Dragon Wars

Dragon Wars
Developer(s)	Interplay Productions Kemco (NES)
Publisher(s)	Activision
Designer(s)	Rebecca Heineman
Platform(s)	Amiga, Apple II, Apple IIGS, Commodore 64, DOS, Nintendo Family Computer, NEC PC-9801, X68000
Release	NA: 1989 EU: 1989 JP: August 9, 1991
Genre(s)	Role-playing
Mode(s)	Single-player

Dragon Wars is a fantasy role-playing video game developed by Rebecca Heineman and published by Interplay Productions in 1989 and distributed by Activision.

The player starts the game with a party of four characters, who can be either the default characters or ones created by the player. Alternatively, the player may import characters from The Bard's Tale trilogy into Dragon Wars. During the game, the seven character slots can be filled with any combination of the starting characters, recruited characters, and summoned creatures.

The story from the back of the original box states:

The designers of the Bard's Tale series, Wasteland, and Battle Chess pooled their talents to create the ultimate role-playing fantasy. They knew it had to be a first-rate story with sophisticated graphics. The result was Dragon Wars.

Sailing across uncharted seas, you and your party are in search of a legendary paradise called Dilmun — a place where the streets are paved with gold and no one wants for anything.

However, King Drake of Phoebus has declared all magic illegal - magickers have been slain or fled into exile. In retaliation, enemy islands have threatened to unleash their guardian dragons, the most destructive force in the world. While docked at a harbor in Dilmun, you are arrested on suspicion of spellcasting.

Imprisoned and stripped of everything but your wits, you are sentenced to life in a cesspool called Purgatory. Magic is your only salvation - a worldly possession in a world possessed.

During the initial design process for Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate, one of the designers came up with a list of enhancements and improvements for the game. With the possibility that Interplay would soon be parting ways with Electronic Arts, it was decided to save these for a future game and stick closer to the original engine, though the auto-mapping feature did make it into Bard's Tale III.

These design improvements came in this next game, Dragon Wars. In essence, the game was a fusion of Bard's Tale and design philosophy pioneered in Wasteland.^[1]

Until a month before release, the game was developed as Bard's Tale IV.^[1] However, the rights to the title were still held by Electronic Arts, and thus a new title and setting were needed for the game. It was derived in part from the Sumerian legends of Gilgamesh, with the chief villain of the game being named Namtar. Since to this point the game didn't feature any dragons, the new title meant that Heineman had to add one.^[1]

Interplay advertisements displayed the slogan "Bard's Tale Fans Rejoice!" above the game's name, and mentioned Dragon Wars' ability to import Bard's Tale characters.^[2] The designers all felt it was a better game than Bard's Tale III, and indeed, better than any of the Bard's Tale series, but without the tie-in to the old title and without Electronic Arts' marketing muscle, the game did not fare as well.

To defend against pirated copies of the game, Dragon Wars included a collection of numbered paragraphs within their manual.^[3] Players would receive an in-game message (i.e. "Read paragraph 23"), and have to refer back to the printed material. The game is very difficult to play without references to the paragraphs, and many parts become meaningless. This form of security was widely used at the time.

A sequel, Dragon Wars 2 was in the concept stage of development around the mid-1990s but was cancelled because of the original's tepid sales figures and RPGs being out of style at the time.^[4]

Dragon Wars was reviewed in 1989 in Dragon #152 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.^[5] Scorpia gave the game a positive review in Computer Gaming World in 1989, noting improvements over the Bard's Tale series, saying that "tighter design, attention to detail, balanced combat, and a carefully constructed plotline all combine to produce a CRPG well worth playing".^[6] In 1993 she wrote that the game was "a good choice when you want something a bit more than a standard slicer/dicer".^[7]

According to Heineman, the game sold well but two things were against it: the game being a blobber RPG and not being able to use The Bard's Tale name. The game eventually broke even.^[4]

The game was later included in the Interplay's 10 Year Anthology Classic Collection released in 1993.

• Joker Verlag präsentiert: Sonderheft (1992)^[8]
• Amiga Joker (Feb, 1991)^[9]
• CU Amiga (Feb, 1991)^[10]
• The Games Machine (Mar, 1990)^[11]
• Génération 4 (Apr, 1990)^[12]
• ASM (Aktueller Software Markt) (Apr, 1990)^[13]
• Tilt (Mar, 1990)^[14]
• Enchanted Realms (May 1991)^[15]
• Jeux & Stratégie nouvelle formule #7^[16]

• Dragon Wars on Steam
• Dragon Wars on Gog.com
• Dragon Wars can be played for free in the browser at the Internet Archive
• Dragon Wars at Classicgaming.cc
• Game information (MS-DOS version)
• Game information (Nintendo Family Computer version)
• MobyGames is a commercial database website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes over 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms.^[1] Founded in 1999, ownership of the site has changed hands several times. It has been owned by Atari SA since 2022.

Edits and submissions to the site (including screenshots, box art, developer information, game summaries, and more) go through a verification process of fact-checking by volunteer "approvers".^[2] This lengthy approval process after submission can range from minutes to days or months.^[3] The most commonly used sources are the video game's website, packaging, and credit screens. There is a published standard for game information and copy-editing.^[4] A ranking system allows users to earn points for contributing accurate information.^[5]

Registered users can rate and review games. Users can create private or public "have" and "want" lists, which can generate a list of games available for trade with other registered users. The site contains an integrated forum. Each listed game can have its own sub-forum.

MobyGames was founded on March 1, 1999, by Jim Leonard and Brian Hirt, and joined by David Berk 18 months later, the three of which had been friends since high school.^[6][7] Leonard had the idea of sharing information about computer games with a larger audience. The database began with information about games for IBM PC compatibles, relying on the founders' personal collections. Eventually, the site was opened up to allow general users to contribute information.^[5] In a 2003 interview, Berk emphasized MobyGames' dedication to taking video games more seriously than broader society and to preserving games for their important cultural influence.^[5]

In mid-2010, MobyGames was purchased by GameFly for an undisclosed amount.^[8] This was announced to the community post factum , and the site's interface was given an unpopular redesign.^[7] A few major contributors left, refusing to do volunteer work for a commercial website.{{Citation needed|date=June 2025} On December 18, 2013, MobyGames was acquired by Jeremiah Freyholtz, owner of Blue Flame Labs (a San Francisco-based game and web development company) and VGBoxArt (a site for fan-made video game box art).^[9] Blue Flame Labs reverted MobyGames' interface to its pre-overhaul look and feel,^[10] and for the next eight years, the site was run by Freyholtz and Independent Games Festival organizer Simon Carless.^[7]

On November 24, 2021, Atari SA announced a potential deal with Blue Flame Labs to purchase MobyGames for $1.5 million.^[11] The purchase was completed on 8 March 2022, with Freyholtz remaining as general manager.^[12][13][14] Over the next year, the financial boost given by Atari led to a rework of the site being built from scratch with a new backend codebase, as well as updates improving the mobile and desktop user interface.^[1] This was accomplished by investing in full-time development of the site instead of its previously part-time development.^[15]

In 2024, MobyGames began offering a paid "Pro" membership option for the site to generate additional revenue.^[16] Previously, the site had generated income exclusively through banner ads and (from March 2014 onward) a small number of patrons via the Patreon website.^[17]

• IGDB – game database used by Twitch for its search and discovery functions

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