If you're an experienced veteran, you're no stranger to SSI (Strategic Simulations), a game company that's disappeared from history. Most players may be impressed by the company's series of wargames, or some may think of a series of games commonly known as the Gold Box series that it later licensed as TSR AD&D.
Founded in 1979, the early best-known works were almost always wargame games. However, the market for wargames is smaller than that of role-playing games, so the company's series of related games that use the background of AD&D stories later let more gamers know about the company. Although this series of AD&D licensed games is not only role-playing games, some of the role-playing games are more famous and players are more impressive. When it comes to role-playing games launched by SSI, I personally prefer not the works of this period, but the earlier Phantasie series.
The Ghost Warrior series is better known for the trilogy of films released from 1985 to 1987. If you were a guy from that era and you were a gamer who loved role-playing games, you shouldn't miss the trilogy, and this time we're going to talk a little bit about the classic series.
Ghost Warrior
Ghost Warrior, released in 1985, was the first game in the series. In this game, players organize a team of six adventurers to take an adventure on the continent of Gelnor. The goal of the player's adventure is to defeat the Black Knight, who threatens the entire continent, and the evil magician Nikademus behind the Black Knight. Before ghost warriors, there were already several well-known role-playing games on the market. Such works as Genesis by Origin Systems in 1981 and Witchcraft by Sir-Tech. These games can all feel inspired by the tabletop role-playing game RPGs. In ghost warriors, this feeling is even more obvious.
Many role-playing games on computers of that era, at the beginning of the game, the player needed to spend a period of time to create the character, and when creating the character, it directly simulated the situation of random attribute points from the "rolling dice". Therefore, in order to roll higher points and create more capable team members, usually at the beginning of the game, players are almost buried in the process of creating characters and constantly reshoot. The same is true in Ghost Warrior, where players can choose from six classes and a variety of different races to create members of their own party. And in addition to the common humans, dwarves, busts, elves and goblins, there is also a "random creature" project that can randomly create creatures that include trolls, minotaurs, etc. to become members of the team.
Now players see the game screen of "Ghost Warrior" and should feel that the picture of this game is so simple. The town where the game starts is a text menu only (Apple II version, later ported to a PC with a static background image). The adventure map outside the city is cut into two pieces on the left and right, the adventure map on the right, and the left side is used to show the team and use it in battle. However, such a general game screen was not unusual in that era, and gamers would use their imagination to fill it up.
The difficulty of the game is not low, because the character will die in battle or when the health drops to zero. Unlike the friendly game now, death in Ghost Warrior has resurrection magic, but it is only learned by the player in the later stages, and the resurrection may not be successful, even if the character's attribute points are successful, it will permanently lose one or two points. Therefore, when playing this game, when someone in our team died, almost always chose to load the progress to restart. I remember that in the early days of playing this game, it was often after the team had ventured out into the wilderness, and often died until one or two people were left to survive and climb back to town. Then the guild will abandon the dead characters, add new members, and continue to go. Slowly cultivate the team in this situation of imminent annihilation again and again, and wait until the level is raised to a certain level enough to deal with the enemies in the wilderness, before stepping into the dungeon in the game and starting to explore.
Before Ghost Warrior, SSI had also launched other role-playing games, but the whole company still gave players the impression that "this is a game company based on warboard games". However, with the launch of Ghost Warrior and its sales of more than 50,000 copies, it became the most sold role-playing game under SSI at that time. It is also because of this that there is a follow-up to "Ghost Warrior".
Ghost Warrior 2
Due to the success of Ghost Warrior, SSI soon launched Ghost Warrior 2 in 1986. This time, the story shifts to the continent of Ferronrah, and the player-controlled adventure team faces Nikademus, the evil magician of the previous generation who is hidden behind the Black Knight. The entire game of Ghost Warrior 2 is not much different from Ghost Warrior. Although there are some new terrains on the adventure map and an additional stone throwing instruction during combat, the overall change is not great. From the perspective of the game engine and backstory alone, this Ghost Warrior is more like the feeling of the second chapter than the second generation.
In an interview with the media, Ghost Warrior author Winston Douglas Wood talked about why it was done at the time. He said that many of SSI's wargames used the same game engine, changing only the game's story background and so on. In the marketing of SSI, it will also deliberately put this game using the same set of engines together to promote it, so at that time he also accepted SSI's suggestion and used the same game engine with only minor improvements to develop the second generation.
