Thursday, October 31, 2024

BRIEFs: Mighty Nerd (1989), Rolan's Curse (1990), Dracula in London (1993)

The title screen does not have him "vs." anything.
        
Mighty Nerd
AKAs:
Mighty Marvel vs. the Forces of E.V.I.L.
Mighty Nerd vs. the Forces of E.V.I.L.
Mighty Nerd vs. F.O.E.
Mighty Nerd vs. the Supervillains 
I.S.M. (developer and publisher)
Released as shareware for Apple II GS in 1988, Macintosh in 1989, Amiga in 1989 or 1990
Rejected for: Technical problems
      
Every version of this one that I've tried has been unplayable. The game comes with character creators that allow you to create both heroes and villains, assign them various powers and abilities, and set them loose against each other in a cityscape. The player's ultimate goal is to reach the lair of "Dr. Skull" and defeat him. I guess it has experience points; whether I consider it an RPG depends on whether those points affect anything more than the strength and "frame" bars on the main screen.
   
The hero and villain clash.
       
The problems with the game are many:
   
  • Only one version I found (for the Amiga) has any documentation, and it clears up virtually nothing.
  • I can't figure out how to get into the character creator on the Amiga version.
  • The Mac version crashes when you try to load any custom-created character. Fortunately, there are some default characters.
  • The Mac version crashes when you try to transition levels.
        
Crashes are frequent.
      
In no version can I figure out how to attack. The Mac version doesn't seem to respond to any keys at all. You use the mouse to move, but if you click on something that isn't a movable square, the game gives you a series of error tones that go on forever.
   
There are some videos online of people playing the game, but none that I can find in which anyone is attacking (except the villain attacking the hero), so that makes me think it must be a common problem.
    
There are some fun elements. The opening cinematic shows a squat milquetoast-looking guy finding a rod on the ground, picking it up, and transforming into a tall, muscular hero. A digitized voice reads the game title. It looks like the game supports both walking and flying, if you have that power, and the creator lets you create your own powers, like spells in a fantasy game. The different types of effects here suggest a complexity that I can't make the game deliver. I guess you can destroy buildings and cars.
      
Some of the options when creating a new power.
       
The game was written by Winchell Chung of Phoenix, Maryland, who went on to some renown as a graphic artist.
    
I don't really think it's an RPG and I thus don't want anyone wasting time on it. I suspect that won't stop some of you. If you can get a stable version and it turns out that experience and leveling affects more than just maximum stamina, I'll think about it.
    
******
     
Damn, it's trademarked. There go my dreams of opening a little French bistro called Rolan's Curse.
       
Rolan's Curse
Japan
Nihon Maicom Kaihatsu (developer); American Sammy Corp (U.S. publisher)
Released 1990 for Game Boy in Japan; released 1991 in North America
Rejected for: Insufficient character development
     
You may remember that when I first tried a Game Boy game four years ago, The Final Fantasy Legend (1989), followed swiftly by Wizardry: Suffering of the Queen (1991), I was pleasantly surprised at the relative complexity of the system. Wizardry, in particular, was essentially indistinguishable from the earliest PC games in its series. This was in sharp contrast to what I had expected from the handheld experience: "A relatively short, simple, single-character game, probably action-oriented, perhaps something along the lines of a single-character Gauntlet."
       
Rolan's Curse is largely what I had been expecting, although its obvious inspiration is Zelda, not Gauntlet. Its only value is that it's presumably more interesting than doing nothing while being driven to little league practice or waiting at the dentist's office.
       
Guy looks like a tiny, squat Iron Man.
       
The setup is boring and derivative: An evil former ruler of the land of Rolan, King Barius, has broken out of prison and rallied legions of monsters to his service. The Goofy Cartoonish Little Man (two if you link your Game Boys with a cable) must fight his way through the monsters and defeat him. The game begins with no character creation in a village where the NPCs offer platitudes about the upcoming mission. You then enter a succession of linear screens occupied by monsters that, in Zelda fashion, bounce back and forth on established movement paths, sometimes engaging only when you're right on top of them, some firing missile weapons.
       
Attacking a blob on an early screen.
       
There are no attributes, and character development is achieved only through increasing maximum health, which is done by finding armor that enemies sometimes drop. Each piece increases the maximum number of hearts that represent your health meter. The only other improvements come from switching weapons (between a sword and the imaginatively named Wand of Uzi) and gauntlets that augment the power of your weapons. You have two inventory items at all times, the primary weapon and a secondary usable object like a full healing potion or a "magic axe" (looks like a pickaxe) capable of clearing obstacles. Enemies get harder in time to the increases in your items' power. They also respawn continually.

