Tales of the Unknown, Volume I: The Bard's Tale Retrospective
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The landscape in those days was littered with dungeon crawlers. Die-based RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons were still in vogue, and the emphasis on the computer side was in recreating that experience usually with rudimentary visuals and extraordinarily steep learning curves. In comparison, The Bard's Tale used early color 3D graphics, a straightforward gaming system, and a dry sense of wit to keep you engaged. Even when your entire party was killed, and you had to run back to a temple to revive them, you never felt like you were wrestling with an obtuse game; you felt like you were simply grappling with the world of Skara Brae itself.
Yes, you still needed to sit down with graph paper and map out 16 dungeon levels to succeed. Yes, you would spend hours tapping out keyboard shortcuts in battle: [A]ttack, [A]ttack, [A]ttack, [D]efend, [D]efend, [D]efend. But the overall result was something that was simply more accessible and engaging than the likes of Ultima and Wizardry; a trip into an addictive and exhilarating fantasy world.
It was a massive hit as a result, and was released on virtually every computer on the market at the time. From MS-DOS machines to the Atari ST, if you had a computer, you could play The Bard's Tale. (When my family got our own computer, my first purchase was the Apple IIGS port.) The brand become so popular it even spawned a series of paperbacks in the 1990s.
