Game 580: Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse (1994)

I'm going to go with the usual way of representing the game, but the opening screens separate the series title and game title, and the manual refers to it as Genie's Curse (without the definite article).

         

Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse

United States 

Cyberlore Studios (developer), Strategic Simulations, Inc. (publisher) 

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 23 June 2026

     

As we've previously covered, Strategic Simulations' license to publish D&D content was in its waning months in 1994. TSR was almost frantically trying to squeeze everything they could out of the license. Having exhausted its own development bandwidth with Eye of the Beholder III (1993) and the two Dark Sun titles (1993 and 1994), they happily took proposals from other developers who agreed to publish through SSI. Many of these proposals resulted in games for niche campaign settings, such as Spelljammer (1992), Warriors of the Eternal Sun (1992), and the forthcoming Ravenloft (1994). Into this milieu came a new developer, Cyberlore Studios. It was formed by Lester Humphreys, Herb Perez, and Ken Grey, the first two of whom had worked on The Dark Queen of Krynn (1992) for MicroMagic. They began working on Al-Qadim (whose tabletop manual had just been published) almost immediately. I haven't been able to find any information about where the project originated, but the speed at which they got set up and running suggests to me that SSI already knew they wanted the game and essentially funded the new studio.

     

The game title.

         

"Three distinct visions of Arabia have helped give shape" to the Al-Qadim campaign setting, according to its 1992 guide: (1) the historical Arabia, "home of great warriors, explorers, and traders, as well as great knowledge and civilization"; (2) the mythology and stories of these people, "the world of genies and ghuls"; and (3) the "Araby" of Hollywood, reflected in films from The Thief of Bagdad (1940) to Sinbad's Shazaam! (1991). Scheherazade may go back 1,300 years, but the image you have of her has more to do with Maria Montez than any Arabian author. TSR had a bit of luck releasing the Al-Qadim tabletop materials in the same year as Disney's Aladdin (1992).

      

The source manual.

                  

Al-Qadim ("the ancient") was a brief lark for TSR, never intended to exist for more than a few publications—probably a good thing given its phonetic similarity to "Al-Qaeda," which was about to become a big part of most Americans' vocabularies. Although the land of the setting, Zakhara, is nominally set in the Forgotten Realms (somewhere south of Faerûn), it could be plugged into any campaign setting where some Arabian flair was needed. My understanding is that it was the first campaign setting to offer character "kits," and that some of its monsters and rules live on in fifth-edition D&D. Those more experienced in tabletop D&D will certainly be able to contribute more.

        

In some ways, Zakharan society represents an idealized American model rather than anything historically Arabian. Zakhara is such a melting pot that even orcs, goblins, and other monster races are integrated with the rest of the civilization. There are no racial enmities (although, the book notes, elves do seem to prefer other elves). There is a strong hereditary caste system, with "social status" measured on a scale of 1 to 20 along with standard D&D attributes, but adventurous types are explicitly given a certain social mobility.

      

The manual's depiction of a meeting between a Dao djinni and an efreeti.

         

The "kit" system—a combination of class, alignment, proficiencies, magical abilities, and special skills—are a particularly interesting addition. They had been introduced in The Complete Fighter's Handbook (1989) and continued in the other class-based handbooks of the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was the first time they were baked into a campaign. They include such evocative titles as "corsair" (sea-based, dual-wielding fighters with some thief skills but no heavy armor), "sha'ir" (mages who specialize in summoning genies), "barbers" (rogues specializing in identification, language, and medicine), and "mystics" (chaotic nomad priests who can use edged weapons and who receive their spells through revelation rather than divine gift). There are new proficiencies for characters, including begging, grooming, camel-riding, and genie lore. Heavy armor exists, but given the heat of the setting, those who wear it suffer significant penalties. Hydration is carefully tracked. 

   

"Genies" are not specific creatures but rather a class of creatures, from elemental familiars to powerful efreet. (To forestall wasting time in the comments, these entries are going to follow the D&D convention of djinni and efreeti for the singular and djinn and efreet for the plural, regardless of what actual Arabic does.) They can be summoned and provide benefits to their summoners, which only at the highest levels include wishes. The game's backstory (as the title suggests) involves these beings. A mysterious force has been freeing genies from the magic that binds them to human servants, but a seer who serves one of the genies has predicted that this same mysterious force will yoke the genies for itself. I guess the titular "curse" is the ability for the genies to escape their former masters, although the genies themselves see it as a "blessing."

