Sunday, January 30, 2011

Game 46: Zeliard (1987)

A very pretty opening screen using EGA graphics.




Bad kitty!


Really not all that terrifying.








NPCs give hints as to the upcoming dungeons.


Leveling up at the sage.






Miscellaneous things:




Briefly fun.



  1. I thought the music in Zeliard was pretty good, but I guess it is very console-like and sounds best on a Roland MT-32 MIDI synth:

  2. You know, I'd actually forgotten that the game featured XPs and character levels - I only really recalled the other gameplay elements. I suppose I should know better than to trust my memory 20+ years later.

    It's nice to see the progression into EGA colours. I find it difficult to enjoy much that's purely CGA these days - even when I was a kid, it was hard to like CGA though not having other options on the PC helped.

  3. HunterZ, I'm not a huge game music fan to begin with--I generally turn the music off--so I'm probably not the best judge. It's also likely that the DOS version is inferior.

    Sean, I agree about the graphics. I have low graphics demands in a CRPG, but it's still nice to see a game that looks good.

    1. I usually turn the music down low when there are separate volume controls for music and sound fx/voices. I find the total silence punctuated by the occasional sound effect in the video you posted to be kind of eerie. I think it's disconcerting in a way other games from this era aren't simply because it looks so much like a console game, which my brain is hardwired to expect to have musical accompaniment.

  4. "This is going to make a lot of bisque. Yes, I am aware that not all of my captions are home runs."

    I appreciate the ubisqueitous captions, humorous or not. :)

  5. This is the first game in the series that I played, so it's great to feel the thrill of recognition. I remember realizing that if your best shield ran out, you were probably dead, as your next best shield would be pitifully under-leveled for the area you were in.

  6. When looking far enough back into computer gaming history, I actually start differentiating between the images displayed and the colour palette they're displayed in. Up until VGA becomes the standard and common place - games may look radically different depending on what sort of hardware you have for colour display. So on the one hand, I don't mind ascii art too much or Ultima-style stickmen but at the same time, I loathe the CGA 4 colour palettes and actually prefer monochrome displays.

    I bring this up because it strikes me that being colour blind may actually be something of a benefit for playing some of the games you've blogged about in the past. Le Maitre des Ames in particular actually starts to make me nauseous (yes, literally) trying to look at all the cyan and magenta in its display.

    As a side note, when I played Zeliard, it was in CGA - so all these oranges, yellows and reds were cyan and magenta...

  7. Robyrt, I didn't even realize you could have more than one shield. Thanks for the note. Sean, you may be on to something. My inability to distinguish many colors might have a lot to do with why I haven't been bothered by the "inferior" DOS versions of many of these games. To the extent that I care about graphics at all, I am more moved by good graphics DETAIL than by good color, and most of the detail varies little between platforms in this era.

  8. I swear the Armorer used to yell at you "GET OUT, If you are going to waste my time"

  9. Zeliard's music struck me as good enough, particularly the tune that plays when you first start the game/are in above-ground towns, that I occasionally load the game up just to hear the song for a while. Though perhaps someone on YouTube has finally recorded the track for this purpose.

    I have another comment to make but I see you are talking about mapping the game in the next posting so it will go there.

  10. I remember the music of Zeliard being the first game music i'd heard on my PC that wasn't an intro/outro tune. Playing for hours on end i'd never get sick of those tunes even on PC speaker, though my parents didn't feel the same way, its too bad PC speaker didn't have volume control.

    I think Duke Garland's 'Ears' are just a 'Cutesy/Anime' rendition of the horned helm that he wears, as you can see from the Box Art.

    1. Yes, i found he thinking they where ears pretty silly since they look like wings you see in some character's helmets.

  11. I find it intersting that most names are in Spanish, I found a fan site tha has a comprehensive list:

    Also it seems that the names are as they appear in the original Japanese version, and the transation was literal; someone argues that they avoided specific words in Spanish (like Plata), since they could not have been spelled in Japanese, which has a syllabic alphabet.

    I mean, it certainly saves you a lot of time, not having to come up with original and consistent names for your gameworld, I wonder if there is some other game where it ws done.









