BRIEFs: Dragons of Flame (1989), X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants (1990), Golden Axe Warrior (1991)

 

The DOS version of the game doesn't have a graphical title screen. It does have a pre-title screen graphic, but it's low-quality, and it disappears so fast that it's hard to screen-capture it.

        

Dragons of Flame

United Kingdom
U.S. Gold, Ltd. (developer), Strategic Simulations, Inc. (publisher)

Released 1989 for DOS and Amiga; 1990 for Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC; 1992 for FM Towns and PC-98, 1992 for NES

Rejected for: No character development

     

I was originally going to play this one to the end and either number the entry or at least give it a standalone BRIEF. I got discouraged from that path by a terrible combat system and annoying controls that I didn't want to bother to reprogram.

    

Dragons of Flame is the middle of the three games in the Dragonlance-based "Silver Box" series developed by U.S. Gold under SSI's D&D license. It was preceded by Heroes of the Lance (1988), which I finished, and Shadow Sorcerer (1991), which I did not. It is based on the Dragons of Flame module (1984), which itself was based on the latter part of the novel Dragons of Autumn Twilight (1984). [Ed. I got the order wrong. The module preceded the novel.] It is set in the early days of the War of the Lance, in which the goddess Takhisis created the armies of Draconians from dragon eggs. The eight canonical Heroes of the Lance have been captured by a Draconian army but are freed when some elves attack the Draconians. The companions' goal now is to reach the fortress of Pax Tharkas, find the sword called "Wyrmslayer," and free the slaves kept captive there.

      

The opening moments give you the main quest.

       

The game begins on an iconographic map. The party starts in the northern part of the campaign map and must make their way past hordes of monsters to Pax Tharkas in the south. Only one specific route gets them over rivers and to the caverns that will sneak them into the fortress, but treasures and useful NPCs can be found by exploring the other parts of the world. Many of these NPCs join the party, though I'm not sure I understand why. A lot of them looked like, and fought like, peasants.

      

About to cross a bridge with a lot of enemies in the area.

       

All the heroes appear in the party at once. The first one is the leader, and it is he or she that you control when you encounter an enemy and switch to combat. Combat occurs on a side-scrolling screen, as in Heroes of the Lance, and the player uses the numberpad to move or to execute various attacks. As long as Goldmoon is alive and within the first four characters, she can cast cleric spells without having to switch party leaders. The same is true of Raistlin and mage spells.

      

Slaying a Draconian.

       

Enemies are so dense in the world that they're nearly impossible to avoid. They include giant wasps, trolls, griffons, zombies, and various types of Draconians. Combat is a frustrating affair in which enemies sometimes appear literally right on top of you, sometimes in clusters of half a dozen or more. The numberpad lets you move, crouch, or jump in either direction. If you want to fight, you must—in one of the worst possible configurations of keys in gaming history—hold down the numberpad's "+" key while simultaneously hitting the numbers on the numberpad. I don't know if the authors intended that you hold down the "+" with your little finger and operate the numbers with the others, or perhaps use two hands, but either way, it was impossible for me to get used to.

     

Well, I guess I'm dead.

      

Cleric spells are divided into those that can be cast by Goldmoon through memorization and those that require "charges" from the Disks of Mishakal; these include "Raise Dead" and "Heal." You can thus only cast a fixed number of these high-level spells per game. Mage spells all come out of a fixed number of charges in Raistlin's staff. I found magic was the only way I could win battles, and I was a bit annoyed when it kept running out.

   

I've tangled a Draconian in a "web."

      

I made it to Pax Tharkas, but only to the main entrance, which was closed. I kept running out of spells before I could make it to, let alone through, the cave system. Anyway, the game is not an RPG by my definitions. Yes, the characters have attributes, but they're fixed. They don't gain experience as they defeat enemies, except as part of a final score. As with the other two Silver Box games, a complete game is only meant to take a few hours, after which you see your statistics and are encouraged to try again.

     

I've made it to the fortress; I just can't get in.

