D&D Origins: Warriors of the Eternal Sun

When I was a kid, we didn't have systems, like the XBox 360 or the Wii.  We had the grand-daddy of awesome systems, the SEGA Genesis.  It feels weird for me to say that, being the Nintendo Fanboy I am today, but when I was a kid, I had the ATARI 2500 and I had the Genesis.  Later I would have a Gameboy Color and the N64, but when I was a small boy, I had the Genesis.  Sonic the Hedgehog, Wonder Boy, Battle Tech.  Yeah!  SEGA does what Ninten-don't, and don't you fucking forget it!

Now that I am done sucking the magnificent cock of the Genesis, I must begin my story not with the game in the title, but with another game called Cadash.  Cadash was an adaptation of the arcade game by Taito, and was my first major introduction to fantasy gaming (i.e. wizards, dragons, etc.)  I beat the game as both the Fighter and the Wizard, and loved the game so much.  This will become very important later, but with this story, it led to how I borrowed a lot of my games from friends and relatives.  My cousins owned Cadash, and I borrowed it a lot.  When the family vet's son was moving out, he let me borrow a lot of his games.  There was Aladdin, and Terminator, all really great games.  One cart stood out in my memory.  This game was Warriors of the Eternal Sun.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, but this was my official introduction to Dungeons and Dragons.

Now, when I started playing this game, I had already started playing Pokemon and Dragon Warrior, so RPGs were nothing new to me.  What was new, however, was the customization.  Yeah, it was simplistic and based on AD&D rules (I started with 3e, so AD&D is a bit unfamiliar), but I loved it.  I made characters based on my friends, and explored the strange new lands the castle appeared in, and died, died A LOT.  Probably died more times than Kenny and Captain Jack combined, though if you add Rory to the mix, you might get close.  This game more than any other introduced me to tactical thinking and resource management.  Some say video games make people dumber.  I, on the other hand, grew smarter playing this game.

The plot was:  A castle in an unknown location in the world of Mystara sinks beneath the ground during a conflict with Goblins.  The king orders you to figure out what has happened, and to gain allies.  As you investigate the Valley of the Eternal Sun (since the sun never sets), you gain allies, but the populous of the town start going insane, driven to madness by a mysterious power.

I never did beat the game, I both had no clue what I was doing, and never had the game long enough for me to figure it out.  I mean, I needed a strategy guide to help me figure out parts of Dragon Warrior III, and I read that guide so much it literally doesn't exist anymore.  I got as far as the Azcans usually, and only once made it to the fiery tunnels that eventually take you to the Oltecs.  Despite never making it all THAT far, the game enchanted me so much, so much so that I still do not know why I haven't downloaded a ROM of it and played it.  The title screen music is even my ringtone.

I later revisited this game when making a campaign in high school.  I never did get the chance to DM that adventure, most of the people I played with graduated and moved on to bigger and better things.  The files I typed up for it are probably both lost on an old computer in this house and lurking away hidden in the harddrives of my alma mater, along with a hacked copy of DOOM and a list of proxies to bypass the school's firewall so you can check MySpace (back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth).  Perhaps a group of nerd will uncover it and play out a few adventures?  Hell, who am I kidding?  They probably will want to play DOOM, I know I wanted to!  I want to play some DOOM now, to be fairly honest.

However, I would not realize what Dungeons and Dragons was until I saw a game that felt more like traditional D&D, and boy was that game beautiful.  But, as they always say, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."