Category:The Bard's Tale: Difference between revisions

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Series stub

This series is a stub. Help us expand it with details as well as a {{series}} infobox. Reliable information can be researched on Wikipedia or you can just search for "The Bard's Tale" on Google. Do this and you get a cookie.

The Bard's Tale is a series of dungeon crawls heavily based on Wizardry.

Original trilogy

The games share an almost identical character creation and interface, and an absolutely identical combat mode with Wizardry. Notable differences are: (1) the introduction of the bard class, with a "bard song" ability; (2) the surface is an actual city to be explored, instead of a simple menu screen; (3) there is more than one dungeon.

In the first three games, characters could be transfered from one title to the next, but only using the same platform.

Platform	Bard's Tale 1	Bard's Tale 2	Bard's Tale 3	Notes (limits and defects)
C64	1985	1986	1987	8-bit graphics; bugs
Apple II	1985	1987	1988	8-bit graphics; bugs
MS-DOS	1985	1988	1990	Encounter rate is too high
Amiga	1987	1988	1991	-
PC-9801	?	?	?	Japanese language only

Incomplete trilogies

Platform	Bard's Tale 1	Bard's Tale 2	Bard's Tale 3	Notes (limits and defects)
Apple IIgs	?	?	N/A	-
Atari ST	1987	N/A	N/A	-
CPC	1988	N/A	N/A	8-bit graphics
ZX	1988	N/A	N/A	8-bit graphics
NES	1990	1992	N/A	Game was reduced to fit in cartridge

Later titles

• Dragon Wars was supposed to be "The Bard's Tale IV", but the title was changed very late during the production.
• Swords and Serpents was developed by the same team from Dragon Wars; it is a clone of Wizardry, even more than The Bard's Tale 1; it has the peculiarity of being a computer-style role-playing game that was released for consolle only.
• The Bard's Tale Construction Set is a software that allows to create dungeons.
• The Bard's Tale (2004) features a completely different gameplay from the rest of the series.
• The Bard's Tale IV and The Mage's Tale started development after a 25-years-long pause in the series.