            

A mermaid later explains it to me.

        

An arrogant efreeti named Mirza Gubishbuskin used to serve a sha'ir named Farid al-Mutan, a resident of Sorcerer's Isle. Mirza unexpectedly found himself freed from servitude in the middle of an invasion. He refused to help the island, and it was sacked by ogres, ettins, and other monsters. The seer has predicted that a son of the protector of Sorcerer's Isle, Al-Hazrad, will be the key to defeating the mysterious force and returning the genies to bondage, but it is not clear that all genies see that outcome as preferable.

    

The son, of course, is the player character. He starts the game not as an inexperienced youth but rather as a Level 2 corsair, having already seen plenty of adventure serving the Master Corsair Sinbar. He's even wooed Kara, a caliph's daughter, and plans to marry her.

     

The character's starting statistics. One more goblin, and he's Level 3.

       

Character creation is thus not much; the player gets to give the kid a name (Sunduq in my case) and choose a difficulty level. The character has attributes, but they're the same for every new game: 18(74) strength, 17 dexterity, 16 constitution, 14 intelligence, 15 wisdom, 14 charisma, 3900 experience points, 22 hit points.

     

The strength statistic seems justified.

        

Gameplay begins in Sinbar's palace, where he's complimenting Sunduq on his accomplishments, noting that only Sunduq's brother, Tarik, "has ever shown your skill and bravery." Sinbar regrettably dismisses Sunduq from his service: "You must put aside thoughts of adventuring and prepare for your wedding to the Caliph's beautiful daughter, Kara." All Sunduq has to do is negotiate a maze to a teleporter that will take him home to Zaratan on Sorcerer's Isle.

   

Sunduq gets a chance to talk with Sinbar a bit; the game features full-sentence dialogue options. (SSI introduced them in the previous year's Dark Sun: Shattered Lands.) In them, we learn that the seer referenced in the back story, Khatarina, is Sinbar's daughter. "She said she had a vision of you as a great hero," he tells Sunduq before leading him to the maze.

      

"Wait. I meant that the other way around."

       

Controls are simple; Al-Qadim is more of an action game than an RPG. Everything can be done with the mouse; right-clicking to move in the direction of the screen cursor, left-clicking to swing the character's weapon or initiate dialogue (I guess the game figures out which you want to do based on who you're next to). The numberpad and its ENTER key can be used instead. I'm not sure which I find easier yet.

    

The graphics are not a million miles removed from Dark Sun, if Dark Sun featured only one character and the icons were a bit larger.  

    

Entering Sinbar's maze.

     

The "maze" turns out to be less a maze and more an obstacle course intended to teach the controls. In order, the character faces:

     

• A force field that comes from behind and teleports you back to the beginning if you linger too long. 

• Rocks protruding into the hallway that the character must navigate around.

• Spikes protruding from the ground that he must navigate around.

• Spikes that go up and down, requiring him to time crossing them.

      

Sunduq gets hit in an unfortunate place.

        

• Fireballs shooting from a hole in the corridor.

• Pressure plates that activate jets of flame from the floor.

• Jets of flame in a row that activate in sequence.

• Spikes that shoot up from the floor in the character's path. There's no way to predict them, so you just have to react fast and not walk into them.

• Spikes blocking the corridor that have to be lowered by choosing the right pressure plate.

• Large jars blocking the path that must be smashed. 

       

I wasn't fast enough.

         

• Wandering balls of flame that must be avoided.

• Traps in the floor that must be avoided.

• Circular saw blades running back and forth along the corridor. They must be timed and avoided.  

      

The penitent man shall pass.

         

• A corridor where you can pick up a lot of gold, but if you do, you can't avoid the teleportation field and you lose the gold. 

• A pit that must be crossed by activating invisible tiles.

• A bunch of jars that must be flown over by finding a lever that temporarily turns you into a bird. 

     

I avoid a lot of smashing.

         

• Spikes coming out of the floor.

• Chasms opening unpredictably in the middle of the corridor.

• Rolling rocks. 

• Much faster saw blades, much closer together. I couldn't even begin to avoid them.

