straight-forward in it's missions, which is only a big plus as this helps you to move along quite easily. The game can still be challenging though.

A quick look onto the screen shows that it's all pretty well organized and set up as is to be expected of an RPG Dungeon Crawler written in this era. You can click on the arrows to move around, alternatively the cursor keys can also be used for that. Unfortunately the "WASD" key combination is not supported, but that is due to the fact that WASD was not used at all in ANY game released in this time or earlier.

The "ZZZ" icon is to make your character rest. That means recovering HP and MP (hit points and magic points respectively). Be warned that resting takes time, and monsters in the field will keep moving around while you rest, meaning you can be attacked during your rest (causing the party to wake up, but be damaged nevertheless). If you click this icon while everybody is at full HP and MP, they will smile at you, which is pretty funny.

The "41" on the screenshot above is your money. The currency in Lands of Lore is "silver crowns".
And below we can see the inventory, which is, like in any dungeon crawler limited. However as party members come and go, your inventory is shared among your entire party.

The "diskette" icon (left-bottom, in case you've never seen one) leads to the game options like saving and the game config. You can also set the strength of the monsters. Like "Whimpy" if you want easier monsters or "Ferocious" when you seek a real challenge.

Attacking will cause a cooldown on your character, well nothing new on this department.
Due to this, you can get the hang of Lands of Lore quite easily, so you only have a short learning curve.

Quite unique to the series might be the magic system. All characters can do magic, however one is better than the other. You acquire spells by obtaining scrolls. So far nothing new. All characters can use the same spells, so you don't have to worry about to whom to give a spell. This makes things easier to organize. When you click the yellow icon next the the party member's portrait you'll see a small menu with "I", "II", "III" and "IV". Those show the four grades each spell can have. The higher the grade, the more MP the spell costs to perform, but the more powerful it will be. You should use this wisely. It makes no sense to use grade IV when grade II is enough to kill a monster. The choice of spell is of course also very important as some monsters are not sensitive to a certain kind of spell and over sensitive to another. The spell animations are superb for the time the game was written in.

The game does provide a challenge in beating the enemies. The interface is easy to use, and the level design is also well-worked out. Due to the automap feature, you will not easily get lost, so no wasting time on finding out where to go, and all important places are marked. You can also use the automap for places were you are not at the the time or to which you cannot even get to anymore. Lands of Lore features one of the best automap features ever.

Story-line

The story-line of the game is not very special. Gladstone is the greatest kingdom among the lands and its greatest enemy is the Dark Army, led by an evil woman named Scotia. Scotia found a magic ring called "The Nether Mask". This ring allows its bearer to transforms in any shape he or she desires. She becomes very dangerous, and during the game she poisons King Richard and tries to take over the realm. You are summoned to cure the king, stop Scotia and bring peace back to the realm of Gladstone.

Not a very original story-line, but it fits the game well, and due to the lore of the lands being well worked out and well-developed characters, the game does take you into its story line well. Since the gameplay does not suffer under all the graphics workouts (which is a very great problem nowadays, even back then) the story-line provides just the extra motivation despite it not being very special on its own.

Conclusion

Lands of Lore is one of those rare titles that covers it all. Great audio and visuals (for its time), a story-line that is not much but still well-written to get you into the story quite well, an easy to use interface and a challenging gameplay. It's considered one of the best RPG games of its time for MS-DOS. It can even compare with some games written today.
It's not that unlogical the game got two sequels due to the success the game had at its time. Unfortunately, both sequels never lived up to the expectations the first game gave you. ;(

Obtaining the game now

I got my copy on CD-ROM back in the time it was for sale.
Today it can be found on GOG.com click here for that. (thanks to Jani for pointing that out).

It is a common misconception that you can download the game for free now due to its age. Copyrights expire 70 years after the death of the copyright holder. If the copyright holder is a company (which is the case for this game), the copyrights expire 70 years after its publication, so the game will become public domain in 2061 for the first release, and 2063 for the CD-ROM version, and not any moment sooner.
If you see any site claiming differently, it's either lying or misinformed.

Some publishers do offer a place where you can legally download stuff (mostly for a price). If you know any, please let me know and I'll add it to this review.

Ever heard of GOG (https://www.gog.com/)? The game (Lands of Lore) can be found here: https://www.gog.com/game/lands_of_lore_1_2

Why didn't I think of GOG myself? Thank you, Jani!

God of Thunder

God of Thunder is a Zelda-like action adventure game, and this is an indie game released around the early nineties.
This is completely compatible with DOSBox, and that's not even the best part. The original Game Developers have now released the originally Shareware production (Shareware was very common for Indie software at the time) as Freeware.

One of the sites to download it from can be found here.

Introduction to the game

Like many Shareware games in the 1990s, God of Thunder features three episodes which can be played as three different games, of which the first one was free, and the other two had to be bought. Well now that the game is entirely freeware you will get all three episodes for free. You can play these episodes in random order, but starting with episode 1 and doing the other 2 in order, will make the game very logic, first of all story wise, but also gameplay wise, as the power ups you gain in episode 1 will be present in episode 2 by default and what you find in episode 2 is by default present in episode 3.

In this game you are Thor, the God of Thunder. You are sent by the supreme god Odin to Earth in order to save save the world from the evil powers of Loki, the god of mischief, and his two minions, Jurmangund and Nognir. Each episode features one town, and in episode one you have to beat Jurmangund to complete the episode, in episode 2 you fight Nognir, and in episode 3 you will (of course) face Loki himself.

During your quest you will face many soldiers of Loki, and a lot of monsters. Your only weapon is Mjölnir. A holy hammer you can throw at your enemies and will always return to you after it hits its target. Additionally during each episode you will learn two new spells that can make your quest easier.

