Dark Sun PC Games IBM PC MS-DOS 1993-94 SSI

Dark Sun Games PC

Strategic Simulations' Dark Sun games are cRPGs released in 1993 and 1994 for IBM PC MS-DOS.

Specifications for Dark Sun Games

The two Dark Sun games share the following specifications:

• 256-color VGA 320x200 display
• Icon-driven mouse control
• AD&D 2nd Edition ruleset implementation
• Tile-rigged area design
• Bird's-eye perspective
• Sprite-based objects and actors
• 320x200 (full-screen active drawspace)
• No separate flip-screen cRPG exploration (a good thing)
• Installation to HDD via diskettes

Dark Sun Shattered Lands 1993

Strategic Simulations released Dark Sun: Shattered Lands for IBM PC MS-DOS 5.0 in 1993. Dark Sun Shattered Lands is set in TSR's AD&D 2nd Edition Dark Sun Campaign Setting of 1991.

Dark Sun Shattered Lands is a good cRPG with a decent mouse-driven GUI, but its perspective and turn-based combat system are rough around the edges. In addition, there is no battlefield grid, no marquee selection, not enough feedback and the playfield is not isometric. Overall, 6½/10.

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands requires at minimum an i80386-33MHz CPU, 620,000 bytes of free conventional RAM and 1 meg of EMS/XMS RAM (2 megs of RAM). A VGA graphics card is also required.

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands was distributed on 5x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Installer for Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, which employs Robert J. Jung's DearJ 2.30 rev.1859. The install size is 15 megs.

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands audio supports Roland SCC-1 or LAPC-1 MT-32 MPU 401 for music and Gravis, Aria, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro I-III, Media Vision PAS / Thunder Board or AdLib Gold for digital sound effects.

• Dark Sun: Shattered Lands Manual aka Rule Book: 92 pages
• Dark Sun: Shattered Lands Clue Book: 126 pages

Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager 1994

Sequel to Shattered Lands, Strategic Simulations released Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager for IBM PC MS-DOS 5.0 in 1994. However, Wake of the Ravager made no notable improvements over its predecessor, which was exceedingly disappointing in 1994. This is just more of the same: poor perspective and poor combat controls. Overall, 4½/10.

Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager requires at minimum an i80386-33MHz CPU, 620,000 bytes of free conventional RAM and 2 megs of EMS/XMS RAM (4 megs of RAM). A VGA graphics card is also required.

 

Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager was distributed on 7x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Installer for Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager, which employs Robert J. Jung's DearJ 2.30 rev.1859. The install size is 16 megs. Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager was also distributed on 1x CD-ROM.

• Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager Manual aka Rule Book: 77 pages
• Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager Clue Book: 125 pages

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