Albion
Blue Byte of Germany released Albion for IBM PC MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 95 in 1995. Albion is the spiritual successor to Thalion's Amberstar of 1992 and Ambermoon of 1993 on the Amiga.
Albion was programmed by Jurie Horneman, drawn by Thorsten Mutschall and composed by Matthias Steinwachs.
Impressively, Albion displays in 256-color square-pixel VGA 360x240. However, it is unfortunate that Blue Byte decided to go with a mix of dimetric perspective and 3D exploration rather than just go with isometric perspective all the way, which would have been far superior.
Albion Features List
- 360x192 top-down scrolling drawspace
- 360x192 real-time texture-mapped 3D drawspace
- Icon-driven interface
- Drag and drop grid-based inventory
- Right-click pop-up menus
- Hardware mouse cursor
- Six-person party
- 6x characters stats
- Magic Resistance & Magical Talent
- 4x character skills
- 52x spells
- 10x negative status effects
- 150,00 word storyline
- 2D top-down and 3D exploration
- Automapping in 3D mode
- Turn-based combat
- Close-range & long-range combat attacks
- Lock-picking
- NPCs: Traders, Trainers, Healers, Blacksmiths
Albion is a tedious cRPG that reminds me of console RPG games. The writing is boring, exploration is a chore and the combat system sucks. Moreover, it has "Tell me about" [a long list of things].
In short, I don't like this game. And I didn't mind that Blue Byte abandoned the Amiga in respect to this franchise, which I always considered to be weak.
The only thing that interests me about Albion is that it displays in 360x240 resolution.
Albion Technical
Albion requires an i80486 CPU and 8 megs of RAM. Albion is a v1.97 Rational Systems' DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time.
Albion was distributed on 1x CD-ROM and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Albion Installation. The install size is 2.5 megs and consists of 63 files.
Albion audio is configured via the Miles Design Audio Interface Library and Sound Configuration Utility.
Albion MIDI music supports Roland MPU-401 General MIDI, Yamaha WaveForce DB50-XG, Ensoniq SoundScape, Gravis UltraSound MIDI Synth, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster AWE-32, Sound Blaster Pro/New, Sound Blaster Pro/Old, Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum Old/Plus/16, AdLib Music Synthesizer Card, AdLib Gold Music Synthesizer Card, ESS Technology ES688 FM Audio, ESS Technology ES1688, ES1788, ES1888 Enhanced FM Audio, Generic Yamaha OPL3-based FM Music Synthesizer, Roland MT-32 MIDI with MPU-401 MIDI Interface, Tandy 3-voice music and IBM Internal Speaker music.
Albion digital audio supports Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster Pro, Sound Blaster AWE-32, Roland RAP-10, Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum, Gravis UltraSound, New Media Corporation WaveJammer digital audio, Ensoniq SoundScape digital audio, Microsoft Windows Sound System and ESS Technology ES688 digital audio.
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