What To Look For In A Gaming PC Archives

Review

The Ultimate RPG Archives is an important package not only because it contains an even dozen of the best computer role-playing games in history, but also because it's the first such collection where every single game within is still worth playing. Usually when a company throws together some of its older products and puts them back on the shelves, you get a decent game or two along with a bunch of fluff, which makes you realize just how much better games are now than they used to be. Not so in the Ultimate RPG Archives; all 12 games in the package remain enjoyable to this day, each in turn a testament to the timelessness of the genre.

Its contents represent over a decade's worth of top-tier computer role-playing games, more than half of which Interplay originally developed. The Bard's Tale series appears in its entirety: The trilogy composed of Tales of the Unknown, The Destiny Knight, and The Thief of Fate is present along with the full-featured Bard's Tale Construction Set. The Bard's Tale pioneered the first-person step-by-step computer RPG format, which would later appear again in Interplay's Dragon Wars, another solid entry in the Archives, which adopts the Bard's Tale formula to a grittier, more hostile game world. The only top-down RPG in the package is Interplay's Wasteland, which inspired the highly acclaimed 1997 post-nuclear RPG, Fallout (Fallout sold separately!). The last of Interplay's own additions to the Archives is Stonekeep, a pretty-looking dungeon hack, which was hammered on by critics and consumers alike when its lengthy development period culminated in its lukewarm 1995 release.

Even if Interplay were to go ahead and publish a package composed solely of its own role-playing games, the end result would be pretty solid. But it also secured the rights to five third-party RPGs, which make the Archives a truly superior value. New World Computing's Might & Magic: World of Xeen - which is M&M four and five seamlessly connected together - remains a creative, humorous, and exciting game. Sirtech's Wizardry Gold, a high-resolution remake of Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, is deep and very challenging, with advanced NPC interaction and character development. But perhaps the greatest surprise in the package is Origin's Ultima Underworld I and II, both true-3D role-playing masterpieces and unparalleled to date in terms of scale and scope.

At first glance, Interplay does a commendable job of making the games accessible even on today's advanced hardware by supplying a helpful boot disk maker and a utility to temporarily slow your machine so the older games won't run too fast. On top of that, you get a massive volume of over 500 pages containing the original documentation of all 12 RPGs. However, all maps and reference materials originally included with these games are nowhere to be found, despite repeated reference to them throughout the documentation. This frustrating oversight won't affect your enjoyment of the majority of games in this package, but a few - namely the Bard's Tale trilogy - demand the use of these materials to answer copy protection questions in order to advance. The magic of the World Wide Web lets lucky gamers like you download the appropriate maps and code wheels from Interplay's web site, but those looking for a complete product out of the box will be out of luck.

None of these games is aesthetically competitive against the current standards. The Bard's Tale series and Wasteland look downright archaic. Even the once revolutionary Underworld games look well worn. But each and every game in the Archives has a distinctive personality about it, an attractive appearance, and a stylistic element that make you understand instantly why the game is still held in high esteem. Even Stonekeep fits right into this collection, as its old-style gameplay feels more appropriate among the similar genre pioneers than it did when the game was first released not too long ago.

Eleven of the 12 games in this set are played in the first-person perspective. Nonetheless they are all different and unique, and between their ranks they offer high adventure, great challenge, difficult puzzles, sly wit, all manner of monster and villain, and ultimately hundreds upon hundreds of hours of top-quality computer role-playing. Even with the missing reference materials, this is a compilation of the utmost quality and value, and it's certain to be one of the best purchases for your role-playing dollar this year.--Greg Kasavin

--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review

I’ve previously talked about how the Internet Archive is a great place to play your favorite abandonware from decades ago within your browser, and it’s even better now. The archive has added 2,500 new MS-DOS titles for you to try out, and they are all free of charge.

If you’re curious about exactly how this is possible, the Internet Archive has a wonderful blog post that explains the process of getting these games working in a playable state. As digital historian Jason Scott writes:

“What makes the collection more than just a pile of old, now-playable games, is how it has to take head-on the problems of software preservation and history. Having an old executable and a scanned copy of the manual represents only the first few steps. DOS has remained consistent in some ways over the last (nearly) 40 years, but a lot has changed under the hood and programs were sometimes only written to work on very specific hardware and a very specific setup. They were released, sold some amount of copies, and then disappeared off the shelves, if not everyone’s memories.

It is all these extra steps, under the hood, of acquisition and configuration, that represents the hardest work by the eXoDOS project, and I recognize that long-time and Herculean effort. As a result, the eXoDOS project has over 7,000 titles they’ve made work dependably and consistently.”

Now, if you’d rather just get to the games, know that scanning your way through 2,500 titles is going to take some time. And you’ll probably have to do a bit of internet searching to convince yourself to try titles that might sound familiar, but you don’t really remember all that well. To get you started, here are a few recommendations we think are worth trying out (unless you want to go download and play everything).

The Secret of Monkey Island

It doesn’t get much more fun than this. Sure, you can probably pick up this game on your favorite digital distribution service for a tiny fee, or you can just go ahead and sink hours into the MS-DOS version for absolutely nothing. Say hi to Stan for me.

The Punisher

This is one of the earliest games I remember playing on my MS-DOS system way back when—likely a 386 or 486 computer with some paltry amount of memory (that at the time, probably felt pretty awesome). The joy of this game is in the brutality. You run around New York City, gunning down any bad guys you can get your hands on. The more evil you stop, the more money you make, and the closer you are to obliterating the mighty Kingpin. It didn’t get much more violent than this back in the MS-DOS days.

The Price is Right

I mean, how else are you going to prepare for winning big on the show, like that guy from the documentary?

Night Trap

I used to be terrified of this game as a kid for whatever reason. Now, it doesn’t seem quite so bad. Your goal? Set traps to help keep mysterious intruders—vampires, if I’m right—from killing a party’s worth of people. It’s a silly concept in 2019, but Night Trap was a pretty big deal two-plus decades ago.

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Get in some practice flying the way things used to be—back in 1993—before you take on Microsoft’s big updated version that’s set to launch next year.

I still can’t do a good carrier landing.

The Incredible Machine 2

I’m pretty sure I convinced my parents to buy me this back in the ‘90s because I said it was educational. It is, sort of, since you’re solving puzzles in all sorts of creative ways, but it’s also a great way to spend an afternoon gaming.

The Elder Scrolls - Daggerfall

Yes. Oh, yes. I was terrible at navigating my way through this game’s dungeons, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t have the most maxed-out character in the realm—thanks to the ingenious cheat of walking into one of the game’s many shops, advancing time past the shop’s closing, stealing everything on its shelves, then selling it all back to the shopkeeper (or keeping it yourself) in the morning. Ah, Daggerfall; you taught me how to cheat with creativity, which I carried with me right into my Dungeons & Dragons years.

Star Trek - Judgement Rites

I never made it through this game, but I respect what it was trying to do way back in the early ‘90s. If you like adventures mixed with a bit of action—which is basically Star Trek in a nutshell—you’ll get a kick out of this title, which I maintain was ahead of its time.