Nintendo Entertainment System The Bard's Tale USA
1StoryThe 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...
The introduction depicts a bard sitting in a tavern. Between occasional sips from his mug, he strums a lute and sings:
The song I sing
Will tell the tale
of a cold and wintery day;
Of castle walls
And torchlit halls
And a price men had to pay.
When evil fled
And brave men bled
The Dark one came to stay,
'Til men of old
For blood and gold
Had rescued Skara Brae.
In the actual game, the player forms a group ("party") of up to six characters in the Adventurer's Guild building which is the only "home zone" where the current game or more precisely, the characters and their current inventory, can be saved. Game progress is made through advancing the characters so that they are powerful enough to defeat the increasingly dangerous foes and monsters in the dungeons, obtaining certain items relevant to solving the overall quest, and obtaining information.
The fictional town of Skara Brae consists of 30x30 map tiles containing either buildings or streets (plus gates and magical guardian statues blocking certain streets). In the northeastern and southwestern area, a lone tower is blocked off by locked gates. The main gates which open to the west are blocked by snow, and remain impassable throughout the game. One street seems to lead south endlessly, teleporting the party back to its beginning upon reaching the portion where the city walls would be.
Certain buildings within the city are special, such as the Adventurer's Guild, Garth's Equipment Shoppe, the Review Board (which must be found first, and is the only place where characters can level up), various taverns and temples and the dungeons. The latter are mazes of various kinds (like cellars, sewers, catacombs or fortresses) full of monsters and riddles, usually guarded by magical statues that turn to life to attack trespassing player parties. The more powerful the statues, the more dangerous is the dungeon they guard which also indicates the order in which the dungeons have to be solved:
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