Why Aren’t All PC Games like “Pool of Radiance?”

I realize that a lot of people become hopelessly addicted to video games. All you have to do is watch the intro to “World of Warcraft” and you see how people are compelled to escape into these fantastic, virtual worlds.

But for me, video games peaked in 1988 with the SSI goldbox classic “Pool of Radiance.”

I used to sit and play “Pool of Radiance” on an old IBM 5150. If you don’t know what an IBM 5150 is, you’re lucky! It was the original home computer and it was a beast of a machine. There was no hard drive, and the defining feature of the “big ugly box” was the fact that it had two massive 5.25″ floppy drives on the front.

Yes, this was the dark ages of computer video gaming.

In order to play “Pool of Radiance” I had to first decompress the three master disks onto nine working floppy disks. These I would diligently load into the 5150’s gaping maw and listen to the beast crunch and moan on them for about 45 minutes before game play would actually start.

The fact that I put up with this ridiculous wait is a testament to how much I loved the game.

By today’s standards, “Pool of Radiance” is supremely lacking in “wow” factor. But it did have something that many modern video games lack: a good story!

“Pool of Radiance” was a Dungeons & Dragons type fantasy role-playing game. Your job was to put together a group of heroes and then go on various adventures that were posted on the bulletin board in the half ruinous, fictitious city of Phlan.

The essential story was that Phlan had fallen into ruin, but there was an effort on to reclaim it. The thing that made this game great was that you were free to wander essentially anywhere on the map instead of being confined to a designated path. When playing, you actually felt as if you were free to explore a fantastic, mythological world, a sense I’ve never gotten from any video game since.

Of course, you were better off following the posted missions on the bulletin board (which got steadily more difficult as your band’s strength improved), but after waiting for 45 minutes for the darn thing to load up, it was nice to know you could just head straight to the mountains if you chose too.

“Pool of Radiance” is actually so old now that anyone who is curious to play it can probably find a free copy with a simple online search. Although this title might seem a little bit obscure, this is actually a fairly well-known game among video game aficionados. So look it up, give it a spin (on a faster computer than I had) and drop the name at the next comic-con. The result will probably be twenty blank stares, but the one person who lights up will be super excited to talk to you, and s/he might have some pretty cool stories!


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