One of the best video games ever, period! The Legend of Zelda

I'm known for strong opinions, but I challenge anyone to say that The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past is not hands down awesome.


If its not the best video game of all time its one of the best. For the time frame the Legend of Zelda was heads and shoulders above most other games in the genre. Set the scene: the 16-bit Super NS was a huge hit and represented a big step forward from the previous 8-bit system which was a monster hit. Zelda's I and II  where good and very involved for the time.

Some people pan Zelda as its a flagship game for the Wii and we all know that anything Wii related is bad right (insert sarcasm here).  Those people are fools. Zelda is a very successful franchise and specfically A Link to the Past is rated as one of the greatest video games of all time. (This is but one platitude, there are many, many more out on the web).

 The think that was most striking the first time we played it, it was a night fairly dark and my buddies and I fired up the game and we here this muted sound of rain? Was it raining outside, was the TV burning out? As an aside I did burn out one TV playing my Atari 2600 back in the day). We check the TV. Nothing. So we keep playing and low and behold, ITS RAINING!!!!!!



I can't understate just how cool this was. There was thunder and lightning; when Link tramped through puddles it splashed. I think that was one of the big advances was the sound. You can tell the designers of the game put a lot of thought into this. 

Questing for hearts and pieces of hearts was also fun to try and get all 20. This was before the advent of the internet so you couldn't just go on line or grab a game book that detailed everything in it to figure out where everything was. And if I recall correctly A Link to the Past was the first time that it introduced pieces of hearts to collect. You had to explore on your own.  Which leads to another awesome idea that was finding the bottles. I remember distinctly after grabbing the Zora's flippers swimming through the rivers and heading up to the castle. A certain friend of mine was getting rather annoyed about me "wasting time". Low and behold I swim to the bridge and what do I find? The third bottle! Needless to say I had a smug, "ship" eating grin on my face, much to his consternation.

A great thing that the game introduced was the upgrade path for the main  weapon, the master sword and if you had full hearts the fact that you could zap enemies from afar. Likewise the gloves, shields, boomerang, bows and armor could be improved. This would set the standard for it upgrades. What else was there? A hammer, bug, nets, shovel, flippers, flying duck to zip you around the board, the boomerang, etc! Bombing walls, hacking bushes, the heights of Death Mountain, the shadowy grove of the forests. Fighting troopers and poes, tektites and zoras, moblins and keese. Multiple palaces to explorer, multiple towers?

In short, pure awesomeness!

For those not in the know, (and I'm not worrying about spilling the beans on a game from the early 90s) the cool thing about the game is the interplay between the Light World and the Dark World. link has a ton to explore before even getting to the dark world. By carefully placing certain barriers that require certain items to unlock the area Link is largely confined to certain areas. The cool part is the player has to use both the Light and Dark worlds to get to certain areas. Some might feel that in hindsight its rail roading" of the highest order but in terms of game-play its actually fairly open, certainly for the time.

A Link to the Past had another great touch that made it  memorable. the ending video scene after defeating Gannon:

Everything is put back where it should be, from Link's uncle recovering to the thief in the forest looking very putt off by Link's triumph.

Like an idiot I sold my Super NES a long time ago and got a replacement combo 8 bit/16 bit system for it some years back. One of the first games I reacquired was this. And playing through it again roughly twenty years after the fact, it was still a good game, it still played well and brought a smile to my face.

In my estimation this game is a 10 out of 10. Its pitch perfect. Now I know many will say that Ocarina of Time is better in the Zelda franchise, I won't argue I think the Ocarina is rightly on that list as well. In my mind you could say Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past are 1A and 1B and a  case can be made for switching that. In a random note for Super NES the only other game that came close to me liking it as much as Zelda was Final Fantasy I (Or III in Japan) with Illusion of Gaia a far distant third.

And another game that is creeping up my list? Skyrim ;)

1st Edition AD&D- the Finale- Part VI

 

My dark elf fighter/mage is about to be killed next...

 

The Final Battle – Closing the book on THE CAMPAIGN

(Parts I, II, III, IV and V) 

This post marks the last entry in my series on THE CAMPAIGN—the high school AD&D 1st edition game that, for me, was the campaign. The one that still lingers decades later.