Aside from fighting the game also revolves around puzzling. Each area can contain a puzzle or be part of a great puzzle. Your spells and your hammer can play a big role in solving these puzzles. In some areas you may even need not to kill the enemy as you may get it to help you, and without its help solving the game might be impossible. You will also lose points as a punishment if you kill people who are on your side. It is therefore very important that you don't shoot your hammer away mindlessly as it can cost you. Each area needs to be taken a good look at before you act. The game is not hard, but you have to remain focussed and sharp in order to progress through the game smoothly and therefore the game can offer a real challenge.

Aside from spells you can also find jewels, which serve as money. You can find appels that restore your health, but watch out, some appels are rotten and will hurt you in stead (you can see the difference quite clearly trust me), potions which restore your magic powers, keys you may need to open locked barriers and treasures which just give you points.

Notable characters you can find during your quest are green angels restoring your magic points when standing close to them. Red angels who restore you HP when standing close to them, and apple sellers who sell you apples to restore your health. Of course, once you get into town, the townspeople are bound to have important information for you. And some of them will give you assistance you really require to move on.

The boss battles are all three challenging, but not ultra-hard. The game has three difficulty settings for enemies, so the game is accesible for beginners and still a challenge for the pros, although I must note that the difficulty settings only affect the strengths and weaknesses of the enemies. The puzzles remain as easy or as hard (your choice).

Bugs

There is one known bug in God of Thunder. If you obtain a key item from an NPC and die before leaving the place, you lose the item and the NPC will not give the item again. This can render the game impossible to beat. It's pretty hard to manage this (in fact you mostly need to press the "D" button to die on purpose, which is the emergency escape when you cannot solve the puzzle you're in anymore), but you still need to be aware ofthis.

Presentation

The presentation of the game is overall quite good. The graphics do look well especially considering they are only taking up 256 colors using a screen of 320x200 pixels (which was the standard of that time). The menus are very easy to navigate through. Tutorials are available in the form of yellow spheres you can touch in order to make Odin tell you stuff, but you can skip that, and the explanations the game gives are often pretty short. The game does also show a sense of humor, so you can have a good laugh every now and then, although the humor is not extremely funny, it does make things a bit easier to swallow.

A tiny interface issue looking a bit ugly is the area number showing in Episode 2 and 3, in order to make it easier to use the hint book you could purchase back in the old time, but you get used to that pretty quickly.

Conclusion

For those who have love for old games, God of Thunder is a must-have, especially since it was an indie production, or at least not an AAA title. The game runs very smooth even inside an emulator and its concept is fun, even after all these years and after many years to come.

Don't you think it would better to post these on Fireside?

If I could post this on fireside.... I would.
This curate board was a temporary solution until everybody has access to fireside.

If I had access to Fireside, I'd like to post some articles as well
However, in Fireside, we can't update articles if say I want to add another game to review. Well, even if I could, my article would probably be buried by other articles anyways
This thread however allows us to post all reviews/posts in same thread. It will be buried by other threads but posting new post will bring it up

Wolfenstein 3D

Warning!
This game has been banned in the Federal Republic of Germany due to its depictions of Adolph Hitler and swastikas.
I don't know if it is banned in any other country. It is up to you if you want to honor the laws of your country or not when you try to obtain this game, but it is my job to warn you for that, and I hereby did.

Wolfenstein 3D is one of the true classics every gamer should have played or at least have heard of. The game was based on a top down fighting game called "Wolfenstein". This game follows the same kind of perspective into the eyes of the hero B.J. Blatzkowitch and became the first First Person Shooter having great commercial success.

I must impress the great commercial success as there were many attempts for FPS games before, but none of them got into rich in fame.

Storyline

There are a lot of confusing things about the story line, as the game contains 6 episodes, and an extra 7th episode in a separate game (The Spear of Destiny), but the numbering is not chronologic. This was because the game was originally only meant to have 3 episodes, but as you kill Hitler in episode 3, no more sequels were possible, so when the game became a bit success, they had to come up with prequels in stead.

In chronological order, the extra 7th episode - The Spear of Destiny - comes first, in which Adolph Hitler had hidden a holy spear in Castle Nüremberg. The spear is said to give its wielder special powers. Hitler was said to believe in its power, and that was reason enough for the US Authorities to send their special soldier, specially trained for solo missions, B.J. Blatzcowitch (read: you), to steal the spear. Of course many nazi soldier will try to stop you.
Episode 4 - A Dark Secret - comes next, in which you have to stop a chemical war, the nazis are planning. For that you need to kill the creator of the chemical weapons, Otto Giftmacher (whose name means "Poison maker" in German).
Episode 5 - Trial of the Madman - Although Otto is dead, his weapons are already created and General Fettgesicht (whose name means "Fat Face") will already be able to lead dozens of people into their deaths with the chemical weapons. However, nobody knows where he's hiding. Your mission is to find the maps showing were the general is, and where the war will take place. The maps are however guarded by the fearsome woman Gretel Große. (The only female enemy in the series).
Episode 6 - Confrontation - Will make you face the General himself.

However things went wrong, and you get yourself captured by the nazis and you are in a cell awaiting your execution.
That brings us to
Episode 1 - Escape from Wolfenstein - where you must escape your prison, castle Wolfenstein. The exit is however garded by Hans Große (and nice to to know Hans and Gretel Große are siblings, and clearly name after Hänsel und Gretel, from the fairy tale about two children facing a witch living in a house made of candy).
In Episode 2 - Operation Eisenfaust - You are sent to castle Hollehammer, where Dr. Schabbs is reviving fallen soldiers into undead killing machines. You must kill these undead soldiers and of course, the evil doctor himself.
In Episde 3 - Die, Führer! Die! - You face kill Adolph Hilter himself, and end the second world war.

