You Might Have Missed...
King's Bounty , (c) 1991 New World Computing/Electronic Arts (Genesis)

Have you ever heard of Heroes of Might and Magic? One, two or three? Heck, have you heard that Four should be coming out sometime in the near future?

Do you know where it came from?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with the "Gran-daddy of 'em all," King's Bounty. Yes, this game was released for the PC a year prior to the port found on the Genesis, but I've never SEEN the PC version, nor am I really willing to dig it up to see something that looks about as archaic on a modern PC as my handwriting from the second grade.
It's also cool when you're one of the special people who still own the cartridge.

In this blissful romp, you are one of four noble kingsmen (barbarian, knight, paladin or sorceress... I was always the sorceress because she was paid more, and had magic to start. Waaaait... women get paid more from jumpstreet? Wow, NWC was sure doing something different when they started this genre of conquerer's quest). Upon your selection of character, you are told that the King's Sceptre has been stolen, and that the villain (our antagonist is a Dragon, Arech Dragonbreath... or, should it be Smaug?) has hidden the pieces to the map with several of his criminal brethren, and 8 scattered artifacts... you are to hunt these brethren and the pieces, and collect the bounty for each capture of criminal, dig up the sceptre from wherever it's hidden, and save your King... oh yeah, and if you don't find the scepter in the alloted time, you have a dead king, a dying world, and your game is over, too. How sad. SO DON'T BLOW IT!

This game, much like its offshoots and sequels, was addicting. The only thing that plagued it was a 64-character password that one would have to enter to be able to continue. This, my friends, is worse than continuing in the original Metroid (and you can't spell something cool like Justin Bailey, either). If you really loved the game, you started early in the day, and ended late at night... but you dared not strain your hand copying that password.

The game plays much like Heroes, except for the fact that this is a one-player game, and there are no other Heroes in the world; just you, and your lackey chesspiece-type followers. Sprites, Peasants, Pikemen, Calvalry, Nomads... you've probably seen all of these names and more... and they're all in the first and one of the greatest titles that NWC ever put out.

Sad part is... not a whole lot of people remember this gem, and that is why I've chosen to tell you all... FIND A WAY to try out the old King's Bounty. If it can make my father (who always looked at me crosseyed when I played video games until all hours of the night) play a Sega Genesis until 5am when he had to work at 2pm the next day... it's a darn good game.