Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[Null Null]

My point is that the games got less serious as time went on. D&D itself got more serious, if anything, probably because it went from a pastime of a bunch of Upper Midwestern geeks passing the region's long winters to the mass-produced product of a Fortune 500 company worried about annoying mothers.

The "silly" shit is just peppered in there occasionally. You make it sound like the entire SERIES is focused about these silly events (of which they are not).

No, though if I ever have the time I'm totally making a FRUA module where you play as the Clerk.

The Savage Frontier games, though, had a less serious tone to them, from the cheerier artwork to the puns on the shop names.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Weren't they done by a different team entirely?

 

[octavius]

Weren't they done by a different team entirely?

They were done by your pals at Stormfront.

 

[GarfunkeL]

 

[Jaesun]

Is it that hard to read the intro screen credits.....

 

[octavius]

Well, since you are both a Racism Expert and a Gold Box fan I figured you would have noticed the name Stormfront Studios.

 

[Jaesun]

 

[Null Null]

I encountered a very weird but very awesome bug the first time I played Pool of Radiance.
It was in 1989, on my C-64.

My party fought some trolls and defeated them. During the next battle, I noticed that my human fighter was regenerating 3 HP every round. This continued for the rest of the entire game. Unfortunately, this ability did not carry over when I imported my party into Curse of the Azure Bonds...

Ah yes, memories of the summer of '89:

LOADING... INSERT DISK SIDE #4... LOADING... INSERT DISK SIDE #2... LOADING... INSERT DISK SIDE #8... (take two steps)

HOBGOBLINS CHARGE SCREAMING!

LOADING...

Nice try, but there are no hobgoblins on Disk 8. Disk 8 contains Kuto's Well, and the Eastern Wilderness. Hobgoblins charging screaming is a line from the Cadorna Textile House, on disk 4.

 

[ProphetSword]

Back in 1988 when I first bought Pool of Radiance for the Commodore 64, I also encountered a similar weird bug while in Kuto's Well. Every single step, a horde of hobgoblins would attack us, not matter which direction we went. Every step. My friend and I fought those battles for hours, until they ultimately beat us down (we used to play the game together, with my friend controlling 3 characters and I controlled 3 characters in battle by passing the joystick back and forth). We wondered what kind of event we had triggered that irritated them so much, and decided we would try different tactics the next time. Except, there was no next time. When we reloaded, the hobgoblins were nowhere to be found. They didn't attack us over and over again in hordes anymore.

I never forgot that, and I've never been able to replicate it either.

 

[GarfunkeL]

The only good thing about the C-64 version is the crazy bugs.

Well, since you are both a Racism Expert and a Gold Box fan I figured you would have noticed the name Stormfront Studios.

Nope, never did. I must be blind.

 

[bloodlover]

What's a good game to start with for a newfag? I am assuming Pool of Radiance?

 

[GarfunkeL]

Yes because it starts the 4-game series (Radiance, Azure, Silver, Darkness) and it has the least eyecandy and worst UI. Once you've overcome that, every other GB game will feel like an improvement and thus easier to get into.

 

[ProphetSword]

The only good thing about the C-64 version is the crazy bugs.

Actually, the C64 version had superior sound and music in comparison to the DOS version and was quite playable with a joystick. It's not my preferred version anymore, but there wasn't anything wrong with it at the time of release.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Except the godawful loading times when changing zones. I really don't remember the sounds or music at all but everything beats PC beeper so that's a given.

 

[Null Null]

Doesn't happen on a modern PC with an emulator. Was a pain though. I remember I had the disks all the blocks were on memorized (and it's pretty easy to figure out why they stuck them where they did if you check monster lists).

 

[ProphetSword]

Except the godawful loading times when changing zones. I really don't remember the sounds or music at all but everything beats PC beeper so that's a given.

Everything on the C64 had long loading times in those days. You pretty much got used to it. Just how technology worked.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Yeah, no. I started with a C-64 with a cassette deck, so don't fucking come to me preaching about loading times. Every level change in TMNT meant a 25-minute cassette loading time. Compared to that, PoR wasn't too bad, but you definitely wanted to minimize going back to Phlan because that was on a different disk. Which meant dying fairly often, which required loading the first disk to get save games, and then reloading the disk where you had saved your game and it was a FUCKING LONG TIME, so don't fucking try to claim that it was just business as usual. Because I drank my juice and ate my ham sandwich while the fucking game was loading. Complaining about loading times on PC or on Amiga is pissing on the wind, I agree, but on C-64 that is an actually valid complaint, so fuck off. Your recollection of past things does not overwrite my recollection of past things.

