The Golden Age Of Gaming: Part III

The Gold Box Set

Finally D&D, for the love of god why did it take so long! I realize I’m branding my self nerd of the century by saying it, but at least I’m out of the closet. I love D&D and the fact that someone finally made a D&D computer game in the late 80’s called Pool Of Radiance (Forgotten Realms) was like an answer to my prayers. By the time Pool Of Radiance came out I had already been fully nerdified by playing the pencil and paper version of D&D and like most geeks I lied about it until, well, until just now. As far as I’m concerned the Golden Age of gaming had hit its peek with Pool Of Radiance and for many of us closet dorks it was as good as it ever got.

Pool Of Radiance was still a game very much in what was at the time a standard format for computer RPG’s like Bards Tale. You made your six characters, you equipped them and you traversed the world in the first person perspective. That however is as far as the similarities went because Pool of Radiance definitively changed how role-playing games would be played in the future. For starters, story became a key element as opposed to combat, which by the way was also changed from the standard text based descriptions of many of its predecessors. There was an overall story in Pool of Radiance that was built up through numerous quests that your characters would complete. The impact of their success would change aspects of the game world, like the safety of traveling through certain area’s of the game for example. More so however the story was actually interesting and well written. Combat also got an overhaul, having been changed to a top down view, creating a turned based strategy mini game. The rules of the pencil and paper D&D game were re-created in Pool of Radiance and in many ways it what really gave the game it’s uhmpf…

Sound, Graphics, Music and game play had reached a new plateau in gaming and again the expectation of players rose to a new level. Pool of Radiance also had a significantly larger following and was so much a classic that it was actually re-released several times on DOS based PC’s in the future as you guessed it “Gold Box Games”. It also triggered sequels like Curse Of The Azure Bonds which was an even larger and more complex game that in my opinion was also an amazing achievement for its time. Most importantly however Pool Of Radiance proved that D&D wasn’t some closet geek thing and in fact it was very much a mainstream thing that most of us lied about all the way to adulthood. It ensured that D&D would forever be linked to PC and Video gaming and D&D games of all sorts continue to be made to this very day.

The Golden Age of gaming had certainly peeked with Pool Of Radiance in my opinion. What came next was a sort of bandwagon mentality in that the genre of role-playing games has been established and no one dared mess witht the format. Despite some great games coming out in the early 90’s, the golden age of gaming began to decline. The decline didn’t mean it was over, far from it. In fact there were new platforms on which to put games with better sound, graphics and certainly more advanced game-play that would energize the industry and create a far larger player base. New game designers jumped on board that would eventually revitalize (not that it needed it) the gaming industry by looking at game-play in a very different way.

The Golden Age Of gaming was certainly dedicated to role-playing games, but strategy games were about to have a revolution that would shift many role-playing nerds like myself into a completely different area of gaming. A man named Sid Meier who had already created a cult following with his commodore classic Pirates was about to take the gaming industry by storm and turn a grumpy out of touch old men like my dad into.... if you can believe it, a gamer!!