C64 Longplay - The Bards Tale

Longplay from the C64 game "The Bards Tale"
This video is downloadable at Archive.org
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[@QuantumDigital2017]

I remember the Bard Music like it was yesterday. How much time passes us by......One memory I had was having to map out the dungeons BY HAND!!! Thanks for sharing a piece of video game history.

[@justinhenryhaynes]

In battles, if you press + or - on the c64 you can increase or decrease the speed of the scrolling text. this is very helpful as you will notice the text scrolls very slowly. When you are fighting 396 berserkers in some dungeon, this can make gameplay hours faster.

[@nickchristopoulos8138]

i used to take A nap..let the fire horn take them down :P

[@boredwithusernames]

I spent months mapping and playing this and it still holds special memories for me. I still have the hand-drawn maps too... nicely explained as well, thanks :)

[@silver1surfer69]

Me too brother in time^^ (but i do not have the maps anymore^^)

[@SxSxG666]

As a kid I never came up with the brilliant idea to actually draw a map on a piece of paper but l had no big troubles to memorize everything. Haha I even finished Shining in the Darkness without drawing anything.

[@boredwithusernames]

@@SxSxG666 I could never remember my way around maps without drawing them out, I admire anybody that can do that, something I always wished I could do. Having said that I have some pretty awesome maps in my collection as a result ;)

[@SxSxG666]

@@boredwithusernames I'm really not sure if I could still do it. You might need the enthusiasm and fantasy of a ten year old that turns those ever repeating tile sets into meaningful architecture that sticks in your mind.

[@henry9684]

I also draw the maps 😊 but lost at relocation. Can you please share a pic how you did it?

[@philv2529]

I haven't played this game since 1987 yet I still remember that the password for one of the dungeons is Tarjan. Why the hell would I still remember that.

[@MarcNuar]

haha! Hilarious. As soon as you said Tarjan, I remembered it... Wasn't it the name of the Mad God and the password for the catacombs under the wine cellar?

[@philv2529]

yeah, I learned it from someone and it enabled me to skip all the dungeons between and go stright there.

[@padistedor]

I bought this game for my C64 in 1986. I never got very far but had a great time playing it. I stayed up many nights getting lost in darkness and watching my party die. By watching this video, I saw how the game ends for the first time, 27 years after buying it. His talking didn't bother me at all and I'm glad he posted it. : )

[@dfella]

Damn. Just reminiscing about this era and this game came up. Our time!! 😂

[@ggagg123]

Wow this brings back memories. And still a classic game. Loved it, gameplay was so addictive, I used to stay up until 3 or 4am in the morning when I was about 10.

[@nickchristopoulos8138]

did the same....stayed up till 4 then had to be at work by 6 am,,,

[@Noone-of-your-Business]

Bard's Tale _ONE_ already had animated monster and spell graphics?? 😲 I thought this was new in the 3rd instalment of the series... Oh wait, that was _multiple_ animations (with different cycle lengths) in _one_ picture... *Dang,* this thing was ahead of its time.

[@qwerty52676]

The first had a mix of moving and still portraits, the second kept the moving ones from the first and added some more, and the third game was all new moving portraits

[@alphashaitan65]

During my medical residency I was always searching for charts, and I would hum "The Seeker's Ballad" which temporarily lighted my surroundings, thus increasing my ability to find weapons, treasure, and patient charts.

[@oliver4953]

Those were the days when Electronic Arts was a guarantee for high quality games without any hidden hooks on the matter

[@NaturalGallantBodybuilding]

How I still wish I had a game like this I could just play on my mac

[@Jauly]

You can play the remastered Bards Tale 1 to 3 series on a Mac. They did a very good job with this.

[@stevetyrell8721]

Oh the nostalgia! Thanks for this.

[@johnf.kennedy7339]

I bought this game brand new. Loved the packaging. I didn’t swap for a file of this game. Something we did back in the day. The Lord if the Rings I played more. Somehow couldn’t get this game going. Remember some classmates vying for the map.

[@rastaban75]

Lie with passion and be forever damned...

[@silver1surfer69]

That took long to get this sentence...^^

[@kIDcHA0S]

This is how I learned what Mead is....now my favorite wine :)

[@Lalovision3D]

Lol. Mead is horrible. Haha. I admire your love of it.

[@justinhenryhaynes]

TIP: battles and text can scroll much more quickly. It is at its slowest setting here. Continue to press "+" during a battle and the text will scroll more and more quickly until it reaches its fastest setting. It will remember this setting and all text wil scroll this quickly from then on.

[@Inbal_Feuchtwanger]

One of my favorite games as a kid, this and great american cross country road race. It really didnt take much to impress people a few years back, but despite how simple this was it was still a ton of fun to play.

