The forgotten land of Zeliard

The year is 1992 and we're visiting my mom's childhood friend. In truth, I noticed the PC in the back room the second we entered. It always took me hours to work up the courage to ask anyone hosting my parents whether I could play on their computer. Luckily these folks knew me and sent me on my merry way as soon as the greetings were over. This PC was much better than the old 8088 XT I had at home - it had a colour screen. For a moment I regretted not bringing my own game disks along. I had at least two games that required colour to even run.

The owner of the computer showed me one or two other games before firing up Zeliard. The intro was impressive, I'd never experienced a scene set in a game like that before. Most games I had told the backstory in a minute or less with some scrolling text, if at all.

By the time he had shown me how to get some start-up gold from the king, buy a rudimentary shield and slice open my first giant frog I was hooked. I wouldn't be able to play the game again until 1994 when I discovered that a friend of the brother of a friend also had the game. This time I didn't let it slip through my fingers - I got him to tell me the name of the game I had played 2 years before and I made sure I got my own copy.

To put things in perspective, games like Myst and Iron Helix were already released by this stage. It was the action platforming mechanic that hooked me, but it was the stories that kept me coming back.

In essence, Zeliard is a side-scrolling action game with fairly mild RPG mechanics. Your character doesn't have stats (other than his health bar) that can be improved. Leveling up increased your health and the amount of times you could cast the spells you had unlocked. Monsters only dropped one type of item: the Alma. Almas had to be collected and exchanged in town for gold, which you could exchange for better equipment and consumables. Not every town had the same Alma/Gold exchange rate, though.

And then there were the stories within the story. As you ran through town you could speak to the denizens which may or may not have something meaningful to add to your quest.

Relatively early in the game you are informed that Jashiin had Percel, the creator of the Ruzeria Shoes, murdered in order to steal the shoes from him. These shoes prevented the wearer from slipping on the floors of the ice caverns in the dungeon. In speaking to the townsfolk I came across Percel's widow and she made it quite clear that she didn't appreciate my presence in town. If it weren't for me then the Spirit would not have used her Percel to make the shoes which led to his inevitable death, seemed to be her line of reasoning. When you reclaim the shoes and speak to the grief-stricken widow  again she apologises and extends her gratitude for honouring her husband's memory.

Of course it's nothing on the quality of narrative we've come to expect from good computer/console-based RPGs nowadays and neither was it the best example of in-game story-telling at the time. What it was was my gateway drug. After Zeliard I needed a decent story in my games before I would even consider buying it.