Somewhere where nothing happens. Ever.
I’ve been looking at old games from the 90s before the widespread introduction of 3D graphics, it was a time of hand drawn backgrounds and sprites.
Amongst those, the illustrations created by Jim Sachs for Defender of the Crown standout.
I already had one or two of them already, but hit a treasure trove on the Amiga Graphics Archive site.
I’ve included some upscaled images from the archive for your viewing pleasure below.
Who remembers Ravening Hordes for Warhammer Fantasy?
The old books were a lot of fun, the example taunt in it always stuck with me despite the years.
“Come on out, ye snivelling son of a scurvy rat-hound! I can smell ye fouled britches and hear ye knees knockin’ wi’ fear!”
It had a great cover by Chris Achilleos.
The recent John Blanche post I did put me in mind of an old book I bought many moons ago, Realms of Fantasy by Malcolm Edwards & Roberts Holdstock.
This illustrated fantasy art book published in 1983 by Paper Tiger, contained descriptions of ten seminal fantasy works. With each of the chapters (and associated work) illustrated by a different artist.
For Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake, this was illustrated by Ian Miller.
Below are some of the illustrations from the book, well worth a look if you can find, though long out of print.
I’ve always liked the painting by John Blanche, they’ve a sort of decadent feel about them.
Here’s a few I’ve chanced upon.
When I think of JRPGs and the like of Final Fantasy one artist always springs to my mind,
It’s such a distinctive art-style, which I remembering coming across on the book covers for Moorcocks, The Eternal Champion series in the 90s.
Here are a number of his more well known works.
Rodney Matthews really encapsulates the ’70s Fantasy vibe for me, with his distinctive spindly elongated art style. Here’s a few images, which illustrate that style.
I really should do something with this site, so with that in mind have some wallpapers.
To start with let’s go with a Fantasy classic, Middle-Earth.
Here’s an initive which you should get behind if you are a gamer in the EU.
Link: Stop Killing Games
In a nutshell it’s an attempt to make the publishers plan for the sunsetting of their games in manner such that the software can still continue to function. This could be removal of a always connected requirement for single player games, a single player mode for multiplayer, offering peer-to-peer support or allowing private servers for multiplayer.
The deadline for the initiative is 31st of July, so there is not much time. But what looked like a long shoot as far as numbers was concerned, is now looking achievable.
It will need to exceed the required 1 million signatures to account for spoilt votes, so even if has reached the required number, still sign if you haven’t already.
Here’s a video that appeared on my YouTube timeline yesterday, this particular YouTuber sets about investigating a dead MMORPG from 1999.
The style of the game really reminded me of Ultima Online which clearly influenced it.
Ultima Online was probably my favourite MMO of all time (up until it suddenly wasn’t), with the downfall of Ultima Online being a story in itself.
I don’t want to give too much away, it worth the watch if you played such games from back in the day.
Wizard of the Coasts have released the core rules for the latest edition of Dungeons and Dragons under a Creative Commons license. It’s great starting point for those looking to get into Dungeons and Dragons or RPGs more generally.
The actual SRD documents, for both 5.1 (2014 D&D) and 5.2 (2024 D&D) can be obtained from the following link: Dungeon and Dragons SRDs.