LATEST CHATTY HEADER

My early gaming memory is sitting at my C64 with my aunt plugging away through the dungeons of Bard's Tale. I was completely enamored with all things medieval growing up: castle LEGOs, role-playing knights as kids do outside, I even dressed up as a knight for Halloween once (even though I got mistaken for the tin-man repeatedly.) I still remember the names of some of my party... Thrax the Axe (whom I would recreate in Sierra's "The Realm" several years later as an alt), Archimedes, ah well, I forget the rest; I know we had another magic user, a bard, and a rogue, though. My aunt would draw pictures for me of our party facing off against dragons - I think I may even still have one somewhere. I created this awesome world in my imagination based on what was on the screen, and I'm glad to say that if I were presented with what is essentially a text-based game today, I could still do the same. We plotted out tons of dungeons on graph paper, and even resorted to (I know, I know...) buying the strategy guide so that we could finally get past the second to last level to defeat the dreaded Mangar. If you want to dismiss Bard's Tale as a "dungeon-crawler," you can; but for me it will always be an awesome world where you never knew what you were going to face around the next corner.