The Phantasie Project

Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus SSI, 1987 Amiga

Inside Phantasie III

Phantasie III came out in 1987, and for me it became the game. I loved the combat, the party built one hero at a time, and a world held together by rules I could almost see. Underneath it is an engine that was inventive for its day, and I have long wanted to know whether it could be used to tell new stories. That is the aim, and it has not been done yet. To get there I have been reading the original Amiga program piece by piece, and along the way I have learned a great deal about how it really works. This site is about what I have learned.

What we found The story
The town screen of Pendragon by day, with a painted street of timber houses, a stone gate tower and hanging shop signs under a blue sky, with a banner reading Pendragon and the menu bar File, Guild, Options along the top.

Pendragon, the first town, as the 1987 game draws it

What we have learned

What we found

[DRAFT] Each finding is told the same way, with what a player would have seen, what we noticed, how we tracked it down, and what it turned out to be. Here are two of them.

Bug

The Wolf you will never meet

The game's monster list includes a Wolf, but nobody playing on the Amiga ever met one. When the dice chose a Wolf, the game sent Small Dragons instead.

The reason turned out to be one number missing from the Wolf's record. Which number it was, we only learned when a fan on the English Amiga Board mentioned meeting Wolves in the Commodore 64 version.

Read the Wolf's story

As the 1987 game shipped

Five grey winged Small Dragons above a box that reads: Monster Identification: Rank 1: 5 Small Dragon(s).

Where the Wolves should be, the game sends Small Dragons, and names them.

With the missing number put back

Five brown Wolves above a box that reads: Monster Identification: Rank 1: 5 Wolf(s).

The same fight with the Wolf mended. Five Wolves come, drawn with the Wild Dog's picture.

The game's own Monster Names box (key M in a fight), in a crop of the battle screen. Both fights were set up with our recreation's test controls.

Curiosity

Why Nikademus would never suspect you

When Filmon first meets the party, he says he chose them because Nikademus would never suspect them. Many players took it as an insult.

It is the line for a party new to the series. Filmon's speech looks in every hero's record for deeds from Phantasie I and II, and a party that carries them hears something else.

Read Filmon's story
A parchment-coloured window. It reads: Filmon the wise old sage speaks, "Greetings ye intrepid adventurers, prepare yourselves for the greatest challenge of all, to defeat Nikademus. I choose you because Nikademus would never suspect you." At the bottom: Press a key.

Filmon's greeting, as the 1987 game shows it

Part way through his speech to a party of heroes made in Phantasie III.

All the findings written up so far

The method

How it was done

We take the game's original 1987 code and run it, unchanged, on a modern computer, a small piece at a time, and watch what it does. Something counts as found only when it has been read in the code and then seen to happen. Where it helps, the game is started from its own disk in an Amiga emulator and watched on screen. Every finding says how far its proof goes.

  • Seen in the 1987 game

    The original game, started from its own disk in an Amiga emulator, showed it on screen.

  • Tested by running the original code

    The original code was run and we watched what it did.

  • Read in the code

    Read in the program but not yet run. Always marked.

The story behind it

What would you do with it?

All of this is on the way to one thing, new stories told on an engine from the 1980s, with new places and new quests and the same rules underneath. I would like to know what you would make with it, or what you remember from playing it.

A way to get in touch is coming.