Controverse

The game was very controversial. The second world war is a very sensitive subject, especially when you take into account that many who survived the war were still alive at the time the game was released. This is not the first game based on a big war, since there are countless games about other wars, like the Roman invasion and many medival wars. You can deem it a bit hypocrite, if you like, but you must take into account these wars are so long ago that nobody remembers those wars and only know about them because of history lessons. The second world war is recent enough to still have survivors alive today. The fact that you are not a nazi yourself in the game, but the "brave hero" fighting them was in the eyes of oposers only a minor detail.

To make the game more realistic there are countless swastikas and protraits of Hilter and other symbols of Nazi Germany. Only a logical step due to the game's chosen theme, but it was deemed offensive, especially by war survivors. This controverse led the game to be banned in Germany.

Another point of controverse was the fact that, the German pronunciation of the stuff the guards yell when they see you or die "Spion", "Eine kleine Amerikaner" or the famous "Mein Leben", was poor at best. This even led to an apology from iD software (the games developing company) to German speaking people for "insulting their language".

Game itself

As a first person shooter you see through the eyes of the hero, and you can move forward, backward, sideways and turn around. With you gun you shoot enemies, and you can open doors, and pick up treasure and that is about it.
The power of the CPUs available at the time was very varying, and therefore the game could run very smooth on one's PC and very slowly on another. It was for this reason you could make the viewscreen smaller in order to cause faster rendering, and this would make slower PCs still able to run the game smoothly. In DOSBox you can run the game fluently with the maximum screen size (and if not you have a very outdated computer for today's standards).

WASD controls were not common at the time, and the game does therefore not support it. Mouse is supported, but the controls do not compare to today's standards. This means that if you are a fan of today's FPS fans you may need some practice with this game to get full mastery over the controls where the cursor keys are used to move and turn around. Alt+arrow keys to move sideways, space to open doors, shift to move faster (running) and Ctrl to fire your gun. Until the release of Quake all FPS games would follow the same controls.

The game comes in 4 difficult modes

• Can I play, daddy? (very extremely easy)

• Don't hurt me! (easy)

• Bring 'em on (medium)

• I am a DEATH incernate! (hard)

With this iD software did follow the same perspective as in the Goodbye Galaxy series of Commander Keen where difficulty modes also exist, and they would keep this on in this game's successors "DOOM" and "Quake". I personally applaud this setup and I think all games should have this setup in order to make the game fun for beginners, but still a challenge for "die hard"-gamers.

The learning curve is easy, but the game can still be challenging.

Playing the game in modern times.

The game needs an emulator like DOSBox. Please note that even though the game is old it is not free of copyrights and thus you will still need to buy it.

Except for Episode 1, that episode is free, and a special "shareware" version only containing episode 1 may be obtained from every source you like.

The game is available on Steam, and also on GOG.COM.

But before you buy this I must alert you (once again) on the ban on this game in Germany (and possibly a few other countries). If you live in a country where the game is banned you should be aware of this!

Grand Prix Circuit

This may not be the best racing game out there, but it certainly is a classic in its own way.

Grand Prix Circuit is a racing simulator, and one of the first simulators you can play from cockpit view. That was pretty groundbreaking at the time, since 3D was practically non-existent at the time, considering the game was released in 1988 for DOS and 1987 for other platforms (most notably C64) respectively.

The game features three brands of racing cars. Ferrari. McLaren. And Williams. The game also features 5 difficulty settings in which 5 was the hardest, but also the most realistic. In easy you only got to drive fast and make sure you don't crash against your opponents. In the hard mode you must also take care of switching your gears right and come up with a good plan to beat the AI of your opponents who will hinder you like in "real" races, and of course in the hard mode you must take care of your tires and fuel.

The courses you can take on are actually based on REAL racing courses used in the Grand Prix.

• Jacarepaguá Circuit - Brazil

• Circuit de Monaco - Monaco

• Circuit Gilles Villeneuve - Canada

• Detroit street circuit - United States Detroit

• Silverstone - United Kingdom / Great Britain

• Hockenheim - Germany

• Monza - Italy

• Suzuka Japan

The controls are a bit different from modern racing games, but you'll get used to them if you take time. I therefore recommend to try the game first in easy mode and only raise the difficulty when you feel you're up to that. Some AAA developers of later racing games (like Gran Tourismo) were originally inspired by this game.

I already had my own copy for DOS back in the old days, and I can say that except for a few slow downs in the title screen and menus the game itself works perfectly in DOSBox. How well the c64 version works in c64 emulators is unknown to me. What the possibilities are to get this game legally are also not known to me. Fill me in if you know ;)

Fantastic stuff! As an "old school" gamer I really enjoyed reading your reviews. And this one in particular reminded me I stumbled upon this game a while back and meant to check it out but never did. So thanks for this. I will be sure to check it out at one of the various DOS games sites and play it. Actually looks like a solid candidate for remakes.

Speaking of which... do you cover modern games done in a classic style. Games inspired by old games or outright remakes? If so, I have a game soon to be released Atlantic Crisis that'd you may enjoy. If you like simpler arcade action games.

If not no worries. And thanks for taking the time to do these reviews. I will keep checking back for updates! :)

I am planning to do a new review soon, however time was not on my side.
Thank you for your assessment, though. It's great to know I got an audience for this ;)
I've not yet played your game (I've a full schedule right now), but as soon as time allows me I will surely give it a try, as your game looks interesting.

First of all, apologies for staying out for too long.
Work, work, always work, kept me away from this series.

Today I'm gonna talk about the Eye of the Beholder trilogy.
Not the Nintendo GameBoy series, but the "original" series made for MS-DOS, AMIGA and many other platforms of the time.

The EOB series is a series of Fantasy Themed "Dungeon Crawler" type RPG games, released in the 1990s. They were pretty popular at the time.

This trilogy contains (duh) three games. "Eye of the Beholder", "The Legend of Darkmoon" and "Assault on Myth Drannor".
Basically all three games use the same game mechanics, with only a different story (with a few references to the older games), higher level enemies and spells, and a few new features, and that's it, so that's why I'm gonna discuss the series as a whole.

