Pool of Radiance, heh. so many fond memories.
We were just kids back then when I played it for the first time, and I remember we all playing on one computer, each of my friends controlling in combat one of the party characters, six of us in the tiny room of one of my friends. We decided what to do or where to go by vote. We cheered, blamed each other on poor tactics, made a LOT of noise I tell you.
The Black screen with a "Loading, please wait" caption could take up to 10 minutes to load the game. And then, as we were playing a pirate copy, we only knew a few of the manual's passwords, so sometimes after three failed attempts we had to reload again!
In the meantime, while the game loaded, we played Battletech, or rolled PNP characters, or other nerdy stuff.
I remember a heated argument over choosing wether going to the Vhalinghen graveyard even if we were too low level. We ended up dying, and the horrible loading time described above made death a feared thing, believe me, so the upset and finger-pointing was big. We were always trying to tackle encounters that were above what we could handle, for instance, I'm sure we needed to try over a dozen times beating the Ettins at the Stojanov Gate (and each time we died, yeah, 10-30mins of loading).
On that playthrough I remember I had a fighter/cleric/magic-user. Man, how much the character sucked, you can't begin to imagine. Also, I remember being one-shot by Thyrantraxxus lightning bolt in the end battle and everyone else surviving.
Other than PoR, I remember feeling a chill when I saw the Daggerfall world map, and realized the sheer size it had. I hadn't played Arena yet, so the shock was big. I remember being so excited about exploring such a huge place.
