Rare PC Games I'm looking for

Retro, have you dealt with any earlier versions of the Elder Scrolls games? I've talked to a few of the people who have developed the earlier games in the series, but as far as I know any older code is probably lost.

 

You mean betas? The first encounter I had with the series properly was a Daggerfall demo - and I think an early one as this was on an early Windows 95 machine. I still have that somewhere. I then tracked the game down, and got hold of the others on the way, including Arena. I've never seen the original gladiator-style version, though! Was production started on that version? I haven't seen anything of Mournhold, either!

 

Are the Elder Scrolls games really that rare? I found the CD-ROM version of Arena in a flea market once. Bought it for like twelve bucks. Daggerfall I found in an EB discount bin for seventeen bucks, complete. This was back in like 2001 or thereabouts. I guess I got lucky, thoguh my copies aren't exactly complete anymore.

 

Arena was republished several times, as was Redguard. Daggerfall complete in its original packaging is fairly scarce now, sure. There are 3 copies on eBay UK's completed listings. One was unboxed and went for nearly £15. The top one was complete and went for £30. A further two came from the US and fetched over $40 each - both jewel cases only.

OK, well we shouldn't really discuss value here - and anyway, value doesn't mean it's rare. It does show that there are a number of people bidding on it, and willing to pay a bit, when the few copies do come up for sale.

I work in a video game shop. We've had several Arenas come in, a few Redguards when new, and no Daggerfalls. We have been going for more than 10 years now.

Tsktsk, why aren't they complete any more? I dunno, call yourself a collector! Hehe j/k ;-)

 

I would call anything from the Elder Scrolls series up to Morrowind "rare." Daggerfall had a good production run, but it's getting increasingly hard to find a copy for a decent price, and the last time I found it a store was about three years ago (and I promptly bought it).

I've only seen two copies of Arena with my own eyes - one was my neighbors, which is how I found out about the game ('94). The other copy was the CD version that is sitting in my house to this day.

Retro, I think you're referring to the Interactive Preview, which is the closest thing I've seen to a "beta" version. There was a slew of things in that demo that never made it to the full game, including a lot of text in the executable that gives one an idea of just how large the game was planned to be. The Ear icon on the "HUD" was in that demo, whereas it was removed in later versions. The cart feature was very buggy, and physics seemed to be even worse than in the published game. The bestiary section also contained full animations for some of the creatures, which sadly were cut (presumably to save space). Some of those animations were very slick.

With Arena, I don't think coding began with a strict gladiatorial game in mind. From what I can gather, the team began with a vague idea of what they wanted (D&D like game with swords and wizards - the usual). They started adding things like stores, guilds, and eventually full towns. The game turned out to be pretty groundbreaking, although it wasn't realized by most of the target audience, since it required a (for the time) godlike 486 to run at a decent framerate. By some stroke of luck my family happened to be early adopters of the Pentium, so I was a happy little camper. Never again would we buy the latest and greatest

I'm pretty sure Mournhold is what turned out to be Morrowind. I remember back in '96 I was reading a magazine boasting about Morrowind's "high-res" 640x480 graphics. As a side note, Daggerfall's engine actually supports 640x400, but it was never enabled and a lot of work would have to be done to get the sprites and textures to scale correctly. A group was working at it at one point but this was years ago and there's no one with the knowledge, skill, or time necessary these days to complete such a task.

 

It don't surprise me none that Elder Scrolls is so rare... the first two games are good. I honestly consider Arena the best of the series (Daggerfall had more freedom but its features weren't as well-implemented, and I prefer standard EXP over "level up by raising your skills" any day).

Anyway... for the moment, the only other PC Games I'm looking for are the other Last Half of Darkness games. I have the original MS-DOS trilogy, so now I only need the following:

4. LHOD (sometimes called LHOD '99, A CD-ROM remake of the original which included a "spider-puzzle" and a bonus game called Haunted Casino. Used to be sold by the publisher for $9.95 but is now discontinued)

5. LHOD: Shadow of the Servants (I can buy this from the publisher so this isn't much of a priority)

6. LHOD: Beyond the Spirit's Eye (ditto)

 

Taemos, this is all taken directly from Bethesda (elderscrolls.com)....

Hmm, Interactive Preview rings a bell, you're most likely right.

Daggerfall seemed a funny beast as far as compatibility was concerned. The IP ran fine on my P100 at the time. However, when I finally got the full game, I ran it on my P3 667 with a Voodoo3 card and 98SE, and it kept randomly dumping out to the desktop!

 

Compatibility isn't the whole issue with Daggerfall.

One thing that helps run it in Win98: Have a Config.sys file with HIMEM activated and FILES set to 90.

I actually once read a whole document full of things you should do to Daggerfall to make it run as stable as possible. I think its still up somewhere at the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages.

 

Hmm, interesting. Seems it was a very unstable game - lots of problems!

There are a few pointers here.

 

Retro, you're right, my apologies. I misrepresented what I meant to say. There are actually screenshots of the party interface, but I'm 99% sure they're mockups, as the same screenshots exist with a different user interface.

Daggerfall was ridiculously buggy. The first released version of the game was confusing because of all of the weird quirks it had. I bought a ship and panicked when guards were on board claiming I was loitering. Crashes were numerous and the game got me into the habit of constantly saving (which carries over to the present day, unfortunately).

It's by no means the most stable game in the world, although the final patch had it at least on better terms with the computer than, say, Frontier: First Encounters. I still play Daggerfall on DOSBox to this day, although not quite as often as I used to.

Now that you've highlighted that text from the official site (which I've never read, by the way ), I recall reading somewhere about Mournhold being planned for release after Arena. I don't have any solid say-so, but after talking a few times with one of the lead developers and head artist I don't think they did anything on Mournhold past maybe a sketchy planning stage. Arena was released in '94, and Daggerfall in '96, so that would leave little time for designing, coding, and developing a different game in the span of two years, especially considering how large Daggerfall is and how much they really did accomplish in two years.

The Elder Scrolls series is one of my favorites, in case no one can tell.