     

Getting killed by these obstacles results in a message that I die "with dishonor," which seems a bit harsh. In any event, I eventually make it through to a large treasure chest. Sinbar's voice congratulates me; I earn 450 experience points, which gets me to Level 3; and I get Oil of Water Elemental Invulnerability, Oil of Air Elemental Invulnerability, and 200 gold pieces. 

     

I have to look up who this "Loregiver" is.

          

A teleporter whisks me home to Sorcerer's Isle, on a sandy beach outside the city. My sister, Aliya, meets me and escorts me through the guarded gates to a giant cistern. My father, standing next to it, greets me warmly, and I learn that he sent me the sword I carry. Aliya says she has to practice her magic, but I should visit her in her house. Finally, I can play.  

     

I've been using it to smash jars.

          

The manual includes a helpful map of Zaratan and its various buildings. I explore the town and talk to NPCs, including various members of my family. In most interactions, I have a humble and respectful option, a proud and haughty option, and a mercenary option. I'm not sure how much those options matter. The few times that I saved and tried every option, I got different NPC responses but ended up in the same place. For instance, when the Qadi asks me to deliver a peace treaty, I can say:

    

• "Yes. I will do your bidding, wise Qadi."
• "I am a Corsair, not an errand boy!"
• "The Al-Hazrads will never make peace with the Wassabs!"

      

Dialogue options with my neighbor. The middle version of Sunduq really wants people to know that he's a Corsair.

        

The Qadi has a negative reaction to the second two, but I still end up with the treaty in my pocket, awaiting signatures. 

      

Everyone's talking about my forthcoming wedding. My brother, Tarik, is on the way home from his work as a merchant marine. My bride-to-be has written me a love note.

        

The game's depiction of Zaratan, the capital city of Sorcerer's Isle.

         

It's clear from my dialogue that my family's business is in the sea trade. We own a captive genie named Muliban and use him to protect the city but also to create fair weather for our trading vessels. We have an ongoing rivalry with the Wassab family, which thinks our use of the genie gives us an unfair advantage. The town Qadi (the magistrate) is concerned that our family feud will lead to violence in the streets, and he wants both families to sign a treaty to behave honorably. 

              

Thanks, Qadi! I swear by the nose of Bozo the Clown you haven't aged a day!

         

Other findings:

   

• In further conversation with my father, I learn that my sword is called the Sword of Honor. It will grow more powerful if I can find a "special shard of the Moonstone." He also tells me our neighbor Babazar's daughter is terribly ill. Tarik, my brother, isn't here yet but is on his way for the wedding.

• The inn is run by a confused man who mistakes me for my brother and thinks I'm marrying the Caliph's mother. 

• One of the inn's residents heard that there is a fabulous treasure on a nearby reef. He talks himself out of trying to claim it himself.

    

Don't let me discourage you.

         

• Another guest, Zultan, says he came to the city to study my family's genie. I tell him the genie is not an insect to be studied, and he gets all offended.

• The weapon master asks me to deal with some monsters west of town. He also agrees to spar with me, so I finally get a sense of the game's combat, which seems to consist of the opponents standing face to face and slashing at each other. The manual mentions sneaking, using missile weapons, dodging, and using spells, so I'll explore those eventually. 

          

This turned out not to be a great use of my health points.

         

• At the temple, I generously give 50 gold pieces and get 180 experience points. I try it again with 10 but get no further experience.

• I wander into a house that turns out to be the Wassabs' house. Their son, Mamoon, tries to attack me, but his father stops him. The father won't sign the treaty unless my father signs it first.

      

Given how long it took me to get through the obstacle course, that might be a fair hit.

        

• I can hit ENTER when next to some furniture and baskets, but I'm spared the ethical dilemma of looting them by the fact that none of them have anything of value.

      

Food is not a requirement in this game.

         

• My sister gives me a Sling of Seeking, "which can be increased by finding the correct Shards of the Moonstone." Aliya has been accepted by Zaratan's Sorcery Guild. Its founder, the efreeti's owner from the backstory, fled town after his genie disobeyed him. "He hides in that strange tower to the northwest of town."

• A poor resident asks me for 30 gold to help fix his house. I give it to him and get another 180 experience points.

