Tales of the Unknown: Volume I - The Bard's Tale

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Description

The small country town Skara Brae was enjoying a peaceful life, until an evil wizard known as Mangar the Dark appeared. Monsters have invaded the town, terrorizing its inhabitants. Mangar cast the spell of Eternal Winter on the surroundings, isolating Skara Brae from any possible help. Guards that were entrusted with the task of protecting the town have disappeared within one night. Only a party of brave adventurers can save Skara Brae and defeat Mangar.

The Bard's Tale is a fantasy role-playing game similar to Wizardry games, with first-person exploration of pseudo-3D maze-like environments, and turn-based combat against randomly appearing enemies. Unlike early Wizardry installments, the town can be explored physically, and parts of the overworld are accessible as well. Several dungeons must be explored before the player can tackle the final quest.

Six character classes are available when the player is prompted to create a party of six adventurers in the beginning of the game: Bard, Hunter, Monk, Paladin, Rogue, Warrior, Magician, and Conjurer. The last two can be promoted when specific conditions are met during gameplay. The bard class plays a special role, possessing magical songs that improves the party's performance in combat and are required to solve some of the game's puzzles.

Screenshots

Promo Images

Alternate Titles

• "Shadow Snare" -- Working title
• "バーズテイル" -- Japanese spelling

Part of the Following Groups

• Bard's Tale series
• Fantasy Creatures: Dwarves
• Fantasy Creatures: Elves
• Gameplay feature: Character development - Automatic leveling
• Gameplay feature: Importable characters
• Games made into books

User Reviews

Hey, Hey, Skara Brae, what a cool game you have to play!	DOS	Daniel Reed (29)
Set the standard for gaming in its day	DOS	thejayman (16)
Breakthrough RPG in the Home Computer era	Apple II	Frecklefoot (203)
A great early dungeon crawler	DOS	ex_navynuke! (48)
Great In It's Day	DOS	AstroNerdBoy (40)
1st Person RPG Classic	DOS	Yeah Right (57)
One of the Great Dungeon crawls	DOS	mclazyj (31)
One of the all-time classics.	DOS	Mirrorshades2k (282)
Fantasy Role Playing Excitement	Apple II	eqfan (2)
My first ever D&D RPG.... still has classic gameplay current games can learn from	DOS	XplOrOrOr (16)

Critic Reviews

Commodore User	Commodore 64	Dec, 1986	9 out of 10	90
Retro Archives	Commodore 64	Aug 15, 2018	17.5 out of 20	88
ST Action	Atari ST	Mar, 1993	86 out of 100	86
Computer Gamer	Commodore 64	Jan, 1987	85 out of 100	85
Tilt	Amiga	Jul, 1987	16 out of 20	80
Joker Verlag präsentiert: Sonderheft	Atari ST	1992	76 out of 100	76
Computer and Video Games (CVG)	ZX Spectrum	Sep, 1988	7 out of 10	70
Retro Archives	NES	Aug 15, 2018	9 out of 20	45
Questicle.net	NES	Jan, 2011	D	25
GameCola.net	NES	Jan 06, 2006	1.8 out of 10	18

Forums

Topic	# Posts	Last Post
Bard's Tale Song remakes	1	Pieces of 8-bit Jul 30, 2015
What advntages does the Hunter class have?	2	Game Guesser (28) Feb 17, 2013
Completed?	3	Indra was here (20902) Dec 07, 2010

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The Bard's Tale appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Buildings

While most of the buildings are empty and exist only to increase the size of the map, entering the building directly across from the guild shows the game credits.

Novels

Though any direct connection to the game series, setting and characters is slight at best, an officially-licensed Bard's Tale series of novels eight strong (!) were published by Baen Books over a six-year period in the '90s:

1. Castle of Deception (1992), by Mercedes Lackey and Josepha Sherman;
2. Fortress of Frost and Fire (1993), by Mercedes Lackey and Ru Emerson;
3. The Chaos Gate (1994), by Josepha Sherman;
4. Prison of Souls (1994), by Mercedes Lackey and Mark Shepherd;
5. Thunder of the Captains (1996), by Holly Lisle and Aaron Allston;
6. Wrath of the Princes (1997), by Holly Lisle and Aaron Allston;
7. Escape from Roksamur (1997), by Mark Shepherd; and
8. Curse of the Black Heron (1998), by Holly Lisle.

References

• Michael Cranford, a devout Christian, put many Biblical references into the first two Bard's Tale games. Most notable are a reference to the crucifixion in the first game and the Holy Spirit in the second. In fact, Cranford ended his video game career with the second game in the series and now programs web sites for religious groups.
• One of the more powerful shields in the game, the Ybarra shield, is in fact named after Joe Ybarra, a producer at Electronics Arts, who was directly involved with The Bard's Tale.

Skara Brae

The original Skara Brae is a well-preserved Neolithic village located in the Orkney Islands of Scotland. The four thousand year old settlement was buried by encroaching sand dunes and uncovered a century ago when a storm exposed parts of the structures. Today it is a well known tourist site and undoubtedly inspired Michael Cranford (Bard's Tale) and Richard Garriott (Ultima series).

NES version

In the NES version, the post-death screen was removed, the word "kill" was avoided and all alcoholic beverages were replaced with non-alcoholic ones.

Awards

• Commodore Force
  • December 1993 (Issue 13) – #88 “Readers' Top 100”
• Commodore Format
  • November 1994 (Issue 50) – #29 The All-Time Top 50 C64 Games
• Computer Gaming World
  • March 1988 (Issue #45) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
  • November 1996 (15th Anniversary issue) - #89 on the "150 Best Games of All Time" list
• GameSpy
  • 2001 – #17 Top Game of All Time
• Happy Computer
  • 1986 - Best Role Playing Game of the Year
  • Issue 04/1987 - #2 Best Game in 1986 (Readers' Vote)
• Power Play
  • 1987 - Best Atari ST Game '87

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Chip Arnett, Peter Ferrie, PCGamer77, Pseudo_Intellectual, Ray Soderlund, Vance.

Related Web Sites

• Bard Songs (An online collection of Bard's Tale music transcribed to MIDI format. All from the PC versions of Bard's Tale.)
• BardsTaleOnline (The definitive Bard's Tale CRPG online resource for references, guides, downloads, documents and more)
• The Bard's Tale (1985) FAQs & Guides (on GameFAQs.com)
• The Bard's Tale Compendium (Very complete site with lots of information, hints, downloads for every game of the Bard's Tale series.)
• The Bard's Tale walkthrough - solution (Text full solution posted on The Spoiler Centre)