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Beer beer beer tiddly beer beer beer!

The Bard's Tale, the pinnacle of comedy among computer role playing games, bundled with the classic DOS-era dungeon crawlers: Bard's Tale 1,2,3, is available for Windows and Mac OS X on GOG.com, for only $9.99.

In a world, that's in a desperate need of a hero, one man chooses his own destiny. Yup, that sounds about the same as every other role playing game. Only this time, things go a little bit different. The Bard, a roguish vagabond who only cares for coin and cleavage, has no intention to perform acts of unmatchable heroism and prove that he's larger than life. Neither he has desire for fame and glory that would earn him a place in songs and sagas that would fuel the imagination of the generations to come. After all, he can always come up with songs and sagas praising him, while he enjoys a pint of beer and some female companionship at some cozy inn. Yup, whatever he does, he will be remembered as a great champion of the realm. What would you do in such unique position? Loot riches and woo maidens--it's the correct answer, my friend.

The Bard's Tale delivers solid cRPG gameplay, a vast fantasy realm to explore, tons of quests to perform, and hundreds of items to loot. By all means this is a fully-fledged role playing game, but that's not what it's famous for. Brilliant comedy is where this game truly shines among all other titles in this genre. With excellent writing and fantastic voicing done by Cary Elwes (of The Princess Bride fame) as the Bard, and a gaming voiceover veteran, Tony Jay as the Narrator. There's also an extra treat for the die-hard old-school computer RPG fans included with this release: the classic DOS-era hard-as-nails Bard's Tales 1, 2, and 3.

There are many cliche RPGs out there, but this is not one of them. As you embark on this adventure, you have no way to anticipate how will it end. One thing's certain though--there will be plenty of coin and cleavage coming your way if you get The Bard's Tale for only $9.99 on GOG.com!
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Ghildrean: With "classic DOS-era dungeon crawlers" you mean the Apple II version, right? Because that's the versions of 1+2+3 bundled with the new Bard's Tale, not the actual DOS versions.
I also want to know this, I already have the Steam version, but if these are really the MS-DOS versions and not the Apple II ones, probably will buy again here.
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Licurg: Haven't played the remake yet.
It's almost as good as Sacrifice!
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Licurg: Haven't played the remake yet.
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F4LL0UT: It's almost as good as Sacrifice!
Kill the blasphemer !
Agreed, Tony Jay really had the most amazing voice ever, and he did so many different things like the voice of Megabyte in ReBoot and countless other bad guys in various animated movies and television shows. He was also the narrator for the never-actually released adventure game based on the Warcraft franchise, Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. There's a youtube video of this very cool trailer.

And to gaming, his biggest contribution was probably the one as The Elder God in the Legacy of Kain games. And his voice can also be heard in various games as varied as Icewind Dale to King's Quest VI. A true legend, indeed.

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F4LL0UT: He sucks as the Bard. :P
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Nergal01: Well, if he does I can always go back to English. Nothing wrong with some Cary Elwes and (more importantly) Tony Jay! Now THAT's a cool voice if I ever heard one. I like the fact that the game card mentions him specifically.
Hm, the gamecard now says that the other languages (other than English) are text-only. : /

GOG's not to blame, though. The Steam version doesn't fare any better, either.
Post edited January 29, 2013 by Nergal01
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johnki: Are the originals DRM-free here or do they have to be played through the new one, the way I've heard they need to be?
I would think this is the same as the steam version except for the DRM being removed... However I do still think you need to launch the 2005 version to play the old games. I don't really see how that is DRM though. It is not to manage digital rights but to launch an emulator... It's not the DOS Games...
Great release, but no Polish dubbing? It was sooo fun! ;-)
I used to own the box copy of this collection, alas with a necessary OS upgrade they no longer functioned for me. I am ecstatic to see them released here today. Great music, humor and action make this series that I cannot wait to get back to.
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KajQrd: I would think this is the same as the steam version except for the DRM being removed... However I do still think you need to launch the 2005 version to play the old games. I don't really see how that is DRM though. It is not to manage digital rights but to launch an emulator... It's not the DOS Games...
Alright, cool.

Not so much that it's a DRM as just a bit of a roundabout way to launch them.
I remember completing Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight, then almost finishing Bard's Tale, then just starting Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate (arguably the weakest of the serie).
All MS-DOS versions, whose gfx looked like the "oldest" of the GOG's screenshots.

Never heard of the 2004's game, but from the look of it, it doesn't seem to share much with the old games, beside the name...
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F4LL0UT: I don't get why on Earth people want to play games in windowed mode. Big pixels won't hurt your eyes - having to read tiny letters on the other hand might. :P
3x-graphicsfilter for the win ;-) Really, windowed is nice for multitasking or to have a look in the manuals or reference cards. Especially the old vga-games in dosbox are great for this - big letters in windows.

Btw, thanks to gog for multilingual support.

Edit: Or, in case you play rpgs or adventures, making notes or checking the walkthrough...
Post edited January 29, 2013 by DukeNukemForever
I actually dreamt that GOG would release a really cool game today. Kinda glad my dream didn't come true, as that would have been scary...

Edit: Though it's cool that the first three DOS games are bundled with this.
Post edited January 29, 2013 by Zeewolf
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GOG.com: With excellent writing and fantastic voicing done by Cary Elwes (of The Princess Bride fame) as the Bard, and a gaming voiceover veteran, Tony Jay as the Narrator. In the English version, that is, which is only one of the language options here.
If that is indeed the case, then you need to update the gamecard, since that states explicitly that only English audio is available. All the other language options are text-only. Unless you mean that the reason Cary Elwes only does the voice-over for the English version is that the other languages have no voiceover at all? If that's the case, you probably need to rephrase the sentence above.
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F4LL0UT: HOLY COW! Fully multilingual and it even includes the friggin' Polish version (which IIRC was NOT part of the regular EU release). Way to go, GOG! Normally I don't care much about this kind of stuff but the Polish version of Bard's Tale is legendary (brilliantly translated, brilliantly voiced and even the songs were redone - awesome!).

Piwo, piwo, piwo, pyszne piwo, piwo, piwo...
I certainly don't want to rain on your parade but look closer: Audio and text: English Text only: French, German, Polish, Russian, Korean. You have to forget about Szyc and Fronczewski...
wait... no "Oliver Kalkofe" as the Bard??? I was tempted to buy, but now I wait for a good sale.