I wasn't a Zelda fan, but at least it had some light puzzles, hidden areas, and shops, all of which this game lacks. Zelda was also relatively nonlinear, while Rolan has you on a rail from start to finish.
    
Finding a Wand of Uzi. I don't know why they didn't just use an actual Uzi.
      
I don't regard improvements in maximum health to be enough "character advancement" to call a game an RPG; this is more appropriately characterized as an action game. HowLongToBeat says it only takes 2 hours to win, and an LP on YouTube clocks in at 90 minutes. Despite this short time, I declined to continue with it. The LP shows the character passing through a variety of bland environments, fighting increasingly difficult monsters, visiting a couple of towns with purposeless NPCs, and fighting the occasional mini-boss. Barius is a bull skull-headed villain in a robe who constantly disappears and reappears as the player attacks. Once he's defeated, the people rejoice while the protagonist heads over the horizon to new adventure. Barius returns in Rolan's Curse 2 (1992), which sounds like it adds enough complexity that I probably need to check it out rather than dismiss it immediately.
       
LP author Longplays 4 Days fighting Barius.
        
It feels like for every innovative, landmark Japanese game there are a thousand bland clones, but I suppose that's true of western games, too.
      
****
        
One Halloween as a kid, the only "costume" I did was to gel my hair to a point like that, then put on a "scary" face when people opened the door. Hey, I got candy.
       
Dracula in London
SDJ Enterprises (developer); published as shareware
Released in 1988 for DOS, updated in 1993 for Windows
Rejected for: No character attributes or leveling
     
Dracula in London is a somewhat bizarre adventure/board game based on Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). The author summarizes the first half of the novel--up to Lucy Westenra's death--in shorter versions of the letters and journal entries that characterize the novel. The second half of the novel, or some approximation of it, makes up the core of gameplay. A single player can control all of the canonical vampire hunters (Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, Mina Harker, Dr. Jack Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey Morris) or multiple players can each take one or more characters.
     
The game mostly plays out like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel with graphics. You select from a menu with options like following up on Dracula's cargo, collecting equipment and holy items, visiting Renfield in Seward's asylum, or visiting various other locations in the city. Success is based partly on who is doing the activity, what items that person has, and luck. As you select each event, time passes in hours and days. You have to rest a good portion of each day to avoid exhaustion. Dracula does not passively wait for the hunters but is prowling the city as they hunt him, and his actions (e.g., attacking a constable while in wolf form) are relayed in newspaper articles that give the party additional clues and leads.
       
The city and its options. The manual calls the clock tower "Big Bend."
      
The game is most like an RPG when characters visit houses. There, they become individual icons that can move around buildings of multiple rooms, searching for clues. Monsters occasionally appear and can be fought by characters with the right weapons. For instance, if Renfield escapes and attacks, only the character with the large knife can fight him. A character with turpentine can defeat rats. Characters have health meters and can become diseased or wounded, but they do not have attributes and cannot get better at their skills. Combat is rare anyway.
        
Fighting Renfield in a mansion.
     
The game ends--usually after less than an hour--when the party finds and kills Dracula or he flees London to return to his castle in Transylvania, at which point the player has one final chance to track him down. The game also ends if all the characters die. In between these extremes, characters can be taken out of the game for hours or days by police (who catch them breaking into various locations), illness, or various life events. At the end, each character gets a score based on what he accomplished.
       
Well, this is pretty grim.
        
I found playing it very chaotic and confusing and gave up after I lost twice. MobyGames oddly does not classify the 1988 version as an RPG but does classify the 1993 version as such.
    
SDJ Enterprises was owned by Steven D. Jones of St. Louis, Missouri. He also created a strategy game called The Big Three (1988/1995). Dracula cost $15. I'm guessing the re-release was meant to take advantage of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), the Francis Ford Coppola film that generated a slew of official tie-in games in 1993 from Psygnosis.

45 comments:

  1. you mentioning Final Fantasy Legend in your brief of Rolan's Curse, does remind me of the similar (but better) game of Final Fantasy Adventure (aka Mystic Quest). [as I type this I check the Final Fantasy Legend comments and of course several of us have already mentioned the Adventure/Mystic Quest one!]

    The superhero one does sound interesting but confusing. It reminded me of City of Heroes/City of Villains, although that was an MMO type of thing so made more sense.

    I quite like that concept for a Dracula game, I like that it keeps closer to the book, but seems to be lacking in the execution. The use of the digitised photos is a nice shortcut to get some decent graphics at least.