The series is known as an official Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition product. That means the game mechanics are using a (heavily simplefied) version of the actual Roleplay game Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition. In Roleplay I mean a game you don't user a computer for, in which you are sitting around a table with friends, each of them taking on a fantasy character, and one of them playing the "Dungeon Master" leading the game, and telling the story in which you take part. As far as EOB is concerned the computer is the Dungeon Master and you control all characters. ;)

Well, as the "real life" counterparts of the AD&D games, this means you'll have to create four characters to play the game with. And you also need to make "rolls" to determine the statistics. A "weak" spot into this is the "modify" button though in which you can just put all the stats to their maximum values creating yourself a really strong group. Stronger than you should have actually. Then again, the game is hard enough to deal with that kind of "cheating" so the question is if you want a challenge or not.

If you don't like hours of proper configuration to create your "perfect party", installment II and III have a savegame called "Quick Start Party" allowing you to get on the road right way. Of course, the question is if that party will truly help you to get on the road, as you may have characters in your group that do not fit your playing style.

My personal preference was a Paladin, a Fighter/Thief, Mage and a Cleric, but you can decide on your own what fits you best. Having one Cleric is highly recommended though, as they are your main healers and you'll need them bad.

During your adventures you may meet people offering you your services,in other words they want to join you on your quest. Allowing them in your group can both work beneficial or in your disadvantage. Your party may only have 6 members, so you must think well. If somebody joins you and your party is full, the game will force you to dismiss one character.

After creating your party the game will begin

Let's discuss the stories now, shall we?

EOB1 - Eye of the Beholder

In this game your party has been summoned by the Lord of Waterdeep as they suspect a great evil hides in the sewers beneath Waterdeep. After the Lords briefed you, your party enters the sewers, however, it seems that whatever the "evil" is was expecting you and they cause a cave-in to make sure you're doomed, and there the playable part of the game begins.

This games does show that the creators were still in a debate where the series was going to. This is the most "open" game in the series, meaning that there are often more ways to get past certain points, and it is possible to win the game while skipping, say, about 40% of all the content at least. If this is a "pro" or a "con" really depends on who you ask, but I am not very fond of that myself, and it seems the game creators agreed with me on that point as this was really not the approach they took on in the two sequels.

Overall this game is pretty good, however a big let-down is that you can only create one savegame. If you want to save again later, you can only do so by overwriting the old. As the game can get you in a position in which winning is no longer possible (which was not that uncommon at the time). This is also the game with the highest number of "NPC" character who can join the party.

EOB2 - The Legend of Darkmoon

Now that you have beaten the evil of EOB1, you are held in high-regard with the Lord of Waterdeep, and thus you have friends in the "very high" class citizens on Waterdeep. One of them is Khelben Blackstaff, Waterdeep's archmage. Khelben suspects that a great evil lurks in the temple of Darkmoon located in the forests surrounding Waterdeep. He sent forth a scout (An Elfish girl by the name of "Amber"), who did not return from her assignment, and Khelben fears for her life and that her failure to return might also confirm his suspicions. And thus you are teleported to the forests close to Darkmoon in order to inflitrate the temple and to destroy the evil that lurks inside.

This is actually the most famous instalment of the series, even more famous than the series they are part of, and some people do not even know it is part of the Eye of the Beholder series (not even with it imprinted with very big letters in the game's main menu as shown in this review's heading). In my opinion also the best instalment of the series. The game is a bit more liniar than it predecessor and for me that made the game easier to explore. The true challenge lies in destroying the monsters that live inside the temple's walls, and they are quite hard, so you really want to focus on your fighting and puzzle solving more than trying to find out "where the heck you are going". Those are all big plusses. Also the save menu allows you more save slots now, and that allows you more "experimentation", which does work for the best, believe me.

EOB3 - Assault on Myth Drannor

After you defeated the evil in Myth Drannor you are in a local tavern in Waterdeep bragging about your heroic fight in Darkmoon, when a stranger comes to you. He tells you that far away from Waterdeep lies what is left of the once greatest city of the world, Myth Drannor. A foul lich appears to have put the city into its doom, and the stranger wants you to defeat this lich and obtain an artifact from the lich in order to revive the city. Your party accepts the quest and the game begins.

This instalment of EOB3 has met a lot of criticism, and that's, unfortunately, for good reasons. First of all, they dropped the use of the engine used for EOB1 and EOB2 and used the engine AESOP in stead, by Miles Design. This was a bad choice, and Miles Design also recommended against this as the engine suffered a lot of performance issues. Unfortunately that showed. On my "real" DOS computer it could easily take up an hour to get a savegame loaded, not to mention how many times the game lagged because it had to load extra data the RAM otherwise could never phatom. When playing the game in DOSBox, the loading times are significantly shorter than on a real DOS PC, so ironically an emulator is better than a real machine for this game, but still in DOSBox too, lots of loading and lagging are an issue. They also made it not possible to rest at all if monsters are near, even if the monsters could not get to you in any way. This was different in EOB1 and EOB2 where you could, but in which you could get attack during the rest. It makes EOB3 more frustrating to play as you sometimes have to move away from your target very far in order to rest, and finding the way back is not always easy. Some dungeons are real mazes, and that is something you always want to prevent. Another point of criticism I must cast on this game is that you have a lot of spells you can get for your mage and they are really worth something. Unfortunately, level grinding to be experienced enough to actually casts them takes forever, and as this game is a lot easier in terms of fighting than the other two games, not worth your time. The final boss here is a pushover compared to the boss in Darkmoon (as that one is very extremely hard). Truth is that the game's developers began to realize these issues themselves when it was too late to do something about is, as time is money in the AAA industry. As a result this instalment did not live up to its expectations (revenue wise) and also meant the end of a series that could have been great. It's not that surprising many initiatives are taken to make an EOB4 to make the series live again by the fans as EOB3 was not a good way to end it all.