       

 ******

 

       

X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants

United States

Paragon Software Corporation (developer and publisher)

Released 1990 for DOS

Rejected for: No character development

    

This game was tagged on MobyGames as an RPG by someone who must have seen the world map and assumed that any game in which your character is represented as a little icon is an RPG. There otherwise isn't a single RPG element. There is no experience, no leveling, no economy, no personal equipment. There isn't even a character sheet to view. The X-Men have (quite naturally) fixed powers and abilities, and you just have to keep their health meters high enough to complete their missions.

    

And yet, there's a sense to which the game is RPG-adjacent, in that it was developed by Paragon Software during the same time it was working on MegaTraveller and Space: 1889. The movement window looks passably like the party movement window in the developer's other games, so I'm sure it used much of the same code. It mashes this exploration interface with a side-scrolling combat interface developed for X-Men: Madness in Murderworld (1989), which no one thinks is an RPG.

      

Somehow, it is snowing in Dallas and the enemies are barbarians. I didn't read the comic series.

       

The game is based on a 1987-1988 arc that crossed over multiple Marvel comic series. In it, the X-Men take on a demonic adversary called . . . well, the Adversary. The idea is that the Watcher (an alien being who can see all universes) is observing how the events would have played out if different teams of X-Men had taken on the different missions that make up the overall arc.

    

"And explore the question: What if?" is the conclusion of the opening narration in the current Marvel Studios series. I had no idea it went back so far.

           

The game has you choose five X-Men for your team, then choose a mission. During the mission, each team member's power can be used for both battle and exploration; for instance, X-Men with flying abilities can pass over objects (and somehow bring the entire team with them), and those that can teleport can ignore (some) walls.

 

Exploring some caves with my team. You move the leader and everyone else follows.

      

When the characters meet enemies, the view switches to a side-view interface for combat. You may face multiple enemies, but each character only takes on one of them, so you have to switch between characters (and combat screens) with the number keys, defeating all of them before you can exit combat and move on. With only one primary and one secondary attack per character, I don't even think it works very well as an action game.

   

Turn-based combat mode.

    

I should mention that there's also a kind of "tactical" party-based combat system, too, in which all party members and all enemies face each other on a Brady Bunch-like grid of portraits and take turns using their attacks. I had to steal a screenshot of this because for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to switch to it. The controls in general are a bit of a nightmare, with PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN, of all things, used for the two types of attack. 

   

If you're interested in more there's a good article here by an author named "Scary Crayon."

 

********

     

Art department: You had one job.

     

Golden Axe Warrior

Japan

SEGA Enterprises Lt. (developer and publisher) 

Released 1991 for SEGA Master System

Rejected for: Insufficient character development

    

When this came up on a random roll, I let myself look forward to it for a minute. Although I knew that the original Golden Axe games were not RPGs, I let myself believe that maybe this spinoff had introduced some RPG elements. As a teenager, I had played and enjoyed Golden Axe (1989) in the arcade, its lack of RPG credentials notwithstanding. This is what it looked like:

          

Proper heroes fighting proper enemies.

        

Things started well when I fired up the game. It has a properly heroic title screen and a backstory that evokes themes of Norse mythology and Conan-style swords and sorcery. Long ago, a group of giants tried to usurp the place of the gods. They were defeated, and only one, Death Adder, survived. For years, peace has reigned in the nation of Firewood, which is blessed with the magic of the 9 crystals. But a "greedy minister" sold the crystals to Death Adder, who has now used them to conquer the kingdoms of men. One final hero emerges to slay Death Adder, recover the crystals, and avenge his people.

   

So far, so good. Then we transition to this:

       

Look at the adorable little kid waving his sword around.

      

And this:

    

Even the bearded NPCs look like children.

       

I've already played this game a million times. The same Goofy Cartoonish Little Man; the same enemies marching back and forth across the screen; the same health bar represented as "hearts"; the same NPCs giving one line of drivel. Increases to a couple of status bars do not make a game an "RPG"; every first-person shooter would be one under that definition.

   

I know that The Legend of Zelda will continue to inspire both RPGs and non-RPGs forever, but I won't be sad when we get out of this era of literal Zelda clones.