      

This might be a good time to remind readers about Patreon.

         

• Another guy tells me I borrowed 5 gold from him before going off to be a corsair. I return it and get 90 more experience points. 

• A guy tells me that he's going to "turn into a tiger, say the magic words, and turn back again!" Then he turns into a tiger and stays that way.

      

I knew there was a problem with your plan.

        

• There's a potion shop where healing potions go for 50 gold each. I've spent so much money by now that I don't want to spend any more here. 

• At Babazar's house, he says that his daughter is sick and needs herbs that grow "wild in the oasis." Monsters there have driven everyone back. Again, I have some role-playing options. I say I'll do it. He says to ignore the red and blue berries and get the purple berries. He also gives me a Sunfire Shard. From the manual, shards are like wands, with limited uses. I don't think this type of shard is the same thing as the Shards of the Moonstone. 

      

I hate to break it to you, Babazar, but your daughter has a 67% chance of dying.

       

• At my aunt's house, she's standing on a chair, avoiding an infestation of frogs caused by a spell gone wrong. She gives me a wedding present of 10 gems and 100 gold pieces.

• At the Sorcerers' Guild, I learn how to walk through secret walls. A sorceress asks me to smash a bunch of urns so she can practice magicking them back together. 

          

You can't see me because I'm in the middle of this wall.

        

I head outside to check out the monsters and to try to find the berries, noting with some trepidation that my health never recovered after the fight with the weapon master. I thought it might regenerate slowly on its own. Not only does it not do that, but there is also no way to restore health by sleeping, whether at home or in camp. It looks like I'll need to pay for those potions at some point.

 

As I head west, I am attacked by what the manual calls werehyenas, miniature air elementals, and at least one giant boar. "Miniature" elementals and some other creatures (e.g., desert cyclops, acid blob, giant Zakharan rat) were created specifically for this game and have full-page Monster Manual-like descriptions in case the player "would like to incorporate them into your own campaign."

      

I'm not sure that the world needed these.

         

There are also plants that shoot missiles at me, but it doesn't seem that I can kill or even engage them. Similarly, there are trees with beehives that disgorge swarms of bees if I get too close. 

       

Some bastard plant nails me for no reason.

      

What follows could be characterized as a "Bacchanalia of Reloading." It takes me a long time to get used to the combat system, and even then I'm not sure that I really have it. Attacking in melee range with the sword usually involves an unavoidable hit point loss unless I dance around a lot, and my fingers haven't gotten that agile yet. (I can't decide at this point whether I have an easier time with the keypad or mouse.) The sling can theoretically shoot enemies from afar, but it has a bit of a wind-up period in which they can close the distance, especially if I face multiple foes. The Sunfire Shard will kill a lot of enemies at once, but only once, and it has to be carefully aimed.

     

This seems like a lot to handle.

            

Obstacles help, and sometimes enemies will just mysteriously stop in their tracks, giving me a chance to nail a few of them with the sling until they come to their senses. If I can get the timing exactly right on melee attacks, I can sometimes keep them at bay. (This seems to work better on the horizontal than the vertical.) Even though the character can move diagonally, he cannot face diagonally, so I have to make sure I'm attacking along straight lines.

     

I keep having this very annoying problem where I need to turn around to face an enemy, but the game insists on making the character walk backwards. It can be fatal when it happens, and I can't find anything in the manual or my experimentation with the controls that makes a solid difference between the two types of movement. The game just seems to pick randomly.

           

What, exactly, do I have to do to face east?

         

It turns out that there's a particularly wussy way to survive: Mince along, firing sling bullets every few steps. When the bullet goes off at an angle, that means it's detected something. Keep firing and hope to destroy the enemy off-screen. 

      

The whole experience reminds me (not pleasantly) of a console action RPG or action game like Deadly Towers or The Legend of Zelda. What makes Al-Qadim technically an action RPG and not an action game is the use of character attributes and levels to determine success in combat, but the attributes are pre-determined. It appears that the only thing the player has any agency over, when it comes to the character, is how many of these side-quests to do, which I guess might contribute an extra level or two here or there.

          

The bards singing of my quest doesn't sound bad . . .

             

(I honestly wonder if the attributes are even "real." Since every character starts with the same attributes, are they even part of any of the game's formulas? Could I hex-edit them to improve my success? Or are they just for show?)