Game Mechanics

Well, let's now discuss the game's mechanics.

The game takes place from a 1st person perspective. The game is tile based, and when moving you instantly move one spot. There is not scrolling animation for this, as you have to take the technology in mind of the time in which the game was written. You can click the arrow buttons with the mouse, in order to move. Alternatively you can use the arrow keys on your keybaord for this, depending on what you prefer. WASD is not supported, and I won't criticize that as WASD was not common in the the time in which the game was developed.

Fighting was done by right-clicking the hands holding a weapon, like the screenshot above demonstrates. A compass is given to you and take good note of that compass as you can ocassionaly turn around without noticing, but at least your compass never lies, so you can always see it on your compass when that happens. You need to get the hang of these controls, but once you mastered it, it's quite easy to move around and fight.

And this is your inventory screen. Please note you can see the full action "3D" screen and yes that means the game is running and enemies can move while you are sorting stuff out here (in EOB3 you can call the camp screen to block that one one (of of the few improvements that game has), but in the other two you mean deal with it). Aside from your equipped items you have 14 item slots per character. Weight is not taken into account (that is where the game differs from the actual role-play), but still 14 slots per character is not much, so you need to think well about the items you take with you.

Continuation

Well this is also a bug plus of the game series. You can load an EOB1 savegame in EOB2 and thus use your EOB1 characters at the same power as they were in EOB1, with their inventory, equipment and spells. Key items will (of course), not be transferred. And you can do the same in EOB3 with your EOB2 party, although the method to do this in EOB3 is needlessly complicated, but there are ways to get around that if you are a bit handy with computers and file systems.

Playing this game in modern times

DOSBox as a "perfect" support for all three instalments (for DOS). So if you still have the game from the old days, no need to do anything crazy, just install DOSBox and install the games in there, and you're ready to go.
ScummVM also supports these games these days, but I do not know how bug-free that support is, plus Myth-Drannor (EOB3) is due to the engine switch not supported. I also do not know how well the party transfer systems work (as I never tried). ScummVM has however never made it a secret they use a different save format than the original games, making transferring from EOB2 in ScummVM to EOB3 in DOSBox totally impossible, and that's why I am not very fond of using ScummVM for these games.

Now I am pretty sure there are countless websites on which you can download this game for free, but I must impress THAT IS NOT LEGAL!!! No matter what those websites say. What IS legal is to buy them from sites that offer them up for sale like GOG.COM where the series can be bought as a collection of the FORGOTTEN REALMS ARCHIVE COLLECTIONS.

Overall, I've always loved the series, even EOB3 despite its terrible flaws described above. The series does still have a fanbase, and even when you are too young to remember these games from the times in which they were hot, I can recommend them, if you don't mind the game not matching up to today's standards.

If you don't like hours of proper configuration to create your "perfect party", installment II and III have a savegame called "Quick Start Party" allowing you to get on the road right away.

Even EOB1 has a "Quick Start Party" in its one and only savegame slot after installation. It is very easy to overwrite it with your first save. To recover, simply reinstall the game, and find a way to manage multiple savegames.

Thanks for telling me that, as I didn't know as I already overwrote it on my first play of the game.
I, after all, did create my "perfect party" :D

I hope this isn't necor....necromanc.....necromongering and old thread, as the last post is from 2016, but I just wanted to say: Great stuff!!

Lands of Lore and Eye of the Beholder are such great games, and have been quite the inspiration to me. Thanks for the in-depth reviews!

Don't worry... as soon as I got some important business done, I'm planning to write another review here. Thanks for your appreciation :)

Prince of Persia is a rather simple set up platform game, at least in concept, as it was very ground-breaking for its animation techniques at the time setting the standard for the games to come.

Story

The is set up in the "Stories of 1001 nights" theme and takes us to ancient Persia, where the sultan is absent, and the evil visier Jaffar, wants to abuse the situation to seize the throne. The simplest way to do so is to force the Sultan's daughter into merriage, but she keeps refusing, until Jaffar summons a great hourglass. It will take an hour before the hourglass runs out and will make the princess disappear forever.
You assume the role of the princess' lover, who was thrown into the dungeons by Jaffar. You have one hour to make your way out of the dungeons and to strike down the evil magician, in order to save the princess' life.

A classic story of love... Don't we all LOVE it?

Gameplay

When it comes to the technical part of the game, the focus lied on smooth animations, the torches on the background had a realistic looking fire and the arms and legs of the hero (and his enemies) had to have a kind of realisitic result. However, due to the limited resources of the time, this made the developers decide to leave out scrolling effects. This does work out in the gameplay, though. Now all levels are devived in small portions and they are not that hard to navigate through. Still the game offers great challenges. You still have spikes to jump over and enemies to fight.

Of course, you can jump, and you can also jump up a higher platform by pulling yourself up (an elemement we also saw later in Tomb Raider).

You need to find a sword halfway the first level allowing you to fight guards. Eventually you need to find the door that exits the level allowing you access to the next level.

SECRET TIP: What I must note here is that the time ticks away while the end music sounds at the end of each level, however, you can "cheat" by pausing the game until the song's over. For all levels together it can save you almost 5 or 6 minutes of time.

There is no limit in how many times you can die, however dying will restart the level and the time you used to get as far as you got before you died will be wasted. You can only save the start of the level, so it makes no sense to go for the "save-frequently" option, because when you load a game you'll always be at the start of the level (and if you didn't save right after entering the level you also suffer from wasted time), and that might be one of the weaknesses of this game. The game would really have benefitted from a better save routine.
Furthermore, the savegame routine only works on level 3 and above.