 

[Null Null]

I first played Secret of the Silver Blades on a PC with no hard drive. Took 5 minutes to load...and I had to keep pressing the enter key to keep the picture of the castle from loading, because that would have been another 5 minutes. Not to mention the Ice Caves. Oh god, the Ice Caves. The encounters were bad enough, but each one would take 5 minutes to load.

 

[Jaesun]

I don't remember bad loading times on my Amiga 500 (for Pools and Secret) back in the day.

 

[Lilura]

Everything on the C64 had long loading times in those days. You pretty much got used to it. Just how technology worked.

Some games had long load times and some games had loooong, looooooooong load times, get the point?

Complaining about loading times on PC or on Amiga is pissing on the wind, I agree, but on C-64 that is an actually valid complaint, so fuck off.

Many Amiga games had overly long load times (Walker and Shadow of the Beast are just two examples), and while most load times didn't approach 8bit tedium, I remember staring at Amiga loading screens counting the pixels out of sheer mind-numbing boredom. (But what annoyed the fuck out of Amigans more, I guess, was disk swapping, a reason - other than efficient pirating - that we went out and bought a second external disk drive, it was to cut down on the disk swapping that made load times seem even worse than they actually were.)

 

[GarfunkeL]

Hahaha, serves me right for assuming things about Amgians! Never had one and only had two friends who had Amiga 500 back in the day. I was so jealous of them playing Ultima VI in beautiful colour with great music while I was stuck playing PoR on C-64.

 

[ProphetSword]

Yeah, no. I started with a C-64 with a cassette deck, so don't fucking come to me preaching about loading times. Every level change in TMNT meant a 25-minute cassette loading time. Compared to that, PoR wasn't too bad, but you definitely wanted to minimize going back to Phlan because that was on a different disk. Which meant dying fairly often, which required loading the first disk to get save games, and then reloading the disk where you had saved your game and it was a FUCKING LONG TIME, so don't fucking try to claim that it was just business as usual. Because I drank my juice and ate my ham sandwich while the fucking game was loading. Complaining about loading times on PC or on Amiga is pissing on the wind, I agree, but on C-64 that is an actually valid complaint, so fuck off. Your recollection of past things does not overwrite my recollection of past things.

I don't really understand your opposition to the statement that loading times were long for disk access, especially when you agree with me at the very beginning of your statement. I'm going to chalk it up to you being a fucking idiot and move on with my life.

 

[octavius]

I remember staring at Amiga loading screens counting the pixels out of sheer mind-numbing boredom. (But what annoyed the fuck out of Amigans more, I guess, was disk swapping, a reason - other than efficient pirating - that we went out and bought a second external disk drive, it was to cut down on the disk swapping that made load times seem even worse than they actually were.)

I bought three extra floppy disk drives myself. They were quite cheap. A hard disk OTOH was grotesquely expensive.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I don't really understand your opposition to the statement that loading times were long for disk access, especially when you agree with me at the very beginning of your statement. I'm going to chalk it up to you being a fucking idiot and move on with my life.

Well let me help you out then, my dim-witted friend.

#1 I complained that playing Pool of Radiance on Commodore 64 was aggravating due to long loading times.
#2 You stated that because loading times for all games on Commodore 64 were long, I am not justified in my complaint.
#3 I replied that while loading times - especially on the cassette deck - were long, PoR had especially annoying loading times due to the way zones were sprinkled on different floppies. I further elaborated that your recollection of the loading times not being very bad does not mean that my recollection that the loading times were bad is invalid.

Do you get it now or do I need to draw a picture?

 

[ProphetSword]

#2 You stated that because loading times for all games on Commodore 64 were long, I am not justified in my complaint.

Never once said you weren't justified. Just pointed out that all games took a long time to load. You agreed with that statement. Therefore, you are angry at yourself.

How you took a simple comment that all loading times for disk access were long on the C64 (which is absolutely true) as some sort of personal attack is amazing to me.