''Dragon Wars'' is a
fantasy role-playing video game
A role-playing video game (commonly referred to as simply a role-playing game or RPG, as well as a computer role-playing game or CRPG) is a video game genre where the player controls the actions of a character (or several party members) immers ...
developed by
Rebecca Heineman and published by
Interplay Productions in 1989 and distributed by
Activision
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...
.
Gameplay
The player starts the game with a party of four characters, who can be either the default characters or ones
created by the player. Alternatively, the player may import characters from ''The Bard's Tale trilogy'' into ''Dragon Wars''. During the game, the seven character slots can be filled with any combination of the starting characters, recruited characters, and summoned creatures.
Plot
The story from the back of the original box:
Development
During the initial design process for ''
Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate'', one of the designers came up with a list of enhancements and improvements for the game. With the possibility that Interplay would soon be parting ways with
Electronic Arts, it was decided to save these for a future game and stick closer to the original
engine
An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy.
Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power gene ...
, though the auto-mapping feature did make it into ''Bard's Tale III''.
These design improvements came in this next game, ''Dragon Wars''. In essence, the game was a fusion of ''
Bard's Tale'' and design philosophy pioneered in ''
Wasteland
Wasteland or waste land may refer to:
* Desert or barren area
* an uncultivated area of land, whether wooded or not, whether common land or not
Art, entertainment, and media Comics
* ''Wasteland'' (DC Comics), 1987–1989 anthology-style horror ...
''.
[Rebecca Heineman Interview.](_blank)
Digit Press, 2006.
Until a month before release, the game was developed as ''Bard's Tale IV''.
However, the rights to the title were still held by Electronic Arts, and thus a new title and setting were needed for the game. It was derived in part from the Sumerian legends of
Gilgamesh, with the chief villain of the game being named
Namtar. Since to this point the game didn't feature any dragons, the new title meant that Heineman had to add one.
Interplay advertisements displayed the slogan "Bard's Tale Fans Rejoice!" above the game's name, and mentioned ''Dragon Wars'' ability to import ''Bard's Tale'' characters.
The designers all felt it was a better game than ''Bard's Tale III'', and indeed, better than any of the ''Bard's Tale'' series, but without the tie-in to the old title and without ''Electronic Arts marketing muscle, the game did not fare as well.
To defend against pirated copies of the game, Dragon Wars included a collection of numbered paragraphs within their manual.
[Copyright protection paragraph reference](_blank)
Classicgaming.cc 2016 Players would receive an in-game message (i.e. "Read paragraph 23"), and have to refer back to the printed material. The game is very difficult to play without references to the paragraphs, and many parts become meaningless. This form of security was widely used at the time.
Reception
''Dragon Wars'' was reviewed in 1989 in ''
Dragon'' #152 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.
Scorpia gave the game a positive review in ''
Computer Gaming World
''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...
'' in 1989, noting improvements over the ''Bard's Tale'' series, saying that, "Tighter design, attention to detail, balanced combat, and a carefully constructed plotline all combine to produce a CRPG well worth playing."
In 1993 she stated that the game was "a good choice when you want something a bit more than a standard slicer/dicer".
The game was later included in the ''Interplay's 10 Year Anthology Classic Collection'' released in 1993.
Reviews
*''Joker Verlag präsentiert: Sonderheft'' (1992)
*''Amiga Joker'' (Feb, 1991)
*''
CU Amiga'' (Feb, 1991)
*''
The Games Machine'' (Mar, 1990)
*''Génération 4'' (Apr, 1990)
*''
ASM (Aktueller Software Markt)
''Aktueller Software Markt'' (literally ''Current Software Market''), commonly known by its acronym, ''ASM'', was a German multi-platform Video game journalism, video game magazine that was published by Tronic-Verlag from 1986 until 1995. It was on ...
'' (Apr, 1990)
*''
Tilt
Tilt may refer to:
Music
* Tilt (American band), a punk rock group, formed in 1992
* Tilt (British band), an electronic music group, formed in 1993
* Tilt (Polish band), a rock band, formed in 1979
Albums
* ''Tilt'' (Cozy Powell album), 1981
...
'' (Mar, 1990)
*''Enchanted Realms'' (May, 1991)
[https://www.mocagh.org/enchantedrealms/enchantedrealms6.pdf ]
References
External links
''Dragon Wars''Dragon Wars on Steam
''Dragon Wars''Dragon Wars on Gog.com
*
''Dragon Wars''at Classicgaming.cc
*{{moby game, id=/dragon-wars, name=''Dragon Wars''
1989 video games
Amiga games
Apple II games
Apple IIGS games
Cancelled Nintendo Entertainment System games
Commodore 64 games
DOS games
NEC PC-9801 games
Role-playing video games
Sharp X68000 games
Video games developed in the United States
Games commercially released with DOSBox
First-person party-based dungeon crawler video games