Copy Protection

Unfortunately Prince of Persia features a "Doc-Check" copy protection (unless you have a hacked version of the game... Naughty-naughty). These kinds of copy-protections were very common back in the old days. They purpose is, as the name suggest to prevent the game from being copied illegally. If you have the legal version of the game this should be no problem.

In order to verify you have a legal version of the game, you'll get into the level shown above when you complete level 1, or if you load a savegame (if you do this and you didn't exit the game after already having gone through the copy protection before, the level will be skipped). If you have a game manual, just check the requested page, line and worth and drink the potion with the starting letter of that word. If you have it wrong 3 times the game will exit immediately. If you drink the right potion the door will open.

If you have a collector's version of the game, you may have gotten a list with all the correct letters in stead.

Bosses

Yeah, the game features 4 boss enemies. The first is encountered on level 3 where you'll meet an invicible skeleton. Since it's invincible you'll need to figure out a different way to beat it. At level 6 you'll meet a fat guard, who is more aggressive than the other guards. At level 12 there are 2 bosses, first your mirror image, and killing it will kill yourself, so find a way to get past it, and the second and final boss is, of course, the visier Jafar himself.

Controls

WASD is not supported, as it was not common in those days (in fact no game at all had support for it back then). You just control the hero with the arrow keys. You can jump with the up key, duck with the down key and grab onto stuff with the shift key. When you encounter an enemy you'll automatically draw your sword (if you have one) and you can use shift to hit the enemy. If you do it on the right moment you can use up+shift to parry an enemy attack. Especially when fighting the fat guard or the visier himself mastery of this technique is of vital importance. The controls are not hard to learn and as level 1 and 2 are fairly easy, you have enough time to practice until you get your first real challenge in level 3.

Then some special keys you may wanna know about:

• ctrl-g Save game (only saves the start of the level)

• shift-l Level skip. Only works up to level 4 or 5 and will limit the time to 15 minutes which is not enough to finish the game from that point.

• ctrl-r Resets the game to the start screen

• ctrl-l Only works in the start screen. Loads a savegame.

• ctrl-q Quits the game (you won't be asked for confirmation).

Obtaining and playing this game in modern times

Like most games in this thread, you need an emulator to play this game. The game works perfectly in DOSBox. Since the game is (despite its groundbreaking graphic style for its time) not demanding on hardware you don't need to play with the config settings of DOSBox at all.

Trying to obtain a legal copy of the game (or even an illegal one) can lead you astray as the is also a 3D action series with the same name and maybe even officially of the same franchize, but I'm sorry I need to say it, but they have NOTHING TO DO AT ALL with this gem, but they will very likely pop up in nearly every google search you do. I tried to find it, but everything leads to that modern series and not to the original, as if it never existed.

I bought my own copy years ago, but I deem it unlikely you can still buy that. If you know a place where you can legally obtain this game, link me, and I shall update this review.

Oh man, I remember Prince of Persia!

I had a black and white version if I remember correctly, but also the coloured one later. But I never saw a copy protection, so I must have had a hacked version :(

I remember the game was HARD, never quite finished it, and the image of the prince being killed on spikes and in a metal, snapping blade thing, I found quite intense as a younger boy.

Anyway, a true gem, perhaps I'll try to complete it this time. Without any save function of DosBox of course :)

Ah Prince of Persia, although I never completed that game, I admit it was a great game that time and worthy of being called legend. Cheat code I got from friends allowed me to skip to last level and because of that I lost motivation to play the game for real
But I did complete the sequel without cheat nor training

Did you have a scroll by “Future Brain Incorporated” at the start of the game?
And if you quit the game did it say “Hope you enjoyed — R. Bubba Magilicutty”

The DOS version was cracked by R. Bubba and he removed the entire copy-protection level from the game, when he hacked the game. The AMIGA version was also hacked, bu there the copy-protection remained, but in stead of saying “Page xx, line yy, word zz” it just gave away the correct letter.

(Yeah I got a legal copy for DOS. I took that copy-protection screenshot myself). :P

And, well not to brag or anything, but I DID complete the game… All levels…
I remember I was playing this game at school when the headmaster guided some future pupils into the computer classroom. When those kids found out I was about to fight Jaffar and finish the game I had their full attention, since… after all… none of them ever finished the game :)

Sadly, I can't remember...

Still want to finish the game one day, old school style, but I fear, with DosBox, the seductive Save\Load features will be too much to resist!

I never knew such features exsited in DOSBox….

Yeah, again if I remember correctly, you can save the state of the game. And reload it later. Quite handy!

I tried to check that out, but didn’t find it, but I shall check the DOSBox documentation later.
Anyway, I’m glad you guys liked my review. I mean a “Know Your Classics” series would not be complete without “Prince of Persia”. :)

Oh, wait, I got confused again. Man, I must be getting old. It was Emulators that had the save state function, and so I could finally finish those old Megadrive games with saving and loading.

Indeed, I don't recall DosBox having the same function...

I’ve looked it up, there is an unofficial version of having this feature. Some experimental code for this is present in 0.72, but it was “dummied” as the code is very premature and unstable (and therefore not documented by the DOSBox guys).
Indeed I know a SNES emulator with a save state feature, and there are emulators for other platforms as well with such a feature ;)

Really, now... I was young, and then to come accross a game about.... SEX!!!!
Yeah, this was one of the first commercial games in which sex plays a very important role and the reactions at the time were therefore overall very extremely negative, but yet Sierra (the company behind the game) quickly found out that the game broke all records in the warez-scene, in other words the world of illegally copied games. How did they know so many people copied this game illegally? Because graphic adventures were not so well-known at the time as they are today, and thus nobody really understood the game, but hey a game about sex had to be explored more, so the sales on the hint books were very very high. Much higher than the sales on the game itself. Sierra made a fortune on a game everybody copied illegally, which was quite a big joke.