   

Here's a phenomenon for which I think there ought to be a term, but for which I'm not going to coin one until I get some confirmation that other people think the same way. It's complex, but it goes something like this: You're playing a game in which healing is rare or expensive. You're motivated to save after every success. You're also motivated to reload not only when you die, but when you've taken a significant-but-unnecessary loss of hit points. What's "significant?" Roughly half your hit point total before taking the damage. If the character is fresh, you might accept a 50% loss as the cost of doing business with a particularly hard foe. After that, it's 25% (or 50% of the remainder). Then 12.5% Then 6.25%—okay, you're not actually calculating to two decimal places, but you get the idea.

      

What?! What did I do that was dishonorable? I got eaten by a pack of jackals!

          

Knowing that this is going to happen means that, paradoxically, there's no point in bringing the character to maximum health. Eventually, you're going to get to the point where you're reloading with practically every hit anyway. Might as well live on the edge and use it as an excuse to master the combat system. So that's what I did—which is why the health bar in the screenshots hardly budges. Only I never really "mastered" it. I just reloaded a lot.

        

I found the oasis with the berry plants. The game solved my colorblindness issue by not even letting me pick the red and blue berries. When I went to pick the purple ones, a mermaid appeared and welcomed me to the Oasis  of the Pahari. She asked if I was a man of honor, and I said yes. She said I could heal myself as often as I liked in the oasis if I did her a favor: Take a message to the Qadi of Zaratan that the mermaid's master, Farid (from the backstory, now living in exile in a tower) wants to speak about the monsters infesting the oasis. She went on to say that my family's genie, Muliban, "has rid the oasis of monsters many times, but somehow they return." She further asked that I not tell anyone else of her existence, lest "greedy men" try to capture her for their own profit.

       

How about you let me heal first, then take your message?

      

Having a free place to heal sounds like the solution to a lot of problems, so I prepare to head back to town even though I haven't killed all the monsters yet. At this point, I run into a problem where the game freezes every time I try to walk off the screen and back to town. So I guess I'll wrap up while I try to solve that problem.

   

So far, I like the setting and plot. The NPCs are fun and remind me pleasantly of those in the Quest for Glory games, while the early experience exploring the city feels a bit like Conan the Cimmerian (1991), but both impressions might have more to do with the themes of the setting than any actual influence. I am not a fan of the controls, so far, and I suspect the RPG elements are going to turn out to be somewhat illusory.

   

Time so far: 3 hours (this included a lot of reloading in the oasis); I probably only made an hour of real progress).

   

****

   

Next entry in this series 

        

For further reading:

   

• My index of games played by lineage has all other Dungeons & Dragons titles.
• The Internet Archive has the Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures source book. 

07/08/2026  

The Elder Scrolls: Arena: Summary and Rating

 

It's a good thing this is a single-character game, because three of these people would be fatally distracted in combat.

       

The Elder Scrolls: Arena

United States 

Bethesda Softworks (developer and publisher)

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 9 March 2026

Date Ended: 29 April 2026

Total Hours: 43

Difficulty:  Moderate (3.0/5)

Final Rating: 38

Ranking at time of posting: 473/582 (81%)

     

Summary:

   

The first Elder Scrolls game lays out a surprising amount of the series' geography, history, and lore, including the races and provinces of Tamriel and the basic history of the empire united hundreds of years ago by Tiber Septim. Now, Emperor Uriel Septim VII has been kidnapped and sent to an alternate dimension by his evil BattleMage, Jagar Tharn. To rescue him, the player has to find the 8 pieces of the Staff of Chaos, each hidden in a dungeon in a different province, then confront Tharn in the imperial palace.

    

The game has all the trappings of a modern CRPG, including attributes and leveling, a full set of weapons and armor, a detailed spell list (and the ability to craft your own spells), monsters with various strengths and weaknesses, NPCs, side-quests, and a robust economy. Despite these assets, the experience mostly falls flat, likely because the developers relied too much on bland procedural generation of most dungeons and  NPCs and all cities and towns. The first-person graphics and free movement are decent for the era, but alas they don't age well. Overall, Arena tries to build on its famous predecessors—primarily Ultima Underworld (1992) and Legends of Valour (1992)—but fails to equal them, let alone surpass them.

