The Wild Wild West of SSI Game Installers

[intric8]

I've played most of the Gold Box games that were published for Amiga in the 80s and early 90s. Being built off the same game engine, the series by and large didn't change very much across four years and almost a dozen games. Some titles are better than others, and all stand in the shadow of the original Pool of Radiance much like the children of celebrities do.

But one thing about the Gold Box games for Amiga has always baffled me: the installation process (or lack thereof). Of course all of these games can be played off disks. But most offer installations for users with hard drives - even though in the early days most Amiga users didn't have one.

What's so weird, though, is virtually every single game in the series that tells you how to install the games to hard drive in a totally unique set of instructions. Or none at all. And sometimes, it's even buggy.

Last night I decided to finally play Treasures of the Savage Frontier, a game I've been procrastinating to play for years. This was quite possibly the last Gold Box game to be made available for Amiga. It was this one or the 4th and final installment to the Dragonlance series, The Dark Queen of Krynn, as they were both released in 1992. It was during 1992 when SSI ultimately decided to pull away from Amiga when they put Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed on DOS-only, and never looked back.

Anyway, last night I pulled the box off the shelf and admired it one more time. It's extremely hard for me to look at the box art and not smile. Or literally guffaw. That hair!

I peered at the tiny copyright date on the box and verified: 1992. End of the line for the Amiga's journey with SSI. OK, I thought, this should be as polished an experience as possible. I inserted the first disk of three.

The only icon available in the drawer was for a save utility program. It's for either creating a save disk or transferring characters from the 1st game in the series (Treasures is game #2 of 2). After a brief eye-roll, I pulled out the card insert for Amiga owners with installation instructions. The only thing the card mentioned was how to run this game - off disk! "Insert the disk and boot your machine." Oh no you don't, SSI.

I looked at the files from within DOpus and saw a "disk a" drawer amongst mostly Workbench related directories and files. I dragged over the 'disk a' folder. On disk 2 there was a "disk B" (yep, capitalized this time) as well as the game executable. I dragged over the file and the folder. Disk 3 had "disk c". Dragged that over. Then, I created a default hammer icon for the executable. I'm going to create my own custom icon for the game later. I'd done this once before, but it was on a different machine and I've no idea where I've put that stuff at this point.

Anyway, I double-clicked the default icon I made with DOpus to launch the game. That's right, I rolled the dice and didn't even bother with an assign. I like to live on the edge.

Game fired right up! Only thing I have left to do is create a party tonight and save the game. Assuming the save process works it's just yet another completely bizarre example of SSI flipping Amiga owners the bird (in a strangely lazy way) assuming everyone only used disks. It's just so weird - especially when some of the earlier games provided on-disk HD installation programs.

Note:
I played and finished the first game in this series, Gateway to the Savage Frontier in 2018 five years ago on my Amiga 2000. But I lost my files from that game (I think). I should flip through my stack of disks one last time... Even though I played it on hard disk I could have sworn I saved the party files to a disk at some point thinking I'd need them for this later installment. But I may have to just start from scratch.

Honestly part of me wanted to replay the first game just so there was more story continuity here, but deep down I'm imagining the two stories aren't that tightly woven. Same "universe" but probably independent stories for the most part.

At least I can reuse my character's names even if I can't remember what their classes were.

I'd read the Curse of the Azure bonds novel around this time, if I remember correctly. Hence Dragonbait.

[intric8]

After starting to build my party in the image of the previous, I'm feeling I'm at a massive disadvantage. My characters are starting quite low-level (4) where I am pretty sure I was at least 6 or 7 when I finished Gateway. Ugh...

Do I really want to replay Gateway to have better stats? It's been around 5 years, but at least I'd have a pretty good idea of what I needed to do. But I'd probably burn about a month just to get back to where I am now. Is it worth it? Should I just struggle, naked and demoted?

I'll install Gateway and decide tonight what to do. Really sucks I lost my previous game data.

[intric8]

It turns out I did have to create an assign for this game after all. And I don't think I've ever done one quite like this before. (The wild-wild-west!) I had to remap a floppy drive.

The game loads up just fine the way I moved things over originally.

So, I started to build my characters based off what I remembered (and could see in my own screenshots) from Gateway. But as soon as I finished a character the game wanted me to add a disk in the floppy drive to save it. No! The game appeared to be hard-coded to ask for DF0 or DF1 to save the game or characters. Disgruntled, I opened up the User-Startup and tried to make an Assign for just the Save drawer I had on my hard drive.

Unsure what to do I asked a friend. He suggested I assign the unattached drive that the game offered as a choice (DF1), since it wasn't in use. My assign looks like this:

Code: Select all

ASSIGN DF1: DH2:Treasure/Save/ 

I have an assign for DH2 that points to my Games directory. Assigns gone wild!

But it works! SSI... I swear. It didn't have to be like this.

[intric8]

Do I really want to replay Gateway to have better stats?

No. After creating an entire new party based off the original, I actually have better hitpoints now than I did when I finished Gateway. I'm goig to run with what I have. The only real downside is I won't have any of my previous armor, weapons or items. But considering how broken the economy is in these games I imagine I'll be just fine in a matter of hours.

Sally forth!

[intric8]

I've made pretty good progress into Treasures of the Savage Frontier thus far. It has a lot of similarities to Gateway (which makes sense since it is Part 2). But it has its own identity, too. Siblings.

Things that really stand out to me at this point:

• Most of the towns are generally on the small side and pretty easy to navigate. Some are literally just little shipping docks with a few shops. Interesting!
• The NPC interactions are SO much better than we're used to seeing, and there are a lot more than usual. There are several NPC encounters that are strategically placed along the way that really flesh out the story. I love this approach and wish they'd done this more often in earlier games.
• There seem to be a lot more "side quests" that (I hope) may be optional but offer a lot more intrigue in the game.
• The female NPC that joins the party and falls in love with the my paladin beau is yet another interesting party dynamic that I find intriguing. It's a subtle dynamic, but it helps to keep the role playing mood stronger than usual. Plus, she's a badass fighter.
• The battles are still noticeably easy in this game at this stage. Gateway was also surprisingly easy and Treasure seems to map to it's difficulty level pretty closely. Almost zero game restarts. I think I may be close the the halfway point in the game (I have no real way of knowing) and I've only restarted/backtracked two or three times. That's a crap ton less than earlier Gold Box games. Almost zero frustration, or stress.

Ease the seat back [Bridge] She's blinding, I'm flying. Right behind in rearview mirror now. Got the fearing, power steering. Pistons popping...

I love it when they use the giant monster icons. For 2-state animation, some of them (like these big blue guys) have seriously awesome animation. Look at the size of that sorceress! Paladin, don't let your eyes wander. You're in a battle!

We don't get very many of these half-screen artworks, but when we do they never fail to put a smile on my face. I mean look at that Bob Ross sunset and silhouettes!

Overall, Treasure feels like a slightly more polished version of something we've seen many times before. And for a Part 2 game, it really feels like the literal continuation of Part 1 and not a completely different game, which makes sense (but often isn't the case with other games in the series).

It's been a fun and fairly relaxing traditional role-playing adventure. The story thus far isn't very memorable but it's well-told.