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Comment by thesuperbigfrog | Hacker News Reader

Many years ago I played one of her works, Bard's Tale 3: Thief of Fate and enjoyed it very much.

It was a masterful blend of RPG, dungeon crawl, and puzzles and had a memorable soundtrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru5kg35dNso

Having a bard in your party let you choose a soundtrack and their songs brought magical effects. For example, the Rhyme of Duotime let your party attack more frequently in combat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oR4j7w4FIY

BT3 is available on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/msdos_The_Bards_Tale_3_-_Thief_O...

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Interesting, I didn't know BT3 was by a different author, it definitely had its own vibe distinct from the first two, which this guy wrote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Cranford). I liked them all though.

The steam remasters are incredibly faithful to the originals - right down to the timing and flow of the turn-based combat. Makes me wonder if they are emulating the original code somehow.

I believe they’re using the PC ports, running in something like DosBox or FreeDOS

The original Bard's Tale was my first RPG and I've been hooked ever since.

BT3 was wonderful, lots of nostalgia for me. Sad to hear of her passing.

The first trilogy (including BT3) was also remastered about 7 years ago and released on Steam, it's like $15 and has many quality of life improvements.

It seems Bard's Tale 3 can be played on the DosBox emulator:

https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=188&letter=B

... which is available for many platforms, including Windows and Linux:

https://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1

although the latest version of DosBox seems to be from 2019, so maybe others can suggest a more actively-maintained emulator.

DOSBox-X is a port that is actively developed and has many features missing in vanilla DOSBox.

There are a few other ones as well. DOSBox Staging is one. Magic DOSBox seems to be the most popular on Android. There is some iOS port as well.

That sounds promising. Do they also have a "compatibility by game title" database?

"DOSBox Staging" is such a weird name for that fork / continuation.

ahh i have fond memories of this game... and the silly anti piracy attempts (decoder ring) they shipped it with.

In middle school, a friend and I 'cracked' that decoder ring by copying all the info by hand on to paper so we could both play the game from one store bought copy because we were poor. I don't think we ever finished the game, but it's still one of my happiest early gaming memories.

They remastered all three of the first Bard's Tale games a few years ago and released them on Steam with many quality of life improvements-- I bought the set without a second thought even though I know I will probably never take the time to play it all the way through. I've spent a few dozen hours on it so far, though.

It is hilarious to think if you could beat BT3 you could also crack the decoder ring

She was originally chosen to do a remaster of the series. This was eventually reassigned to another publisher.

If you purchase Bards Tale 4 you get the remastered 1,2, and 3 for free.

I have played BT 1 every year or so since the late 80s.

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