   

****

    

I'm glad they didn't give up after one game, but Arena is a bit of a misfire. It is more impressive (from a programming standpoint) than fun. Roguelikes show that procedural generation can work when done well, but it has to be coupled with solid mechanics and logistics. Bethesda made a good effort at both but didn't quite clear the bar. The company will continue to struggle with the balance between handcrafted content and generated content straight into the modern age, and many of the complaints I have about Arena are the same ones I have about Starfield (2023).

    

Arena's handcrafted content is limited to its 18 main quest dungeons. The problem is that few of those dungeons are terribly interesting. Even the "handcrafted" locations feel like they started with a procedural base and then just added title cards, welcome messages, furnishings, and riddle doors. Even in this regard, I feel like they got less interesting as they went along. The cities and NPCs, meanwhile, have no character at all beyond some skins specific to their provinces. If I had been a consultant on Arena, I would have advised them to handcraft at least the capital cities of each province, and to sprinkle them with a dozen or so non-generic NPCs.

     

This, for instance, is a "handcrafted" level. As far as I can tell, it may as well have been procedurally-generated.

        

On the other hand, if the mechanics had been better, it might have been a pleasure to explore a few more side-dungeons, gaining a few more levels, finding a few more artifacts. There are modern games for which I wouldn't mind the occasional procedurally-generated level at all. The Infinity Engine games come to mind. If Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale had featured some optional, repeatable dungeons with random selections of enemies, particularly ones that you don't get to fight often in the main campaign, I might never have started this blog.

   

As for those mechanics, Arena almost always has a good base but doesn't go far enough in some areas and poorly balances others. The equipment system (likely influenced by Might and Magic III-V) offers not quite enough variety, particularly for certain classes. The economy is just a bit too generous. Combat goes on just a bit too long against not-quite-enough enemies who are not quite interesting enough to hold my attention. The combat interface is innovative but gets a bit exhausting. Graphics occupy that unfortunate valley between the best of the previous primitive age and the worst of the forthcoming immersive age.

        

I meant to include this shot from Ebonheart in my last entry. That volcano is visible in the distance from everywhere in Morrowind.

       

My repetitive uses of "a bit" and "not quite" are poor English, but they work for a game that landed just shy of the threshold of victory. I've always tried to follow Strunk & White's recommendations to eschew negative verbs and adjectives (e.g., "did not respond," "not unattractive") in favor of positive ones (e.g., "ignored," "pretty"). But Arena almost begs for the former.  It's not a bad game; it's just a not good one. I don't necessarily not recommend it, but I don't really recommend it, either.

   

In the 1980s, I established a rating of about 35 as my "recommended" threshold, but by the mid-1990s, I think it needs to be up to 40. A score of around 40-43 would reflect the way I feel about the game. Let's see what happens.

     

