The Arthur Pendragon Adventures Series

In the spirit of "games that predate the modern Rare shared universe, but inform it" like the arcade Donkey Kong titles that we love so much here at DKGirder, I wanted to take a sidestep today and talk about sometitles that inform the lore of today.Programmer Dave Thomas began working in the games industry in 1983, most notably putting out Warlock for the Atari 400 at Calisto Software. Due to the long commute though, he soon quit the company, and started working instead at a smaller studio called Ultimate Play the Game. You may have heard of them :P. (But if not, they later went on to become somewhat renowned devolopers Rare, creators of Donkey Kong Country, Banjo-Kazooie, and Sea of Thieves, among other things.)While working there, he started working on a pet project, accompanied by his brother Bob on art & design. The Staff of Karnath, heavily inspired by the 1962 film Jack the Giant Killer, and also drawing some light inspirations from the works of H.P. Lovecraft, was the eventual result. He named the protagonist of this game, Sir Arthur Pendragon, after the character of the Black Prince Pendragon from the film, and thus a lasting legacy was born. Though I don't think anybody realized that at the time...The first outing for Sir Pendragon's Adventure Series, The Staff of Karnath, released in 1984, is a semi-3D view side-on of the castle of the ancient wizard Karnath, long since vacated. Dave Thomas says the perspective was to be "as though you were looking into a doll's house." The basic gist of the game is that after untold ages, wizard Karnath found a mysterious orb of power left behind by an ancient lovecraftian race, and wanted to use it to bring said beings back to our reality. Unfortunately, the dude was ancient, and, fearing his own death was near, rigged the castle such that any meddlesome adventurers would trigger this event, before disappearing in mysterious circumstances (more on that later).Centuries later, adventurer extraordinaire Sir Arthur Pendragon enters the castle, and sets out to uncover its secrets, find the orb, and destroy it. Gameplay is pretty standard adventure game fare, though at the time it was pretty cutting edge, with the player leading around Pendragon in a semi-3D environment, solving puzzles, finding parts of the pentagram lock to the orb's location, and dealing with traps and enemies while solving puzzles around the castle. All while on a time limit, and with limited instruction.Dave and Bob Thomas met with overwhelming support from Ultimate when they turned in Staff of Karnath, and immediately went to make the next game in the series. Released in 1985, Entombed, the second game in what was now the Pendragon series, sees our intrepid adventurer stumbling across an ancient Egyptian artifact in a pyramid... which promptly locks up and fills with nasties trying to prevent you from getting out with it. According to Dave Thomas in a 2008 interview, Entombed took the longest to create of the Pendragon titles, as he'd decided to redo the original engine to allow for a much more expansive experience.The time limit in this game is in the form of Pendragon's dwindling air supply in the tomb as he searches for a way out. He's more proactive this game, getting an Indiana Jones style whip, and other inventory items, instead of just relying on esoteric sorceries like in the previous title.Reviewers praised the better graphics, larger game, and continued interesting use of puzzles and exploration. Overall it was very well received, and the brothers went back to the shop to start working on the next entry, which perhaps has the longest lasting legacy of them all...Released later in the year, Blackwyche was a bit of a major overhaul for the series. In fact, you can almost split the Pendragon adventures in half. Karnath and Entombed are standalone stories that feature a blonde adventurer with a very similar graphics set and engine, and have a heavy focus on oldeschool solving of intricate puzzles. The later two games, Blackwyche and Dragon Skulle, have a continuing narrative across the two titles, revamp Pendragon to have black hair and a magnificent gentlemanly mustache, and focus a bit more on the swashbuckling arcadey action, though still containing plenty of puzzles to solve and areas to explore.Blackwyche focuses on the story of Pendragon exploring the titular ghost ship and trying to save the previous captain's spirit from the malevolent power of the Skull of Souls, which the crew had found on an uncharted island, according to a mysterious journal. In similar fashion to previous outings in the series, you explore the ship, fend off enemies, solve riddles, and collect parts of a macguffin, in this instance a map.Contrary to how much I'm talking it up, this entry wasn't actually rated that highly by reviewers. Most criticized it being very samey to the preceding entries, though not in a good way, saying the puzzles weren't as in depth, and not liking Pendragon's new 'stache. Unfortunately, next to other Ultimate titles releasing in this time frame like Nightshade and Knight Lore, Blackwyche just wasn't that well received...Even later in 1985, the brothers turned in the final entry in the Pendragon Adventure Series. And by that I don't mean that it was cancelled. It says it's the conclusion to the saga right there on the win screen when you beat the game. It seems they had decided four was enough. The game picks up where Blackwyche left off, with Pendragon using the mysterious map to chart a route to the uncharted Dragon Skulle Isle, where rests the evil Skull of Souls.Gameplay is much as it was before. There's a bit more of an inventory this time, starting you out with a shovel so you can dig around and increasing your collection of tools as you progress from there, fighting off giant ant people, little devils, mighty dragons, and finally the Skull itself. As before, plenty of exploration and puzzle solving abound. Unfortunately, also as before, reviewers were not kind, one even saying that perhaps it was for the best the series was over, one even going so far to call it "A disappointing conclusion to what was a very good series of games."While this was seemingly the last we were going to see the good Sir Pendragon, it's not like Ultimate, soon to be Rareware, never made reference to those games ever again. Karnath himself showed up as a giant snake thing in several of the Battletoads games, first as an environmental hazard in the appropriately titled Karnath's Lair stage in a few titles, and later as an actual boss in Super Battletoads.And even later on the Game Boy Advance, Rare put out Sabre Wulf, a new entry in the Sabreman series, not to be confused with the ZX Spectrum title of the same name from the 80s. It features tons of references to past Ultimate Play the Game releases, including multiple map locations named for the Pendragon titles, such as West Blackwyche, Karnath Jungle, The Entombed Swamp, and Dragonskulle Town. It's fun to think that Arthur and Sabreman were all traipsing around the same locations, maybe even palling around between adventures :)And that was it for several years... Fortunately, modern Rare still loves its roots. Up at the top of this article you'll see a nice portrait of the man himself. That's not fanart, it's from Sea of Thieves! The Blackwyche itself is wrecked on the beach of one of the islands in the game, and Pendragon's portrait hangs in the captain's cabin. This was a nice little easter egg for the fans, but recent events have suggested that there's more in store for the good captain...The last few monthly lore-heavy events in the game have involved the collection of various dark relics, which the skelly enemies of the Sea of Thieves then went on to use to summon a nasty skeleton captain from beyond the grave to serve as the boss for the game's new raid, the Fort of the Damned. Elsewhere however, back at the Blackwyche, a little shrine of dark relics has been set up in the captain's cabin, and the eyes of the painting have begun to glow...And lo and behold, just the other day Rare announced the next monthly update, the Seabound Soul, featuring a new story quest with the return of (the ghost of) Sir Arthur Pendragon, as he guides the players to uncover the mysteries of the feared ship, the Ashen Dragon, as well as some other mysteries!And so lives on the spirit of Ultimate, as well as the literal spirit of Sir Arthur Pendragon, forever guiding new adventurers on the thieving seas :) Special thanks to my regular cohost Milo , as well as friends of the site Jeff the Brash (of the Golden Sands Blogpost ) and Captain Breegull for their help in gathering materials and images for this article. Cheers, ~Gibbon