16 thoughts on “PATN – Week 4

  1. “Pool Of Radiance” is the original “gold box” SSR games, the ones where anything that didn’t involve “click on the monster until it dies” was relegated to a terse note instructing you to read a page in the manual.

    Like, the climactic ending of the game was a text entry in the manual.Report

  2. I got all those Gold Box games on Good Old Games on a sale about six months ago.

    I also got all the Star Trek games ever made, including one I have vivid memories of being stuck on sometime in the late 80s or 90s. (Never managed to get past that part). So that would have been either late Apple IIe stage or early 386 processor period. Can’t recall which.Report

  3. I may only be able to do it with a select few RPGs, are there any that you would recommend?

    on the nes overall?

    crystalis (this is still fun mostly. kinda zelda in spots, a bit more rpgish!)
    destiny of an emperor – too many random encounters, but otherwise fun. big twist is no twist if you’re familiar with the romance of the three kingdoms
    the nes port of ultima 4 is actually pretty good. music is fantastic.
    dragon warrior iii (maybe, if you hate free time a lot, which it appears you do)
    ff1? maybe? again, time hatred factor.Report

  4. So, here we have Dragon Lance: Heroes of the Lance, which is based on a series of books I have never read.

    When serious thinkers were arguing politics in the 1980’s, they made appeals to the Dragonlance books the way that serious thinkers today appeal to Harry Potter.

    We just didn’t have the internet back then.

    You should only bother to read the first six, though. Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, Dragons of Spring Dawning. Then read the Twins Trilogy. Time of the Twins, Test of the Twins, and Something Else Of The Twins I Can Never Remember.

    They were awesome.Report

        1. At this point in your life it’s probably more interesting as a historical document. Like watching “Blade Runner” after you’ve grown up watching all the movies that were inspired by “Blade Runner”.Report

          1. Fantasy is ever-so-slightly more resilient than sci-fi when it comes to aging gracefully.

            Right? Has GRRM destroyed our ability to read pre-GOT fantasy?

            Man… now I’m wondering if Michael Moorcock is readable in 2017…Report

            1. Jay,
              Not really. They’re both really part of the same genre, and as long as you write enough good rules, you get a good story. If you don’t, you get a bad story and that sucks. We kind of understand how to write good stories now (they have clinics on that sort of stuff!).Report

            2. “Fantasy is ever-so-slightly more resilient than sci-fi when it comes to aging gracefully.”

              This is true. Technology, obviously, moves past SF in a way that doesn’t happen for Fantasy.

              …but it’s getting to be increasingly the case that social attitudes are part of mainstream fantasy criticism. They always were–see, for example, Moorcock’s writings on Tolkien–but now it’s getting to be part of pop criticism, more than just wacky-left wierdo overinterpretation.Report

              1. They really weren’t even published by a ‘real’ publishing house at the time. Ballantine was an offshoot of an offshoot with a genealogy that was almost entirely lurid pulp fiction. They scored some more mainstream (but still pulpy sci fi) successes, made money, and after they were bought out by Random House, kicked Norman to the curb.

                edit- ok, I read the wiki entry wrong. Ballantine was a Penguin and Bantam guy that started up something to parallel Fawcett publications, (after their success), he did not come from that genre.

                Still Ballantine was more at the edge of the publishing world in the 60s, than the center.Report

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