GIMLET 

Category	Assets	Liabilities	Score
1. Game World	A detailed backstory with history and lore.  An intriguing map with interesting place names. Evocative names and historical tidbits dropped into conversation, quest messages, title cards, exploration messages.	A laughable explanation of the game's name.  Most of the name drops are just names; later games will flesh them out but Arena doesn't deserve that credit.  Races in this early game are mostly fantasy archetypes.  Outdoor areas completely wasted. Forced fast-travel.	4
2. Character Creation and Development	Fun, Ultima-like character creation process. Character classes are well-differentiated and create unique gameplay experiences.  Class-based roleplaying options for thieves and spellcasters.	Leveling is boring, involving a simple allocation of 3-6 attribute points with consequent increases in health and mana.     Awful character portraits.  No roleplaying options for fighter classes.	4
3. NPCs	Towns are full of them and you learn a fair amount from them.	They're almost all randomly-generated with no personalities.	3
4. Encounters and Foes	About 20 monsters with some strengths and weaknesses. I found the riddle doors a fun diversion but others will want to subtract more for that.	Monsters are a bit boring. No major variance in tactics necessary to defeat them. No other special encounters.	3
5. Magic and Combat	Spell variety offers most of the tactics in combat. Other tactics found in use of terrain.	Combat is otherwise a bit boring. Different types of attacks don't seem to make any difference. Ranged combat under-developed.  Most of the "use of terrain" tactics feel like exploits.	3
6. Equipment	Lots of equipment slots. Easy to understand relative offensive/defensive value of items.  Items mostly randomized in game world.  Almost anything can be enchanted. Variety of potions serve as a money sink.  Powerful artifact items.	Not quite enough variety in equipment to put in those slots, particularly for certain classes. Limited to one artifact item at a time unless you use an exploit.	5
7. Economy	Several ways to make money: selling looted items, side-quests, thievery. Lots of things to spend money on.	Economy gets a bit generous by the halfway mark.  Silly haggling mechanic. Treasure in dungeons weirdly limited to 99 gold pieces.	5
8. Quests	Clear main quest. Artifact quests. Side-quests with various levels of complexity in each town.	Main quest stages are overly repetitive and predictable. Side quests are boring and don't reward enough to bother. No different main quest outcomes.	4
9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface	Almost everything on the screen has a keyboard backup. Decent sound effects. Limited voice acting is good. 3D continuous movement.  Nice automap and journal.	Graphics are good for the era but ugly by the standards of even 5 years later; do not age well. Dragging mouse to swing weapon in combat gets a bit old, particularly where precision isn't required.  No ambient sound.	4
10. Gameplay	Geographically nonlinear. Replayable to experience different classes.	Narratively linear. Otherwise not replayable. Repetitive nature of main quest process gets old. Game is a bit too long.	3
Other/Total	Lots of procedurally-generated content	Lots of procedurally-generated content.	38

      

That final score is a bit lower than I expected, but not so much that I think something's wrong with the rating. I really wanted to like Arena, which infused some of the enthusiasm of my early entries, but it showed all its cards early. By the time you've found the third piece of the Staff of Chaos, you've really experienced all the game has to offer.

       

Why would you not include a single shot of combat?

            

Scorpia's review in the May 1994 Computer Gaming World echoes many of my own thoughts about the game. "Everything eventually becomes mechanical and repetitious," she says, referring to the interchangeable towns, NPCs, and dungeons, as well as the limited number of enemies. She points out, more than I did in my coverage, how utterly useless the entire outdoor experience is. Bethesda spent a lot of time on pretty outdoor maps with structures, dungeons, monsters, even weather effects, and there's no reason whatsoever to ever experience these things.

   

On the other hand, she liked the combat a lot better than I did: "It's the most natural way of fighting that I've seen in a first-person game." She also spends more time talking about the side quests (I guess some had unachievable time limits) than I spent playing them. Her final comments are almost prescient:

   

The game is impressive as a first effort. Most of the pieces of a good CRPG are there. What is needed now is a tightening of the code, a little polishing up of the basic engine, a little scaling back of the size, and the inclusion of some real role-playing elements . . . with a solid storyline. These are well within Bethesda's abilities, and their addition to future products would make The Elder Scrolls a dynamite series.

    

I'm glad she was still around to review Daggerfall two years later. Despite her misgivings, the Arena won CGW's "Role-Playing Game of the Year" award.

       

According to MobyGames's roundup of reviews, the game's best review (in its age) came from the March 1994 Joystick (a French magazine) at 91%; its worst from the May 1994 PC Zone at 62%: "The cities are dull. The interaction is dull. The playing area is too large. The quests and money-earning too laborious. There is no wit." The mode is around 80%, or a B- in my profession, which makes sense to me. 

       

Just a shot of me fighting a fire daemon. I liked it, and I didn't get to use it earlier.

       

What strikes me about almost all the reviews is the mention of size. None of them seem to have caught on that Arena's supposed vastness is completely illusory. Maybe some of the European magazines that I can't easily translate covered it, but nowhere in the English reviews did I see any acknowledgement about the extent of procedural generation. Maybe they weren't aware of it. Maybe the idea was just too new to them.

        

A ton has been written about both the game and the Elder Scrolls series. I like to try to synthesize everything in these "Summary and Rating" postings, but this is one of those games for which there is far more content out there than I have time to assemble in a single entry. Here are some highlights of what I've found elsewhere:

    

• The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages confirms what commenters contributed to my last entry: The original conception was for the PC to be the ward of General Talin Warhaft, leader of the imperial guards, also confusingly named "Talin." This explains why in the manual, Ria refers to the PC as "Talin" while the cinematic shows Talin Warhaft being captured along with the Emperor (and the original endgame cinematic shows him being returned). There's even a cut slide from the opening narration that explains this.

