C64 The Bard’s Tale
Play 'The Bard’s Tale' on C64 online.
The Bard’s Tale game data
Commodore 64 game name: The Bard’s Tale | Release date:
1985 |
Publisher: Electronic Arts |
Game media type: d64 |
Language: en
User rating of this C64 game (you can also rate it under the C64 emulator):
About Commodore 64 The Bard’s Tale
The Bard’s Tale is a fantasy role-playing video game designed and programmed by Michael Cranford, originally developed for the Apple II and later ported to the Commodore 64. The game was distributed by Electronic Arts and is a classic dungeon crawl experience, focusing on gaining experience and advancing characters’ skills through mostly random combat with enemies and monsters. Players explore maze-like dungeons, solve puzzles and riddles, and find or purchase better equipment for their characters.
When starting the game, players can create up to six characters chosen from various classes, including bard, hunter, monk, paladin, rogue, warrior, magician, and conjurer. Sorcerer and wizard classes become available for experienced conjurers and magicians. On some platforms, players can even import previously created characters from Wizardry and Ultima III, which was quite innovative at the time.
The bard class introduced a unique gameplay element with magical songs that functioned like long-lasting spells, affecting the player’s party in various ways. Some puzzles in the game required the use of bard songs to be solved. Each bard song triggered corresponding music while being played.
Magic users could change classes permanently, and a magic user who mastered all spells from all four classes would be referred to as “an Archmage.” However, Archmage status only affected the availability of all spells and did not have any other impact on gameplay.
Casting one of the 85 magic user spells required typing a four-letter code found in the printed game manual, but in some versions, players could select spells from a list when using a mouse. Combat in The Bard’s Tale is turn-based and described through text rather than graphics. Cash and experience points are distributed evenly among surviving party members after winning an encounter. The game’s combination of innovative features, like the bard class and the ability to import characters from other games, helped to make it a classic RPG experience.
In order to play The Bard’s Tale online, click on the start button located below the Commodore 64 emulator window.
This file type doesn't support auto Joystick port detection. Please choose 'Joystick Swap Ports' if needed.
The Bard’s Tale C64 keyboard mapping
When you start a game, each joystick port is automatically turned on. Sometimes this causes a problem as the joystick port is mapped to the keys below. If a game uses these keys, you need to turn off the joystick ports.
C64 emulator joystick - keyboard mappings| DIRECTION | JOYSTICK 1 | JOYSTICK 2 |
|---|---|---|
| LEFT | A | CURSOR LEFT |
| RIGHT | D | CURSOR RIGHT |
| UP | W | CURSOR UP |
| DOWN | S | CURSOR DOWN |
| FIRE | LEFT / RIGHT CTRL | LEFT / RIGHT SHIFT |