![]() According to Keith Brors (former technical director of SSI), the company was pressured by TSR into developing their Buck Rogers computer game against their better judgment, due to TSR president Lorraine Williams personally owning the Buck Rogers IP. They were based on the Buck Rogers XXVc tabletop RPG by TSR, with rules heavily based on those of the company's flagship game. SSI also adapted the Gold Box engine from fantasy to science fiction for a pair of Buck Rogers games: Countdown to Doomsday (1990) and Matrix Cubed (1992). ![]() ![]() Following the events of the first game, Treasures of the Savage Frontier (1992) added a weather system and an innovative romance system between party members and NPCs. They set their first Forgotten Realms Gold Box title, Gateway to the Savage Frontier (1991), in the Savage Frontier, an area to the extreme west of the previous games location. After Secret of the Silver Blades came out, Chuck Kroegel passed the Gold Box engine and the Forgotten Realms location to Beyond Software (later Stormfront Studios). When SSI began working on the Dark Sun game in 1989, all the programmers in-house had to stop the development of Gold Box games and start working on the Dark Sun engine. : 139–159 While the games give players a chance to meet Dragonlance characters like Tanis Half-Elven and Raistlin Majere, the gameplay is far more linear. The following titles were Death Knights of Krynn (1991) and The Dark Queen of Krynn (1992). Chronologically, it was the third Gold Box game and employed some innovations that showed up in later games, like the moon phases for mages, the choice of deities for clerics, and the level difficulty selector. Released in 1990, Champions of Krynn was the first of SSI's Gold Box spin-offs based on TSR's very popular Dragonlance universe, and roughly in the novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. A series of TSR novels paralleled the stories in the games. The original four titles were developed in-house at SSI, and the first three titles were the best selling Gold Box games. This was followed by Curse of the Azure Bonds (1989), Secret of the Silver Blades (1990), and Pools of Darkness (1991), the games forming one continuous story rooted in the once-glorious city of Phlan, later encompassing the entire Moonsea Reaches and four outer planes: Dalelands, Cormyr, Cormanthyr (where Myth Drannor is located), and Thar. The first game produced in the series was Pool of Radiance, released in 1988. SSI's 1991 catalog cover, showing some of the Gold Box titles. Later versions were led by Victor Penman and Ken Humphries. Using Wizard's Crown 's detailed combat system as a base for their work, the development of the Gold Box engine and the original games was managed by SSI's Chuck Kroegel and George MacDonald. TSR significantly participated in the games' development, including designing a tabletop module that the first SSI game would be based on. Īfter winning the AD&D license, the number of SSI's in-house developers increased from seven to 25, including the company's first full-time computer-graphic artists. Although smaller and less technically advanced than other bidders, SSI unexpectedly won the license in 1987 because of its computerized wargaming experience, and instead of releasing a single AD&D game as soon as possible, the company proposed a broad vision of multiple series of games and spinoffs that might become as sophisticated as TSR's tabletop original. (SSI) president Joel Billings had, along with many other companies, earlier contacted TSR about licensing AD&D, but TSR was not interested at that time. Ten companies, including Electronic Arts, Ultima creator Origin Systems, and Sierra Entertainment applied for the license. In the mid-1980s TSR, after seeing the success of the Ultima series and other computer role-playing games (CRPGs), offered its popular Advanced Dungeons & Dragons ( AD&D) property to video game companies. These games shared a common game engine that came to be known as the "Gold Box Engine" after the gold-colored boxes in which most games of the series were sold. The company acquired a license to produce games based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game from TSR, Inc. ![]() Gold Box is a series of role-playing video games produced by SSI from 1988 to 1992. AmigaOS, Atari TOS, BASIC, DOS, Macintosh System SoftwareĪmiga, Apple II, Apple Macintosh, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, NEC PC-9800, NES, Sega Genesis ![]()
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