There are three versions of this game, in this game I'll limit myself to the "original".... Yeah, you can see I placed "original" in quotes as even that is not entirely right. The very original was a fully text based adventure which was solely written to test a database system and that game was called "Soft Porn". Al Lowe wondered if it was a good idea or not to "translate" that game into their graphic adventure engine and well the rest is history.

One thing the game was hated for were the 5 age verification questions to verify you are really 18 years or older. Sierra did a very bad job realizing that whatever is common knowledge WITHIN the U.S.A. is not always common konwledge OUTSIDE of the U.S.A. and as a result a lot of foreign players were constantly deemed "a kid" because of simply being a foreigner lacking U.S.A.-specific knowledge.
There are lists on the internet with all answers though, as well as a cheat to skip all questions.

If you play this game in ScummVM, I recommend to save the game immediately after aswering all questions as loading a savegame from teh ScummVM loading will then skip all questions. This trick does NOT work when you play the game in DOSBox or a real DOS computer, though.

Now the game starts in front of Lefty's Bar. You can walk around by using the arrow keys and as soon as you want to do something, simply type what you want to do. For example, to enter the bar, walk to the entrance and type "OPEN DOOR". And so it goes through the entire game.

The object of the game is simple to explain. Larry Laffer is a nerd who worked as a computer programmer without having any friends and never caring about it either. But when he reaches his 40s he realizes that he may die a virgin if he lives on this way, so he goes to Lost Wages in order to find the love of his life. You got 1 night to do so. The game starts around 10pm and when it's about 5 or 6am the sun will rise and then your time is up and this will cause Larry to commit suicide meaning the game is over (although not many people know that there is a time limit to this game, and this time limit was removed in the two remakes).

There are countless ways in which Larry can die and you can also get yourself stuck in a no-win situation. You really need to think out well in order to prevent that, and to make a lot of savegames in various files. Adventure games in the 80s were pretty notorious and infamous for this.

One way in which you can die is by trying to leave the scene on foot. You'll be beaten up by some punk, so you'll need to drive around the game by taxi. You need enough money for this because if you don't pay the taxi driver will beat you up and drive over you (killing you).

Now a bit of downside in Larry is the need for money to progress in the game, and you have far too little to cover all the costs you'll have to pay during the game, and the only way to get more money is through... Gambling. You can go for either BlackJack or the slot machines, both are boring and tiresome and also easy to cheat through. Just save before playing and load the savegame if you lose and save if you win. You have have up to $250 and not more (It's pretty obvious because of the max value of 255 in a byte variable). Luck will decide how long it takes to keep your cash up to par. If you get on $0 it will count as a death and the game will be over, so make sure you never run out of cash.

Well one of the good parts is maybe the ability to take girls in close-up and it was pretty astonishing what a good job Mark Crowe did on the girls given the limit graphic possibilities of the technology and the used engine at the time. As you can go "hubba-hubba" over the girls in Larry, it did surprise the developers how well Larry still worked with the female audience, since after all, Larry hints for girls and we will see everything from girls that can make a man go wild... or at least that was the idea. Well Larry is just plain horrible when it comes to approaching women. As a matter of fact he's just a dork and a lot of girls have met a dork during a date and in this game and nearly all its sequels it will become horribly clear that Larry THINKS he's in charge during his dates with girls, but the truth is that THEY are in charge, and this game already shows a fair go in how Larry awaits just plain disaster when the moment appears to have come a woman may drop her clothes for him. It already happens here and this would basically be the trademark that made the series as a whole that popular, and seeing how Larry is getting humiliated or even downright totured by the girls he talks out of their clothes was for some women very satisfying, and thus the game offers a lot for both a male and a female audience.

The disk killer myth

The Disk Killer Myth floating around Larry also shows how little we knew about computers and malware back in the days, or how stories can live their own life. A popular myth says that if you reach the full 222 score your harddrive would be erased.

Well let's be frank here. Which game developer in his right mind would destroy the harddrive of their paying customers, knowing it would damage their reputation leading to bankrupcy and not to mention the legal concequences. Yeah... none right. No Sierra was not that stupid, although they knew about this myth and even parodied it in Space Quest 4.

Now the truth about this myth. As I said before in this review, Larry was one of the most pirated games of its time. Now illegally copied games were at the time very well known for being vulnerable to virusses, as most virusses back in those days attached themselves to executable files and would on an other computer activate and copy itself and so on. With a game pirated as much as Larry it was bound to happen a copy with a virus attached to it would someday circulate. Well, if it was just a private computer the world would probably never have known, however, although the rules of most commercial companies forbid it, people did often play games at work and Larry was pretty popular to be played when the boss was not looking. However the payload of the virus went off during worktime and destroyed the computer's haddrive and also a lot of the network files causing a lot of damage for the company, and thus we had very big "booming" news. The game itself got all the blame due to the lack of knowledge about malware and the myth was born.

Is Larry a dangerous game? No! As long as you have a legal copy, you should be fine and if you have an illegal copy just use a DOS-Based virusscanner, which is recommended for a legal copy too, as other software inside your computer or VM can still infect it, but if that happens the game is not to blame, but the infected software that began infecthing other stuff. Am I still making sense to you?
Well basically this last paragraph applies to ALL software in the DOS era.

Playing this game in modern times

Well it's good to know that the game works perfectly in DOSBox and ScummVM. No differences when you use a "real" old computer. Sierra published their games for nearly all platforms at the time (DOS, Mac, AMIGA and others), and so if you have a copy for an other system as DOS, ScummVM may be the best choice as it supports all versions.

You can buy a legal copy of the game at gog.com but then you get the entire collection of all Larry games up to Larry 6 (that excludes Larry 7 and Larry 1 RELOADED, but includes Soft Porn and the first remake of Larry 1), although the later episodes may be discussed in separate reviews.

