A screenshot of The Bard's Tale on the Commodore 64.

A screenshot of The Bard's Tale on the Apple IIGS.

Discover great deals on thousands of new and used action and fighting games, console games, xbox, gameboy, playstation, nintendo, and family games on eBay with big savings!

Bard Tale

The Bard's Tale (Tales of the Unknown: Volume I) is a computer fantasy role-playing game created by Interplay Productions in 1985 and distributed by Electronic Arts. It was designed and programmed by Michael Cranford. more...

Home

Genre

Arcade

Family

Other

Racing

Albion

Angband

Arcanum

dnd

Dungeon

Eye of the Beholder II

Eye of the Beholder III

Fallout

Gothic

Moria

Mother

Rogue

The Elder Scrolls III

Ultima

Vampire

Shooter

Sports

Others

Systems

Wholesale Lots

Based loosely on traditional Dungeons and Dragons gameplay and inspired by the Wizardry computer games, The Bard's Tale was noteworthy for its unprecendented 3D graphics and animated character portraits.

It was originally released for the Apple II, and was also ported to the Commodore 64, Apple IIgs, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Apple Macintosh, and NES platforms.

Story

The following text from the box cover summarizes the premise:

Long ago, when magic still prevailed, the evil wizard Mangar the Dark threatened a small but harmonious country town called Skara Brae. Evil creatures oozed into Skara Brae and joined his shadow domain. Mangar froze the surrounding lands with a spell of Eternal Winter, totally isolating Skara Brae from any possible help. Then, one night the town militiamen all disappeared. The future of Skara Brae hung in the balance. And who was left to resist? Only a handful of unproven young Warriors, junior Magic Users, a couple of Bards barely old enough to drink, and some out of work Rogues. You are there. You are the leader of this ragtag group of freedom fighters. Luckily you have a Bard with you to sing your glories, if you survive. For this is the stuff of legends. And so the story begins...

Aided by Garth the blacksmith, Roscoe the magic peddler, Kylearan the archmage — and under the watchful eye of the Review Board — your party of six characters set off through mazes of wine cellars, sewers, catacombs, castles and towers. You answered riddles, solved puzzles, and battled fearsome enemies — such as the Witch King Aildrek, the legions of Baron Harkyn, and the Mad God Tarjan — before your final confrontation with Mangar the Dark.

Gameplay

The Bard's Tale is a straightforward "dungeon crawl". The objective is to gain experience and advance characters' skills through random combat with enemies and monsters. This is done while exploring maze-like dungeons, solving occasional puzzles and riddles, and finding or buying better weapons and armour.

When beginning the game, the player may create up to six player characters, chosen from among the following classes: Bard, hunter, monk, paladin, rogue, warrior, magician, and conjurer. The classes sorcerer and wizard were available to experienced conjurers and magicians. A typical well-balanced party might consist of a couple of fighters, a rogue, a bard, and a couple of magic users. On some platforms, the player could import previously created characters from Wizardry and Ultima III, which was somewhat revolutionary at the time.