Although the game engine has not changed much, Ghost Warrior 2 has made a design that was rare in the past. Before the player can play Ghost Warrior 2, the original Ghost Warrior character can be transferred. Although most of the equipment, items, and magic on the body will disappear, the character's level, experience points, and money will also decrease. However, instead of starting over and starting a brand new team, the transferred team can save the player a lot of time at the beginning of the game. However, because the game is not much different from the previous generation, the sales performance of "Ghost Warrior 2" is not as high as that of "Ghost Warrior". Although it also has more than 30,000 sets of sales, it is also a profitable product for SSI, but compared to the launch of "Ghost Warrior" to make players' eyes light up, this "Ghost Warrior 2" Although the story and plot performance are much richer than the previous generation, the game's evaluation is generally low in the previous generation.
Ghost Warrior 3
Then in 1987, SSI introduced Ghost Warrior 3: Wrath of the Gods. This is the first time in the series that the game has a subtitle, and this subtitle clearly indicates that the player is still facing Nikademus, the evil magician of the previous two generations who only heard of the name of the other. After the adventure team destroyed Nikademus' good deeds twice in a row, this time it was finally time to face the ultimate boss. This generation is also the third game in the Ghost Warrior trilogy that players are familiar with.
Unlike Ghost Warrior 2, which uses the Ghost Warrior game engine, in Ghost Warrior 3: Wrath of the Gods, the game's combat system has been greatly changed. Each adventurer is divided into six parts: head, body, and limbs, and this change makes the battle much more complicated. During combat, if the life of the adventurer's hand drops to zero, it will cause an inability to attack, while aiming at the enemy's head attack can deal fatal damage. This change in the combat system has made Ghost Warrior 3: Wrath of the Demon God's combat difficulty much more difficult. Unlike most role-playing games of the time, players only needed to pay attention to the character's health. Since the body is divided into six parts, and some of them are relatively important, it sometimes happens that the character has a high health but has a broken hand, so he can't attack the enemy. The difficulty of the original "Ghost Warrior" series is not low, and it is even more developed in this generation.
Under the change of the combat system, the main screen of the game has also been greatly changed. In order to allow the player to see the status of the six parts of the team members at a glance, there is a whole area at the top of the screen to display this information, and at the same time use different words to indicate the status of each part. Because this part takes up a lot of space on the screen, the space used to display adventure maps and battle screens is much smaller. At the end of the Ghost Warrior 3: Wrath of the Demon God adventure, the player-controlled adventure team successfully defeats Nikademus, ending the evil magician's continuous brutality of the people in three generations of games. And as the player defeats the final demon king, the entire adventure comes to an end.
After the launch of Ghost Warrior 3: Wrath of the Demon God, the response among players was good, and it also received quite high reviews. However, there were many more competitors in that era than in 1985, and there were many up-and-comers on the computer who performed well, so the overall sales volume was only about 46,000 sets, and there was no achievement beyond the generation. After including the good results of role-playing games such as Ghost Warrior, SSI obtained AD&D licensing and continued to develop many games.
Ghost Warrior Trilogy Summary
Winston Douglas Wood, the author of Ghost Warrior, is not an employee of SSI. In those days, many games were actually developed by independent authors and then published by game companies. According to the author's later interview, perhaps because the screen performance of "Ghost Warrior" is not very good, so he asked many game companies whether they were willing to release it and were rejected, and finally it was difficult to find SSI to have the will, and the game had a chance to launch. In those days, games like Ghost Warrior were called CRPGs. Most of the authors of these games have a lot of experience with TRPG, so the games they make have a strong TRPG style. The game replaced the role of DM (Dungeon Master) with a computer, and handed over the action of rolling the dice to the computer, so that this type of game was quickly extended to the original TRPG-loving group.
The concept of the "Ghost Warrior" trilogy was also very rare at the time. Although many games have sequels, the structural generation of games is almost independent. Like the first three works of Genesis, although the stories are related, they are all connected with the previous works. The Ghost Warrior trilogy, which consisted of Nikademus throughout the trilogy, was rare in its time when the player was only confronted by his men in the first two titles.