[@RonBensonOO7]

My friend in Las Vegas had Bards Tale 1,2 and I ended up getting 3. But we used a program called "PC Tools" to edit the program. We found that the characters were coded in Hexadecimal and gave all the stats FF. When Omar hit first for ******* damage we LOVED IT TO DEATH lol. Thats not all, we also figured out how to make ALL the items available. Not that we needed them because we coded all the levels hit points and everything else with FF!!! Was monumentally awesome... Could only do that by switching out floppys, no hard drive back then and we abused that. Was it Ren that said it best? "meeemories" lol.

[@ananda_miaoyin]

PC Tools. Holy shit. That put me in the wayback machine for sure!!

[@dalwand]

Oo yes the hex edit. Did that a lot with the Forgotten Realms games. AC -78 .

[@langoost9905]

I like icons of party buffs on the main screen. I Was missing them for GoldBox Games.

[@danielinger6233]

The bard’s tale songs like in my memory.

[@Jetset906]

I laughed when i got the "specture snare" and went back and used it on Mangar. He was forced to join our party and fight for us!

[@dalwand]

Its funny, I played this game soo much when I was like 13 years old or so. I even remember stuff that when the narrator says "DEST stands for destroy" I think "Hey, that's wrong, it was called DEath STrike" . I played this and TBT3 really a lot !

[@TheHyenaKing]

that was the first rpg that i really was in to. i remember i had a monk that rocked all. s hard though the last maze drove me crzy. best c64 rpg ever !

[@Thefamiliaguy]

Got this game for Christmas and it never loaded past the intro screen. So bummed at the time that i could not play it and wanted to play so nuch I still have the original disk and box it came in. EA owes me big time for robbing me of a part of my childhood with sending defective disks. Looks boring to me now but i sure would of spent endless hours on it back then.

[@Massie2273]

i played it for months building a powerful indestructable team (5 members) destroying everything in my way but somehow my account at the time got delete by a family member so i was very sad. this game was great will never forget it

[@cinqo7]

So, its actually really possible to finish this game in just one hour? It took me 2 years and never end it actually.

[@EGOS42]

It's not even remotely close to being possible in 1 hour. This video skips to the final area at 15:30

[@Hossman757]

I played this game so much that it burned a permanent image into the glass of my monochrome monitor.

[@lchamp7946]

I will never forget taking on 4 groups of 99 beserkers till the day I die. 🤣🤣🤣

[@Phoenix38m]

mibl,,,,,,,,best spell ever

[@lchamp7946]

@@Phoenix38m Hahaha! I used to start that spell, go shoot some hoops in my back yard, and then come back to my computer and check progress of the spell. Lol

[@MrJimbo-ew9vk]

Recently bought the Bard's Tale Trilogy Remastered a few months ago on GOG. Really enjoyed the remaster.

[@appahoopjack2514]

This was the last game that I played on my C64 in 1987.... If only I would have remembered to program in QBASIC, instead of chasing the Muff around

[@gertpacu3926]

Nice.. I remember Brian the Fist, Samson, El Cid, and Merlin. I used to replace Markus and Omar with my own guys.

[@rimbaud0000]

Love the art style here

[@fabricius]

It's not a longplay, technically speaking, but you really make me wanting to play the game. I will play it on an Amstrad CPC emulator, however. Thanks for the video !

[@yurihageshi8008]

"For some Reason Mangar, sends his minions to stop us from getting there." Yup! That was an awesome statement!

[@ThreeHeadedM0nkey]

Bard's Tale! Skara Brae!

[@markhopwood6928]

I had the tape version of this and was very excited when it was announced that it as going to be released. Compared to the disk version, quite a few graphics and effects are missing (title screen, all animations, different building type in the town, less monster graphics) and you had to load each dungeon level separately. Play was quite longwinded due to load times, but this was one of the very RPGs released on tape for the C64.

[@justinhenryhaynes]

How did you load and save characters and parties?

[@blazed85]

So THIS is what JayzTwoCents wanted to show me.

[@fratman2003]

This voice is sooo soothing..

[@j.b.2263]

Mindblade the hell out off everything.

[@SGTDave]

To be honest, I've never successfully gotten out of the town. I'm always murdered by brigands.

[@silver1surfer69]

Only the picture of The Guild made my imagination run back in the day... The place where all these fighters came from...

[@Lofote]

Uhm, how can some people come by and tell us all about "THE definition" what a longplay is and what? It is ENTIRELY the authors decision what to upload here and not yours, you are just viewers, who can like something, dislike something, comment on something, ... but none of you has the power to DECIDE something. This is ridiculous. And to insult people, that they do not have a brain, because they appreciate this voiceover, is absolutely a no-go.