As with the rest of this series, I’m working purely from memory. I didn’t keep notes back then, and whatever map I had (drawn as we explored) is long lost. We were closing in on higher levels—by 1st edition standards anyway—and after nearly two years of weekly play, the campaign was winding down. Other games were starting to pull us away. I think Twilight 2000 was next, followed by Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. We ran through The Enemy Within in that system—with all the grim, disfiguring horror that implies.

But before the curtain closed, we had unfinished business.

The Trail of Dragotha 

We had been on Dragotha’s trail for the better part of a year—always just missing him, arriving to find carnage in his wake. Jim’s dwarf, in particular, had a personal vendetta. His kin had been slaughtered, and he wasn’t letting that go. Other characters had their own reasons. Mine was tasked with recovering the Shield of Arion, a dark elf relic lost to Dragotha’s grasp.

Eventually, we tracked him to a dungeon lair. The crawl was brutal, filled with clerics who stood in our way. I don’t remember the dungeon being more than one level deep, but I do remember the intensity of those battles. The enemy clerics weren’t just spell-slinging NPCs—they were designed to jam us up. And they worked. That design stuck with me. Years later, I modeled the clerics of Orion in one of my own campaigns after them: high-level threats with spells and powers that players couldn’t easily exploit. The same design philosophy that Gary used for the Drow—challenging, alien, and off-limits to players.

Into the Lair

Eventually, we reached a long, narrow hallway. At the far end was a reinforced door—and through it, Dragotha finally emerged. That's it, a door. Huh?

The Choke Point 

It was a clever setup. Not a grand throne room or wide-open space, but a choke point. No flanking, no big AOEs, no fireballing from range. He met us head-on. The melee fighters couldn’t all get into position at once. Our two big spellcasters—Daryl’s pyromancer and my fighter/mage—had no safe shots. Jeff knew what he was doing. He wanted the fight up close and personal. We couldn’t “call in the artillery” without nuking our own front line. 

And so the melee began

Dragotha came out swinging. In short order, he killed both Tom’s half-ogre and Jim’s dwarf—using, fittingly, the very weapons they were questing after. He wielded the dwarven axe and bore the Shield of Arion, turning our character goals into lethal instruments. Both were gone in the opening exchange.

Dave’s halfling fighter/thief stepped up next, narrowly dodging death. Then my dark elf joined the melee. I don’t remember Chris’s illusionist being present, and Mike’s cleric/ranger actions are fuzzy. But I clearly recall the turning point: with our heavy hitters down, I dropped a lightning bolt—not the spetum I was specialized in, but magic. That bolt finished Dragotha off.

Aftermath

I’ll always remember the scene: the dead on the floor, the battle map filled with fallen PCs, and the BBEG finally going down. That was the end. The campaign wrapped, and we moved on to other worlds. But multiple deaths and me ending it with a spell I used on occasion but not as frequently as fly and fireball.

The Campaign

Looking back, one of the most effective elements of THE CAMPAIGN was how Jeff personalized the stakes. Three of us had “McGuffins” directly tied to Dragotha. And they weren’t custom-made evil weapons—they were our cultural artifacts: a dwarven axe, a halfling bear cloak, a dark elf shield. Turning those against us was brilliant. Like Thulsa Doom wielding Conan’s father’s sword—it hits harder when the blade belonged to you.

Since then, I’ve played in great games, mediocre ones, and forgettable sessions. But THE CAMPAIGN stands alone—not just for what happened at the table, but for the friendships it forged. We’ve been at each other’s weddings, watched our kids grow up, argued, drifted, reconnected, and stayed part of each other’s lives.

And I wouldn’t trade it—or them—for anything.

1st Edition AD&D Part V- The Adventures

 

Oddly, no one in the campaign used a long sword primarily...

Delving Into the Adventures of THE CAMPAIGN

Up to now, I’ve been chronicling the characters, setting, and Big Bad Evil Guy (BBEG) of THE CAMPAIGN. This time, I’m digging into the actual adventures we played—some homebrew, some pulled from the pages of Dungeon Magazine. Jeff, our DM, had great taste, and it shows in the ones I still remember decades later. His blend of original material and curated modules set the tone for a campaign that stuck with me all these years.