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  2. I do sometimes wonder how these titles ended up on your master list in the first place.

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    1. I found them listed as "RPG" in databases that I use to construct the master list.

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    2. What do you think would be a better approach?

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  3. Seems like Dracula in London might be a computerized version of Fury of Dracula, an actual board game from 1987 that has had at least two new editions over the years - an 'everybody versus one' game about hidden movement. Your description sounds a lot like the way the board game works... Wonder whether this was with permission or not?

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    1. It is not, in any way, shape, or form, a version of Fury of Dracula.

      In the "exploration" part of the game, there's a range of different options and ways to deal with problems: for example, if Renfield shows up, Dr. Seward can usually calm him down without a weapon (a good idea, as the best end involves him being cured, not killed).

      The main procedure of the game is to track down Dracula's coffins (often by following real estate purchases) and sanctify each of them to deny him rest. You also need to protect Mina. If you miss some coffins, Dracula retreats and you have to confront and kill him at his castle. Since there's no RPG stats, the tactics tend towards randomness and simplicity (have a knife? Attack Dracula and you might behead him, killing him instantly!), but there is a decent amount of strategy and variability to it.

      The original game had Dwarf-Fortress level graphics and was perhaps better for them. Not an RPG in any event.

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  4. AlphabeticalAnonymousOctober 31, 2024 at 8:46 AM

    "Mighty Nerd" (what a terrible name!) of course makes me think of "Freedom Force" (2002), which MobyGames lists as a "Strategy / tactics Role-playing (RPG)." But more generally this made me notice how very few superhero-themed RPGs are out there. "Buck Rogers" (maybe) and I suppose only a handful of others, really. The dominance of Fantasy as a primary theme is almost inextricably intertwined with the overall genre.

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    1. Freedom force is very very much just a strategy game, and is in no way an rpg. It’s flawed but a great idea as a game with a lot of love put into it.

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    2. There's the adventure/rpg hybrid by Legend Entertainment called Superhero League of Hoboken. It skews closer to the rpg side of things compared to a lot of other adventure/rpg hybrids.

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    3. There is an indie shareware RPG from 1994 called SuperHer.

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    4. Superheroes don't make particularly good RPG material for two reasons:
      1) Superheroes are, by definition, already at the peak of their power, which doesn't mix well with the typical RPG zero to hero advancement curve.
      2) Superheroes are typically one trick ponies: Spiderman shoots webs, Hulk becomes green etc. It doesn't make for a particularly exciting RPG when your character is just doing the same thing over and over again.

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    5. AlphabeticalAnonymousOctober 31, 2024 at 1:47 PM

      > Freedom force is very very much just a strategy game
      @Deano : don't blame me, it's MobyGames. And I think the argument could be made: when characters gets enough experience, they can then purchase better powers. Not really much different from picking a new spell to add to your spellbook. I agree the gameplay isn't "RPG standard," certainly.

      > It doesn't make for a particularly exciting RPG
      > when your character is just doing the same
      > thing over and over again.
      @pfkaVK, that hasn't stopped plenty of fantasy RPGs from using more or less the same formula...

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    6. @Deano, Freedom Force has enough RPG credentials to be considered for this blog; the biggest problem would be its mission structure, not gameplay.

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    7. @RG: I understand the general question about a game‘s RPG aspects, but are you seriously discussing here and now whether a -2002- game is an RPG -for this blog-?

      Unless Chet’s modus operandi changes drastically, it’ll be a loooong while til we get there. By then his criteria could be quite different, so that seems pretty moot to me at this stage.

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    8. @Busca, you do understand that the phrase "has enough RPG credentials to be considered" is different from the phrase "will soon be covered"?

      Strategy RPG's, like those coming from Atlus, are tricky beasts, but the way I understand criteria of this blog, they generally qualify.

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    9. On the topic of superhero RPGs, when Carl Muckenhoupt played Freedom Force he commented that at the time of its release in 2002 there weren't that many superhero games in general. He says this changed with the X-Men movies starting in 2000, when Hollywood started releasing a ton of superhero blockbusters. I'd add that before then, superheroes were certainly prominent in the culture, and there were pre-2000 movies like the Christopher Reeve Superman and Tim Burton Batman, but it probably seemed more like a nerdy comic-book/cartoon kind of genre rather than a draw in itself. You don't see too many Looney-Tunes styled games either.

      @formerly VK, I don't think that the advancement curve is an insoluble problem. Lots of superhero stories can be origin stories which would let the superhero level up, and you could give the superhero different powers (Superman has a few different things like heat vision, Batman has a Bat-everything.) But there are some things that would be hard to fit in... equipment drops don't seem like they'd fit superheroes very well.

