Golden Sun

"Please, dear, wake up."

When you finally take Advance Wars out of your Game Boy Advance, you might wonder what else you can put in instead. According to the 1001 list, old school RPG Golden Sun is worth a look. Well, more than a look, it's a must-play video game. I wonder why that is.

I've never heard of the series before, so I've no idea what I'm in for. There's no better way to find out than by diving right in.

Midwinter

"Gregory Flint bears a grudge against Llewellyn, who jailed him once for selling watered-down whisky as best malt."

Source // Wikipedia

The very first thing I read about Midwinter was its introductory paragraph on Wikipedia. "Midwinter is a post-apocalyptic first-person action role-playing game with strategy and survival elements for the Atari ST, Amiga and PC." This lead to two reactions. Firstly, words to the effect of 'Holy shit, am I reading this right?', and shortly thereafter 'I'm probably not going to be able to play it, am I?'.

Set in the not-too-distant future, you are tasked with navigating a massive island in search of support for guerilla warfare against the big bad guy. You can recruit civilians into your ranks, snipe the enemy from afar, blow up their means of travel and far, far more, all viewed with 3D shaded polygon-o-vision.

Let's see what all of this is about - but will we see it in first-person, or via the wonders of YouTube?

Dungeon Master

I need a new DM.

Source // Moby Games

I've played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons. On a couple of occasions, I've been the Dungeon Master in Dungeons & Dragons. Never have I played Dungeon Master though, and you'd have thought that I would at least have come across it, but I don't even think I've done that either.

As you might imagine, Dungeon Master will see you navigate your party through dungeons full of traps and monsters, hopefully leading to success - if not in the form of treasure, then of getting out of the dungeon alive.

First person, real time adventuring that requires as much combat reflexes as it does eagle-eyed exploration.... How will we fare when chucked into the deep end and left to fend for ourselves?

NetHack

This door is locked.

I've heard of NetHack a few times down the years but never realised what it was - a descendant of Hack, which is a clone of Rogue. Oh. Ohhhh. Oh this should be interesting then...

What's more interesting is that NetHack has been around in one form or another since 1987 and it is still getting updated with new content and mechanics, with the last release, version 3.6.0, coming as recently as December 2015.

Advancing technology doesn't tend to let that happen, especially in gaming, and so I'm going to take full advantage of it and play version 3.6.0 (mostly because I can't get version 1.3d going yet, but don't tell anybody that).

The Lords of Midnight

Yours will be no inevitable victory...

Source // Winterdrake

The entry for The Lords of Midnight in 1001 Video Games includes a screenshot of a chap on a horse, in front of some rocks, accompanied by some blurb. It's reflective of what you'll see in game, but it's akin to taking a screenshot of some dialog in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, rather than showing what you can actually see in Skyrim.

I use Skyrim as an example because both it and The Lords of Midnight allow you to traverse the world you inhabit from a first person perspective, where you're able to move all the way up those mountains in the distance. Mostly.

Skyim-lite on the ZX Spectrum? Count me in. PC remake with the input and blessing of the original developer? Count me in. Accompanying short story to set the scene of Luxor the Moonprince on a quest to rid the world of the evil Witchking Doomdark? Count. Me. In.

Eamon

Who said everything should be handed to you on a plate? You want graphics with your fantasy adventure games? Better start imagining them...

Source // Wikipedia

"That's probably a pretty impressive hand drawn dragon for the time, actually". It's such a strong image to represent Eamon in fact, that this is what 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before Your Die chose to represent the game too. Perhaps a picture of text based gaming above a block of text about text based gaming is too much text. Whatever the case, my only expectation from this game is that there will be a lot of text.

But my first impression was actually one of 'oh, wow, what?', as I discover that Eamon was designed to be built upon by any Tom, Dick and Harry that wanted to create role playing adventures for people to play on their apple ]['s, with a list of hundreds of offerings from the community to pick and choose from.

Not only that, but I find that the platform is still being developed for, and that you can freely download a deluxe edition, which includes all the bells and whistles that decades of fan innovation and interest has brought.

There is, then, no excuse to not dive right in.