SpellSword: I think that is Dragon Wars... The Nintendo Famicom version specifically.
BreOl72: You are 100% correct.
:) Your turn.
Rock on! ^_^
I love first person dungeon crawlers and when I saw the Bandit and a field market DIS (Which I guessed was Distance) Dragon Wars came to mind.
The existence of a Famicom port was news to me though, if anyone is curious about it I found additional information located in the description box for this youtube video on it. (
LINK )
I'll just copy and paste the text here for easy reading.
= = = = = Dragon Wars is a great, relatively unknown computer role-playing game developed for a variety of platforms between 1989 and 1991, ranging from DOS, Apple II, Tandy series computers, PC-98, Amiga, and more. Primarily developed by Interplay and published by Activision, the game is a spiritual title within (and for quite some time, WAS) "The Bard's Tale" series. When the game was in development, it was designed to be the next BT, but due to growing tension between Interplay and Electronic Arts (publishers and right owners of the first three BT games), they withdrew some of the concepts and design plans from BT3 and saved them for a future title after they severed ties with EA, which went under the tentative title of "Bard's Tale IV", and shared a more open world in the vein of "Wasteland", another of Interplay's creations. The boxart was done by the talented Peruvian-born artist, Boris Vallejo, who has done illustrations for several games such as "Wings of Wor", "Golden Axe II", etc.
Up until roughly a month before the game was released, the game still went under the name BT4, but when EA still had not relinquished the rights to the franchise, the designers were forced to make modifications to the name and setting. Still using an enhanced version of the BT engine (with more options and flexibility), the game possessed a darker story and the addition of a new primary antagonist, a dragon named Namtar, and the game was renamed to "Dragon Wars". While the game scored very favorable ratings and the developers themselves thought the game succeeded in being a better game than BT3 (if not all the games in the series), the game did not fare too well financially without the name recognition that the BT titles possessed.
This is a video of the little known Japan-only version of Dragon Wars, which was in development (by Kemco/Seika) in 1991 and slated for a U.S. release but was cancelled. However, a prototype of the English language version surfaced a few years ago, so the majority of the footage is of the prototype (about ten minutes) just so English readers/speakers can understand what's being said. The prototype has various typos and unfinished code, causing gibberish text to appear and often crashes when Japanese characters that haven't been properly converted arise during gameplay, but as the English portions of this video basically recap what was presented in the Japanese portion with some extended gameplay footage, it's not relevant.
The PC games possessed awesome graphics for its time and almost free-roaming gameplay that shares many similarities with BT (dungeon designs, navigation, fighting enemies in waves, etc.). While not as aesthetically pleasant as the computer games, the Famicom game looks quite respectable, especially because the enemies animate (though all characters have this "under-water" back-n-forth motion which is meant to make it look as though enemies animate more, but it's just strange), and Kemco put their usual NES/FC musical talents up for display, improving the audio from the original source material. The game retains the same in-depth gameplay, though it's a bit simplified. In the game, you possess a variety of spells and skills which you need to complete the game as well as various attack and defense options in addition to "advancing" in battle to close in on enemies, and the game gives you bonus stat points upon levels to increase tons of different parameters, where proper management of the skills is key to finishing the game. You can also have up to seven party members (six characters and one summoned monster). The game has a cumbersome menu interface and starts slow, but becomes more entertaining over time. It also possesses a very useful auto-map.
= = = = = Interesting stuff in my opinion.
Anyway, Here is the hint for the next game.
Since it is a bit obscure I'll mention that it is a DOS one, I wonder if anyone else has played it.