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    10. @Anonymous (RG?): Currently, Chet checks out all games that appear on his Master Game List and then once he gets to it decides whether or not he considers it an RPG and how to cover it.

      The MGL goes ten years into the future and (now) is compiled based on certain databases and their classification of a game as ‚RPG‘ (as explained in the FAQ and just mentioned by our host again above). Whether you or anyone else commenting here considers this to be true or not for a certain game is not (anymore) relevant for inclusion or exclusion of said game in/from the MGL. So to me the discussion on this specific question is moot.

      All the more so since - as you could easily have checked by yourself - ‚Freedom Force‘ does already show up on the MGL due to it having been qualified on Wikipedia as an RPG and appearing in its corresponding list of RPGs (one of Chet‘s sources, linked in the right sidebar).

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    11. I mean, your characters in Fantasy RPGs pretty much end up as super heroes at the end. What's Dr. Strange but a fairly high level wizard with some overpowered artifacts?

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    12. AlphabeticalAnonymousOctober 31, 2024 at 9:24 PM

      @Dan: Yes, I was thinking the same thing. The player-characters typically end up as super heroes at the very least, and at most as demigods all but capable of flattening continents.

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    13. RPG characters end there, but they don't start there. Superheroes, on the other hand, tend to stay at a fairly stable level of power throughout their arcs.

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    14. I can't imagine that Chet could have enough patience to play Superhero League of Hoboken to the end, because *everything* in that game is going to annoy him. So unless he can find some technical reason to reject it, I expect that he'll just leave it unfinished.

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    15. It's reasonable to say that superheroes tend to stay "stable", particularly at the pop culture level (There are many characters that undergo long-term transformation but that tends to be into the weeds of "Below the depths of what is known outside of fandom"), but there are certainly common subgenres of superhero that are organized more along the "hero's journey" arc that involve characters progressing over time. Not generally on the tier of your Super-and-Bat-Mans, but they're not exactly rare either. Below Marvel's top-tier, for instance, you've got a lot of characters whose arcs have them "level up" when a new writer takes over. Or something like, say, Power Rangers, who in some incarnations continuously unlock new abilities as the season arc progresses (There's a few versions that feel very RPG-like in their progression, essentially "Well you've won your 30th battle; it's time to unlock your next set of upgrades.")

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    16. Not superheroes, more like classic RPG characters in their development of powers, but this talk of arcs and unlocking new abilities made me think of ‚One Piece‘.

      I see there are quite a few OP games qualified as RPGs on Wikipedia, the most recent released just last year. Given that they started in 2000 and only appeared on consoles until not too long ago, we won‘t be seeing any of them around here anytime soon, though.

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    17. Another possible reason for the lack of superhero RPGs is that it's really difficult to design systems that are both balanced and allow players to make unique characters. Certainly this was my experience with City of Heroes (every character within an archetype is essentially the same) and with the Champions tabletop system (every character is the same, but with different aesthetics).

      It's true that every fighter any of the Gold Box games is essentially the same, but I don't think characters' uniqueness is the draw in Dungeons and Dragons. The chance to read about, watch, play, or make a really uniquely interesting superhero is a big part of the draw of the superhero genre for me.

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    18. > I can't imagine that Chet could have enough patience to play Superhero League of Hoboken to the end, because *everything* in that game is going to annoy him. So unless he can find some technical reason to reject it, I expect that he'll just leave it unfinished.

      Excuse me, but since when does Chet aborts game simply because they are "annoying"?

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    19. Since Legend? :P

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    20. Parts of this conversation feel very Codexian. It being either a RPG or not, as if games can only ever be one genre, rather than elements that make up a game. Not to mention: "This game isn't a RPG." "Yes it is." "Why are you arguing about a game from ten years in the future?"
      Anyway, it kind of strikes me that Freedom Force being considered both a RPG and a strategy game is a point against it, because there's nothing about it more strategic than your average RPG. Chet isn't going to have the best part either way, downloading hundreds of models to try to eek fun out of the one non-campaign mode by having bizarre team-ups and battles.
      In general, the X-Men Legends/Marvel: Ultimate Alliance games did a good job of showing how you could do it, start off fairly weak, then gradually introduce the more advanced abilities as you advance in levels.

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    21. >Since Legend? :P
      Wrong. Since BT2.

