Pool of Radiance-Valhingen Graveyard-There Is a Vampire Here

Nothing you say is ever going to convince me that TSR's Forgotten Realms classic Pool of Radiance isn't the best RPG ever. Valhingen Graveyard was a nice side adventure. The Phlan city council has commissioned you to clear out the cemetery, and it's a rather straightforward clearing of zombies and skeletons at first. The major encounter is...

There's a vampire here! Valhingen Graveyard.

There is vampire here! Actually, there's a little bit of letdown here because unless you've jacked it up to hard mode, or have forgotten everything you know about fighting vampires, it's not too hard to take this fiend out right away. Nonetheless, the getting there is 90% of the fun. After this encounter you'll have cleared the cemetery. From here you might decide to go take on T-thraxus. I'd go ahead and clear out all the side adventures first, get as much experience as you can, and collect every magic item available first. But I ain't your grandma. Pin It

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord For PC 1981

Wizardy:Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord for PC

My school had one of the first advanced computer labs I encountered anywhere, and it seemed impossibly futuristic in the early 1980s. It also happened to contain enough serious computer nerds—several of whom later went on to successful careers in technology—to make what happened in that room considerably more interesting in retrospect.

Most days I ate lunch as quickly as possible and headed for the gym to shoot baskets. But every once in a while I'd wander upstairs to the computer lab to see what everyone was doing.

Usually, they were playing Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.

Calling it "playing" might be generous. These guys had already figured out how to alter the game. Characters that were supposed to claw their way upward one miserable level at a time had been transformed into 100th-level demigods with thousands of hit points. Long before I understood much about computers, I was watching teenagers treat a commercial computer game less like a finished product than a system they were free to investigate, manipulate and rewrite.

That may be the part that interests me most now. We tend to remember those early computer games for their primitive graphics and brutal difficulty, but the computers themselves invited curiosity. You didn't merely consume what was on the screen. If you knew enough—or were willing to learn enough—you could get underneath it and start changing things.

Even with their absurdly enhanced characters, though, I seem to remember that they still had to slog through the endless wire-frame corridors of the maze to reach Werdna, the evil wizard waiting at the bottom.

Apparently even cheating had its limits.

Looking back, perhaps it shouldn't surprise me that some of the kids who spent their lunch periods doing this eventually made careers in computers and technology. I mostly watched from the sidelines before going back downstairs to shoot baskets. But Wizardry remains one of my earliest memories of seeing people interact with computers not as mysterious machines, but as things that could be understood, altered, and made to do what you wanted.

Why not?

Straight, I guess.

Of course there will be a small surcharge on the gold pieces, and they're not real, so there's that. 

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Space Invaders For the Atari 2600

I don't remember whether we got our first Atari 2600 for Christmas in 1977, the year the system first appeared in American stores. I suspect we didn't.

The Atari Video Computer System, as it was originally called, had a respectable launch, but it wasn't immediately the world-conquering phenomenon the Atari 2600 would eventually become. Atari had invested heavily in producing consoles for the Christmas market, and the home video game business was still new enough that nobody really knew whether Americans wanted another electronic box attached to their television.

Then came Space Invaders.

The original arcade game was created by Japanese designer Tomohiro Nishikado and released by Taito in 1978. Nishikado experimented with different ideas for the enemies before settling on creatures from outer space, drawing inspiration from science fiction including The War of the Worlds. He also credited Atari's Breakout as an important influence on the game's design.

Whatever combination of influences produced it, Space Invaders became a phenomenon.

By the end of 1982, billions of quarters had reportedly been fed into Space Invaders machines around the world. The rows of aliens slowly descending toward the player, speeding up as their numbers diminished, created one of the simplest and most effective forms of electronic anxiety ever invented. Everybody understood what was happening immediately: they're coming down here, you're down here, and eventually they're going to get you.

But the version I remember most wasn't standing in an arcade.

It was sitting in front of our television.

In 1980, Atari released Space Invaders for the Atari 2600. It was the first officially licensed conversion of an arcade game for a home video game console, and it became the Atari's killer app. Sales of the console exploded. People who might not have understood why they needed a dedicated video game machine suddenly had a very good reason: they could play Space Invaders without putting another quarter into a cabinet.

I'm guessing that's when the Atari arrived at our house.

The 2600 version couldn't reproduce the arcade game exactly, but that hardly mattered. Having anything resembling an arcade game available whenever you wanted to play it was astonishing. The television wasn't just something you watched anymore. You could interact with it.

And Space Invaders wasn't simply one game on the Atari. The cartridge contained an absurd number of variations—different player speeds, moving shields, invisible invaders, two-player versions and combinations of those options. Atari advertised 112 game variations, which sounded like you were buying an entire arcade on one cartridge even if most of those "games" were variations on the same basic premise.

Shoot the aliens before the aliens reach you.

Simple enough.

It's difficult now, when almost any game ever created can be downloaded or emulated in seconds, to explain how futuristic that little black cartridge seemed. The Atari joystick had one stick and one red button. The graphics were blocks. The sound effects were primitive electronic pulses.

None of that mattered.

There were aliens coming down the television screen, and you were controlling what happened next.

That was enough.

Atari 2600 Space Invaders 

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The Mulmaster Beholder Corps and My Christmas Vacation

I remember playing Pool of Radiance in 1988 when the game first came out. On a Commodore 64. It was fun. My younger brothers and I took turns mapping and had some marathon sessions. I know eventually we were able to defeat The Mulmaster Beholder Corps without the Dust of Disappearance you get in the Thieves' Guild, but replaying the game last week I can't imagine how. When I did it this time I forgot to buy enough arrows at the magic shop outside Dagger Falls so i ended up spending two hours hurling rocks out of a sling at beholders. It didn't feel honest because there was no way one can lose this battle once the Dust of Disappearance is used. But after I got ninety minutes in there was no way I was going to go back and do it again. Now I feel like I should have at least tried. Nonetheless I defeated the Mulmaster Beholder Corps for the second time in my life and went on to defeat Tyranthraxus easily. That's how I spent the majority of this Christmas season. I may go on and play Secret of the Silver Blades but I haven't decided yet. In my opinion Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds were the first and best of the games SSI created. It was really a thrill to have a week in hand to play these two games all the way through and to have a real life to go back to once I finished. Maybe in another Twenty-five years or so I'll play them for a third time. 

The Mulmaster Beholder Corps

March 25, 2013 update: Three months later I have another week to fill. I might just lay low and work out, do yoga, and get my diet back on track. Or I guess it's possible I'll buy a load of chocolate and Tab Cola and play some more Dungeons and Dragons. Haven't decided yet.

October 3, 2019: Did it again. Forgot the Dust of Disappearance is all but essential in defeating the Mulmaster Beholder Corps, and used it in the battle against the cultists of Moander, where it most definitely was not even needed, now I'm trying to remember how the heck we ever won this battle all those years ago without the Dust. I think we just played it round the clock in shifts for a few days until somehow using every buff available met with the luck of the draw and we won with maybe only a character or two left. 

Note to self: don't forget to remember the Dust of Disappearnce is given to the party specifically for this battle next time you play Curse of the Azure bonds. Also, send Tab Cola. 

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