Dungeon Magazine Gems

Dungeon Magazine had some absolutely killer content in its heyday, and I think that rubbed off on me. Even years later, when I started DMing regularly, I’d often modify Dungeon adventures to fit my world.

Two stand out clearly:

The Wounded Worm –Dungeon #8

The imagery of the final dungeon still sticks with me: I can see us approaching the cave, then facing the red dragon in the final room. That fight was brutal—my wand got torched (maybe the cloak of the bat too), and a couple of party members died. My dark elf barely made it out alive.

Later, I used some of the dragon’s hide to reinforce my bag of holding. Jeff liked the idea so much, he gave it a bonus to item saves vs. fire. That’s the kind of campaign it was: things felt earned.

Ward of WitchingWays – Dungeon #11

This one hit hard. We were shipwrecked and forced to swim to the isle, which was already a dramatic setup. I picked up my cloak of the bat and wand of polymorphing here. Jeff started dropping hints that my familiar and spell books were in danger, which I found odd—I wasn’t overpowered or anything. So I made my familiar watch the bag of holding from a safe distance during the final encounter. I remember Jeff being really annoyed by that. Score one for the player.

At one point, someone got polymorphed into a bird. I used the wand to turn foes into snails more than once. Since I was the only one who could use most of the magic items (Daryl’s fire mage and Chris’s illusionist couldn’t), I ended up with a lot of them. Eventually, Jeff realized how nasty the wand really was and made me lose it in an item saving throw. I was a very tactical player even back then—used my stuff sparingly and strategically, especially when I knew the wand was low on charges.

Years later, Wards of Witching Ways is one of my favorite modules of all time. 

Other Memories & Adventures

We played every week for two years, and Jeff ran most of it from his own imagination. While some adventures are long lost to time, fragments still remain:

The Icy Cave and the Blue-Glimmer Sword

We faced a white dragon early in the campaign—so early that only I had to make a fear check. The fight was rough, but we won. A glowing +2 longsword was found stuck in a block of ice, which I ended up using from time to time. It had no powers beyond glowing blue and lighting up the frozen chamber. I liked it. Of course, it eventually failed an item saving throw.

Undead Centaurs in the Grassy Hills

I remember a long stretch of grassy hills and a sudden attack by undead centaurs. What made the fight memorable was Christian’s illusionist summoning a phantom longbow using phantasmal force and firing it—doing fake damage, sure, but it bought us time. It was a clever use of illusion magic in a ruleset where illusions are often hard to adjudicate. Dave and I joined in with real bows while they were still at range.

The Infamous Wyvern Migrations

This was one of the things that made the world feel alive. For several in-game months, we’d see wyverns migrating overhead during our nightly watches. My character was careful not to draw attention during his shift. That peace ended the night Tom’s half-ogre made a ruckus and drew them down on us. I forget who died, but somebody definitely didn’t make it.

The One Night I Nearly Died

Everyone in the party died at least once—except my fighter/mage. I had okay HP and high damage output thanks to specialization and the ogre power bracer, but I couldn’t take hits. One time in a dungeon I got smacked down to -9 HP. Dave’s halfling was nearby and hadn’t acted that round—he managed to stabilize me just in time. One more point and I’d have been gone. As the only full elf in the group, raise dead wasn’t going to work on me, and our cleric didn’t have a scroll or rod of resurrection. I’ve had plenty of characters die over the years, but that one felt like it was close—too close.

The World Itself

Our party traveled far: by boat, overland, even deep into unexplored territory. The continent’s coast lay to the south, and I still vaguely remember a major river splitting the map. Sadly, my hand-drawn map is long gone. The world had that Baldur’s Gate 1 vibe—revealing itself as we explored. I loved that feeling.

I think the next post will be the wrap-up for this series on THE CAMPAIGN. After that, I’ll touch on some of the other campaigns we played—including the disaster that was our run of the original Ravenloft module. Let’s just say there were construction paper gravestones involved… and a body count to match. 

1st Edition AD&D Part IV- The Adversary

Obviously he hadn't gotten the dark elf shield of Arion yet...