   

The cut content.

      

• I only experienced a small percentage of the types of random quests available. They include delivery, retrieval, and escort quests (which always take place in towns), and dungeon quests in which you rescue a captive, capture a criminal, or slay a particular creature. I didn't experience any of these and indeed questioned whether they existed. I suppose you could have fun with the game without ever doing the main quest. Although the times I was given were always generous, apparently you can be given a deadline that's impossible to achieve.

• If you fail a palace quest, for some reason the game changes the entire palace and ruler, with males always switching to females, and vice versa. Those are some serious consequences. 

• There are plenty of people online who claim that if you're willing to put in the time, you can walk from one city to another. They claim it takes dozens of hours. I'd like to have some confirmation of this, but I'm not willing to put in the time.

      

Any volunteers?

      

• The full list of artifacts are Auriel's Bow, Chrysamere (two-handed sword), Ebony Blade (katana), Staff of Magnus, Voldendrug (hammer), King Orgnum's Coffer (gives gold once per day), Necromancer's Amulet, Oghma Infinium, Ring of Khajiit, Ring of Phynaster, Skeleton's Key, Warlock's Ring. They all appear again in subsequent games. I think Skyrim has them all except the Warlock's Ring and King Orgnum's Coffer.

• Bethesda began an expansion pack to Arena set in Mournhold in Morrowind. It morphed into The Elder Scrolls II before its setting was for some reason changed to Daggerfall. 

• Unused or cut content for the game includes art for beholders and balrogs, a slave market, and support for up to four party members at once.

        

I'm sorry we didn't get to see this guy.

       

The official cluebook for Arena was called Codex Scientia, written by Judith Weller and Ted Peterson. I didn't learn a lot from it, but here are some tidbits:

   

• "Resist Fire" lets you swim in lava. I suppose I should have guessed that, but I never tested it.

• Different classes have different casting costs for different spell types.

• The experience table in the cluebook goes only to Level 20. From what I read on various web sites, if you make it to Level 27, you get enough attribute points to max out all attributes at 100, which makes further leveling impossible because you can't leave the "level up" screen until you've distributed new points.

• There are apparently 16 annual holidays in Tamriel, each with effects on the local economy. For instance, on the New Life Festival (first day of the year), ale is free in the taverns. On Second Planting (7 Second Seed), temples heal for free. These are cute bits of world-building, but the odds that you'd be in town to enjoy the benefits of a particular holiday are lower than the likelihood you'd even need their benefits, given the generous economy. It's impossible to imagine a player saying, "Well, I need to buy a new sword, but I think I'll wait until the Merchant's Festival" (when all prices are discounted 50%). It's too bad that later Elder Scrolls games didn't implement them, though. It would have been fun to enter Whiterun or the Imperial City and find a different arrangement of NPCs, as Jester's Day would have required, or to find all NPCs mute, as Tales and Tallows requires.

          

Shots from the hintbook. The emblem on the cover reminds me of something I've seen before, but I can't place it.

       

I struggled with whether to include the game in my "Must Play" list despite the low score. The list includes the first games in a large number of series, including Ultima, Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, Pool of Radiance, and Hero's Quest. I have so far not included any sequels in series whose first titles were not on the list. I think The Elder Scrolls is going to be a "first" in that regard. While it undoubtedly had a certain legacy for its own series, it's hard to detect a general legacy for Arena. Please let me know if you know of any games directly inspired by it, but my own search came up short. (There was notably no explosion of procedurally-generated content in the later 1990s.) Finally, in those earlier cases, I honestly think the first game of the series was a superlative example of that series. This is not true with Arena.

      

But I am certainly grateful for the series it spawned, which we'll have a chance to re-engage in a short time with The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall in 1996. And we might have a little more follow-up on Arena specifically. I have been in touch with developer Ted Peterson, who didn't have a chance to answer my questions for this entry. When I receive his contributions, I'll post a follow-up.

   

***

 

Previous entry in this series

 

For Further Reading:

 

The two primary influences on The Elder Scrolls: Arena:

 

• Ultima Underworld (1992)
• Legends of Valour (1992)

 05/06/2026