In the era of "Ghost Warrior", the specifications of personal computers were quite varied. At that time, most people used Apple II compatible machines, but in the United States, in addition to the Apple II, there were Amiga, Atari, Commodore 64 and other computers with different specifications. In terms of pure graphics performance, the game graphics of the Apple II at that time were relatively not the best. Also because the Apple II is relatively poor in terms of display specifications, the game of that era will feel very general if you look at the performance of the picture from the current era. In the case of Ghost Warrior, the attack action of the character in the battle screen is just a gesture like raising a hand, with a simple sound effect from the speaker on the computer to show the effect of the entire attack. However, even with only this sound and light effect, the game still makes many players who like role-playing games addicted.
Compared to TRPG, CRPG is entertainment that can be performed by a person sitting in front of a computer. Wanting to play TRPG requires many people to get together, and if the game is not finished and is going to continue next time, it will take everyone to take time to continue. Playing role-playing games on the computer, as long as you have time, insert the game's disk into the disk drive, turn on the power of the computer and continue the adventure, which can be said to be convenient and comfortable. Prior to Ghost Warrior, the well-known Genesis and Witchcraft had already appeared on the market, each with its own supporters. Although the fame of "Ghost Warrior" is not as famous as those two series, it is also famous in that era. In the early game magazines, Ghost Warrior was listed as one of the three major computer role-playing games alongside Genesis and Witchcraft.
Unfortunately, compared to Genesis and Witchcraft, Ghost Warrior did not have any follow-up works after this trilogy, so its status was gradually replaced by subsequent games such as Ice City Legends or Magic Gate.
Fantastic Ghost Warrior 4
I've been talking about the Ghost Warrior trilogy. But in fact, "Ghost Warrior" actually has four generations in its history, and what is even more amazing is that this four-generation game is only available in the Japanese market, and the text in the game is mainly in Japanese. This game, called Ghost Warrior 4: Blood of Heroes, can be said to be a fantasy work in the history of Ghost Warrior. To talk about how ghost warrior 4: Blood of Heroes came about, we must first mention the Japanese game company company.
At that time, the PC-88 and PC-98 series PCs used in the Japanese market were incompatible with the Apple II and PC used in the European and American markets outside Of Japan. Therefore, if European and American games are to be introduced to Japan, they need to undergo the procedures of revision and transplantation, and at the same time, they will also translate the text and change the information in the game to Japanese. The company is a game company that transplants European and American games and sells them in Japan. The company also included the Ghost Warrior trilogy in its proxy ported games, and it is said that the response in the market has been good. In the process of porting European and American games, in addition to simply localizing the game, they sometimes make some degree of improvement to the game's graphics, interface, and operation to match the habits of Japanese computer users.
After the release of Ghost Warrior 3: Wrath of the Gods, author Winston Douglas Wood continued to want to continue to develop the fourth generation. Normally, with the experience of working with SSI before, the fourth generation should also be handed over to SSI to continue to be released. However, during this period, SSI obtained the AD&D license of TSR and began to develop a series of related games, and because these games have AD&D signs, the sales performance is very good. After the launch of the first role-playing game with the AD&D logo, Pool of Light, it generated more than 260,000 units sold in North America alone. So during that period, Ghost Warrior 4's plans didn't get SSI much interest. Perhaps for this reason, the author had to turn to other game companies to negotiate. In the end, Co., Ltd. expressed interest in the game that came to Japan.
In this way, the author Winston Douglas Wood handed over his design documents to the company スタークラフト, which was developed by the Japanese company for four generations. The latest version of Ghost Warrior, originally from the United States, has thus become a version that was only launched in Japan and used only in Japan on computer systems. And this fantastic "Ghost Warrior 4: Blood of heroes" has also become a fantasy in the eyes of many foreign game collectors. Ghost Warrior 4: Bloodline of Heroes is similar to the previous generation Ghost Warrior 3: Wrath of the Gods, and the biggest change is that when creating a character, the player has to choose the character's parents. Then through this race of parents, it affects the characteristics of the created character. Since Ghost Warrior has always been able to choose random creatures as characters, when such changes were made when creating characters, the characters created changed a lot more.
Ghost Warrior 5, which has not yet been realized
In 2013, the author of the "Ghost Warrior" series mentioned in an interview with foreign game media that he was planning to produce "Ghost Warrior 5". Unfortunately, due to manpower and time constraints, this plan has not yet been realized. In a 2020 interview with online media outlets, interviewers suggested he could take into account Kickstarter fundraising and then hire some people to help him with the plan. However, at present, we have not seen any action by the author, so whether "Ghost Warrior 5" really appears one day, we can only wait slowly.