The Big Bad EVIL Guy (But Not That Dragotha)

Continuing my deep dive into the backstory of THE CAMPAIGN, it’s time to talk about the BBEG — the “Big Bad Evil Guy” who loomed large over our game like a shadow cast from the past. Nearly every fantasy story has one, and ours was no different. Like several of our party’s PCs, the BBEG was based on a Citadel miniature. In this case, it was a Chaos Warrior model — just like the one that inspired Tom’s half-ogre fighter.

Back then, everything was 25mm scale, but even in that tiny frame, the mini managed to look genuinely intimidating. Of course, the only time I can remember actually seeing it on the table was during the very end of the campaign — right where it belonged.

You can find a bunch of those classic Chaos Warrior minis here. 

What set this villain apart wasn’t just the miniature, but how cleverly Jeff (our DM) used it to create narrative hooks. Remember at the time we were like 13-14, this was new ground. The villain’s design directly inspired the three major MacGuffins the party was chasing — each tied to a personal quest from the backstory of three PCs:

• Dave’s halfling fighter/thief was searching for a stolen bear cloak — a symbol of status or tradition among his people.

• Jim’s dwarf fighter was seeking a legendary battle axe that had been lost.

• My dark elf fighter/rune-caster, Relendor, was after the Shield of Arion — a sacred relic tied to his church and culture. (I’ve included a pic of it below.) As I mentioned in a previous post, it dealt a nasty 2–20 damage in melee.

It’s worth appreciating that Jeff built a reason for three out of seven characters to want this villain dead — and wove all those threads back to one miniature. That's some Thulsa Doom–level villainy.

The shield of Arion in "The Campaign"

So, Who Was Dragotha? (No, Not That Dragotha)

Our version of Dragotha wasn’t the infamous undead dragon from the Tome of Horrors. He was a powerful warrior — possibly with some clerical magic — and definitely a terror in combat. As a 1st Edition villain, he was likely double-specialized in the battle axe and paired it with the Shield of Arion, giving him three attacks per round. Basically, he could mow down just about anything in his path.

His symbol? The Cross of Confusion — naturally. I mean, it was the '80s, so of course we were “satanic” punks, right? (As a side note: I’ve been reading these AD&D books for 30+ years and still can’t conjure a single cantrip. Clearly doing something wrong. Where’s my real power, Dark Dungeons?!)

That symbol popped up throughout the campaign — banners, carvings, crumbling ruins. I distinctly remember it flapping above a desecrated chapel during one of our early encounters. That moment stuck with me. It was probably our first real glimpse of the evil we were chasing.

Shadows of Dragotha

We ran into his minions here and there, but Dragotha himself? He was more often felt than seen. We’d enter an area and find wreckage in his wake — signs of his influence, his chaos, his corruption. His presence hung over the campaign like smoke.

As for what the rest of the party had against him, I honestly can’t say — at least not without digging through Jeff’s old notes (if they still exist). Hopefully someday we’ll uncover more of that lost lore. I do remember the final confrontation with him, but I’ll save that for the proper send-off when I wrap up the full campaign recap.

Until then...

Hurled into Eternity- Latest Revision

(Quick Note: No I have not forgot my series of "Playing 1st edition AD&D", next post is almost ready to go but still needs a bit more work). 

As promised version 11 of the 2nd generation of the Hurled into Eternity rules (link to download is below). Improvements include clarifications in the following areas:

•  Clarifications to the Wild Card System.
• Modes of gunfire have been streamlined to eliminate the need for 1/2 or 1/3 configurations for gun fighting scores.
• Modifiers condensed and streamlined for bonuses and penalties to hit.
• Condensing and changing healing rates for Wounds (W) along elimination of differing healing rates for damage.
• Early write up of a intro adventure (still not complete).

As always, spell checking  and proofing is still on the radar, but not quite there yet as I'm continuing to focus on the rules. The feeling that I have now is I'm inching closer to a finished product. The rules are getting some, good constructive feedback and fixing areas that don't make sense. I saty that every post but two recent rounds of feedback have led to a even tighter game.

As a quick aside every once and a while I get the feedback: "Hurled into Eternity"? That doesn't make sense for a western, it sounds Sci-Fi. Sorry folks, you don't get much more Western then the name of this game! I'll leave it up to you to figure it out...

Lastly feedback is always welcome.