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    22. @Morpheus, it shouldn't be. Freedom Force is a squad tactics game, where each of the squad member is a superhero with his own powers that can be developed separately, and your roster of superheroes can be rotated through a sequence of plot-based missions with no roleplaying options beside squad selection for each mission and superhero development. This is a very well-established subgenre of games. I don't care whether or not they belong to RPG's, but, based on what I've seen on the blog so far, it is more likely to be rejected over rigid mission structure rather than a total lack of character development.

      Since Twilight 2000 is considered an RPG on this blog, I would say that Freedom Force would qualify too (obviously, the caveat being that it is waaaaay in the future), but, again, the discussion is largely hypothetical.

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    23. > I can't imagine that Chet could have enough patience to play Superhero League of Hoboken to the end, because *everything* in that game is going to annoy him. So unless he can find some technical reason to reject it, I expect that he'll just leave it unfinished.

      By *everything* do you mean the setting and silly humor? Because otherwise it's a fairly polished adventure/RPG (which generally Chet enjoys) with simple but more solid RPG systems than 80% of the games he has played for the blog...

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    24. Coincidentally, someone on Polygon published an article today about a somewhat similar subject - the reasons for the lack of ‘actual plays’ based on superhero TTRPGs:
      https://www.polygon.com/actual-play/472715/why-no-superhero-actual-play-podcasts.

      Spoiler: among other things, episodic nature of foes and usually not having the same character growth and leveling up as ‘normal’ RPGs make an appearance as potential factors there, too.

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    25. I was pretty excited about Freedom Force, but the response times of the characters killed the game for me. Felt like I was playing an online game with a terrible ping.

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    26. "I can't imagine that Chet could have enough patience to play Superhero League of Hoboken." One of the most odious commenters this blog has ever had used to go on and on about that game. I already hate it.

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  5. I played the Apple IIGS version of Mighty Nerd some years ago to add it to Mobygames. I also could not figure out how to attack or do much of anything in the game. It seems strange that this game could be ported to multiple systems and be broken on all of them.

    Definitely not an RPG, though

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  6. I remember playing the 1988 version of Dracula in London as a kid. I found it very easy to win, contrary to Chet's experience, and kind of neat for what it was, but I wouldn't call it an RPG either.

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  7. A character with turpentine can defeat rats.

    "Exterminators HATE this one simple trick!"

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  8. Wow. Played the DOS version of Dracula in London as a kid, had no idea there about the other version! I also found it chaotic at first, but once I got the hang of it, it was relatively easy to win consistently.

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  9. That would be Winchell Chung of Project Rho, the sort of hole you may never climb out of once you start reading it.

    I don't know how it plays, but the vampire combat puts me in the mind of Bloodnet.

    Interesting that the character who "contracted VD" was neither "reclusive" nor "extremely bitter."

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  10. ‚FRUA‘ on the horizon! I‘ll start preparing for a last hurrah to nostalgic Gold Box feelings on the blog.

    Though given what our host recently said when covering ‚Dungeon‘ (the Adventure Construction System), in addition to the set itself we might only get to read his impressions of the bundled default module “The Heirs to Skull Crag” - which I understand is more a showcase for the kit‘s possibilities and not as well regarded as the best/better user-created modules.

    ‚FRUA‘ is part of the Forgotten Realms Archives Collection 2 with the four Pools games, the two Savage Frontier ones and Hillsfar which was (re-)issued a couple years ago by SNEG, got it on gog. Maybe I‘ll fire it up for the occasion when Chet gets there.

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  11. I remember trying to get the Windows version running back in the Windows 98 days, but it didn't quite work. Guessing I missed the part on an earlier game where you got a Win 3.1 install going in DOSbox. That said, it sounds like I missed nothing.

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  12. As a Texan who has been to London, I've seen both Big Bend and Big Ben, and can confirm that they're exactly the same.

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  13. I did a full screenshot Let's Play of Rolan's Curse and Rolan's Curse 2 years ago. You can find it at https://talking-time.net/index.php?archive/lp/14277

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    1. Thanks! It sounds from your experience that I probably would have gotten stuck at some point towards the end.

      Can you summarize how you felt about it? Was it entertaining enough for the time it required?

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    2. I mean, I really enjoyed it, but I acknowledge that it isn't an rpg, it's an action game. (I also have severe nostalgia goggles because Rolan's Curse was one of the first Game Boy games I bought way back in 4th grade.) The sequel expands the game significantly so you have multiple characters and there are optional segments, but the overall plot is the same (Barius is bad, fight your way to the end and beat Barius), and all of the leveling is pickup-based: You find character icons for the members of your party (spiked on the map--if you don't have that character, it's a small potion instead) and the only way to get stronger is to collect them. I think it's a fun and entertaining game, especially for the era, but I don't think you'd actually enjoy it.

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