[@DerSchmu]

I understand your point. But I think some games should be explained a bit for people who doesnt`t know them. Myself never played Bards Tale so I would have no idea what I see without the audio commentary. Greets :) Monty

[@WarbirdGames]

I think the reason people are perplexed by the commentary is only because you named it a "longplay." Traditionally, a "longplay" is just the game with no commentary. A "let's play" generally has commentary. I was taken off guard, too. Because some people build playlists of longplays and it would be jarring to suddenly hear the commentary, whereas someone looking for commentary would be searching for a "let's play."

[@RiccardoVirgilio]

che bello... i remember when i draw a map of this game... 21x21 , just this was the fun, and immagination was the rest

[@SilentMannam]

+Riccardo Virgilio Ya, on graph paper! :)

[@DecoderKK]

spent a complete summer on bards tale II

[@Jetset906]

Ah Sweet memories.....

[@racefaceec90]

by the gods i remember having this on my c64. i don't think i ever left the first city tbh.

[@c64corner]

Hab das Spiel damals regelrecht verschlungen ! Die Quests an sich waren sekundär für mich, vielmehr war ich damit beschäftigt, meine Party zu uppen ... ich sag nur "Samurai" ... Ich hatte eigentlich eine Standardparty ... 1.Monk 2.Paladin 3.Hunter 4.Bard 5.Conjurer 6.Magician

[@tauruntino]

Yeah it was tough, I had a stack of graph paper for mapping. Great game for the time.

[@magicknight8412]

I completed this on the Amstrad and loved it. Annoyingly though you only got the spectre snare after defeating Mangar, thus making it totally useless!

[@yurihageshi8008]

I was surprised you didn't have any mage staffs handy.

[@cinqo7]

Can you do it any better? Thanks to DerSchmu for having the PATIENCE to do this longplay of a very difficult and time demanding game like this one.

[@alexandrosgrekski]

I absolutely disagree, and how very rude of you. The voice over here is done perfectly, is engaging and entertaining, and gives a great feel for how someone playing the game might think and feel.

[@leshpar]

Anyone who understands DnD 2nd edition rules would understand what they see. Sure its not exactly dnd 2nd edition, but it is very very close. (IQ replaces int and wis and having spellpoints are really the only glaring changes)

[@theyetidude]

I finished this game when I was a sophomore in high school, but after I killed the wizard, Mangar . I could not escape the dungeon - odd. I really don't remember if I tried teleport spells or not. Also, I was not aware of the no talking over a 'long play' rule and didn't even notice it. The narration adds to the video and I could not give one iota of a crap if he talks through it or not.

[@Phoenix38m]

you had a buggy copy...after mangars death...the end files play automatically...if my memory serves me right

[@WarbirdGames]

Just to chime in here, the talking is totally cool, I but I would rename this to a "let's play" to avoid confusion. :)

[@vytaspuzycki2096]

Bards tale 2 was the best tho!

[@NotSoHotGuy002]

God damn, I really want to play these games, and other old school RPG's, these games seem cooler than Skyrim. But fuck I haven't even played baldurs gate, daggerfall, and well the list goes on.

[@silver1surfer69]

Iduncoho is inspired by Duncan Idaho?^^

[@yurihageshi8008]

It would be good to create characters with high con. For all non casters. Then casters high con AND int to start with

[@roak4115]

I can't play this....Everything looks this same for me. Even with the map I was walking around like a lunatic... 🤣

[@Whatever4690]

My favorite game before better games came out.

[@yurihageshi8008]

Mangar looks like a gardener here

[@blimy007]

download the rom and do it yourself you baby. This game will always exist.

[@ArcanePath360]

I used to play this on a B&W 12" portable TV. It looked even uglier than this. I never did finish the game.

[@scottthomas5819]

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@yurihageshi8008]

Some races can't take certain classes

[@Marius-vw9hp]

Your parties character names sounds like a group of Orcs :D

[@NelsonRodriguezOnlin]

ZZGO Bitches!!!!

[@samizdatbroadcasts7654]

That was Bard's Tale 2.

[@yurihageshi8008]

Rouges are worthless in this version

[@sineast]

hahahaahaha

[@retroscansixtyfour2728]

Oh DAMN you ruined this LONGPLAY with talking!! And start from the beginning and play from beginning to end. This is not a longplay!

[@scoopscore3991]

Hell yes! This guy is a donkey dick!

[@MSTL144]

What a ridiculous tantrum.

[@2PeteShakur]

"The Bard's Tale came out of my friendship with Michael Cranford as high school Dungeons & Dragons players, and it was originally pitched as Shadow Snare. Then, later on, EA decided to name it Tales of the Unknown Vol1: The Bard's Tale. After it became a big hit, EA decided it didn't want to lose the value of referencing the Bard, so it dropped the whole Tales of the Unknown' bit altogether." -- Brian Fargo, original co-designer