Larry did a rather good job at the time, it had a nice story, humor and offers a challenge for adventure game players. Downsides are the age verification questions being too much focussed on a U.S. audience and the nummerous ways in which you can get into a "never-win" situation, and you should not expect TOO much when it comes to the sex-part. The type interface may be bothersome if you are used to play adventures with a mouse, but honestly, you'll learn to live with it and it will soon be no bother.
Larry is a classic, especially due to its controversial nature at the time, which made it famous and set out the road for some very good games to come, although I must admit that there are also pretty bad games around in the series, and when I review the other Larry titles you'll find out why I think so.

Great review, thanks! I remember playing the 3rd installment, I think it was, together with my brother. We played and played and finally managed to complete the game, and we where all eyes and concentration for the ending scene, when there would be.....sex!

And then there was some dark room, and images playing of trains going into tunnels and such stuff, never been so disappointed in my life!

Loved the recent remake though, as an older person, I can now really appreciate the humor!

Ah, that was Larry 6 Shape Up or Slip Out. Those pictures are based on a theory of Freud, of how we keep things going in and out something as a reference how sex actually does the same thing, and thus these images depict our desire. Yeah Freud had a way with picturing things and Sierra made a big joke out of that, but I can understand that as a younger person you wouldn't catch that.
I am planning to take on that game for this thread later, although I may need to cover some other games first :)

Jill of the Jungle Trilogy

Jill of the Jungle is also one of the games that have gotten itself a classic status. The game was not the best of its kind, but it has a kind of a cult status, and as it plays quite smoothly, the game became very good in its own right.

The Jill games are just easy to play platform games, and maybe the start of the success story of Epic Megagames, who would later be famous for games such as "Epic Pinball" and of course "Unreal". The games keeps up a very friendly nature, but may be too easy for the real die-harders, but is very nice for the more casual kind of gamer.

As standard with the ShareWare games of the time, episode 1 "Jill of the Jungle" was free, and episode 2 "Jill goes underground" and episode 3 "Jill saves the prince" were paid.

The playing rules of all the three games is the same, although the later episodes feature more enemies and thus a bit of a higher difficulty. What I don't like is the inconsistency between the three games when it came to audio effects, and also when it comes to the way the levels are connected. Episode 1 also a lot of "New Bulletin" jokes in which they were actually acting quite arrogant towards other great games such as the Commander Keen series and Duke Nukem (which will very likely also be discussed here). Maybe they thought it's funny, but I don't believe you get great yourself by insulting others.

The controls of the game are easy enough to understand. The arrow keys can be used to walk left or right. You can use up and down to look up and down (And down can also be used to duck). Shift is jumping and with alt you can throw your weapon, which is either a knife or a shuriken.

Jill is one of the few games series of its time that does not needlessly multiply scores by 100 to make them look higher than they really are, which is when you get used to that, actually more of a plus actually.

You can obtain various key to open barriers. In that perspective the game offers nothing new.
A nice part of the game is when Jill has to turn herself into various animals. These transformations only happen at certain locations and they do offer a nice variation allowing you to play the game with different tactics every now and then.

"Who said a girl can't slay a few monsters"

Jill was one of the first action focussed games to offer a female protagonist, and the words of my just used header were even used as the game's official slogan. Part 3 "Jill saves the prince" was also a clear pun on the cliche that men always had to save a pretty princess, so it was about time for a game where a woman saves a pretty prince.

Since Jill's clothes are not exactly "covering" I'm not fully sure if they were seriously targeting a female audience though. Of course, one can say she has clothes that are perfec when you are in constant actions (since that was the idea behind the story line), but still of a very tiny bitmapped sprite she does look rather sexy, and that idea was even more exploited in a later game "Vynil Goddess from Mars" (which was clearly inspired by Jill), where even some artwork came with it showing Vynil in some very seductive poses.

With Jill also came a spin-off named "The Onesimus Story", by Ark Multimedia. It uses Epics engine used for Jill and as you can see the graphics look identical and Onesimus moves himself in the same manner as Jill does. Actually he even looks the same as the prince in Jill saves the Prince (how lame). And even a lot of its levels are just copies of levels from one of the three Jill games.

Onesimus was however more taken from a Christian perspective, and therefore the story revolves around the slave Onesimus who seeks freedom, but who can only do so by keeping his faith in Jesus Christ. This spinoff is as a result swamped with quotes directly copied from the Bible. If you are religeous or not, from gamer's perspective this is rather annoying than really contributing to Christianity if you ask me.

In order to fit more in the religious theme, the ability to transform into animals was removed and the levels copied from Jill in which these transformations were needed were adapted, and the ninja shuriken was replaced by a rock (since the "rock" has always been symbolic in the stories about Jesus). Also some monsters were replaced by human beings, and since the original Jill games feature devils for enemies they were replaced by human beings, however a flying devil makes sense (due to his wings), a flying human does not.

In the end I could deem Onesimus to be nothing more but a cheap rip-off from the Jill trilogy.

Years later Jill got herself featured with her very own pinball table in Epic Pinball. I will review Epic Pinball and thus this table in a more dedicated review. I can say that the table features a lot of things you can find in the original game, like Jill's weapons, the appels and more stuff. As the music in the original game was the standard FM-adlib sound, and in the pinball table a true jungle track, the feeling of this table is not the same as the game, but it was nice to see that Jill got this tribute.

Playing this game in modern times.

DOSBox has a perfect support for these games, so no problem there. The first game is free and can still be downloaded all over the net and that is still legal, due to its free nature.
Part 2 and 3 can be harder, as they are now "abandonware". Now the concept of abandonware is always been misintepreted, as all it means is that the games are not longer legally attainable. This does NOT mean that the games are rid of their copyrights and thus downloading them can still be seen as a criminal offense! Keep that in mind, if you look for these games!

We can only hope the current copyright holders will allow you to play these games, because, flawed as they may be, they are classics in their own right, and very much fun to play!