Dark Ages is a 1991 Platform Game by Apogee Software and Scenario Software.
You play as a prince who is the rightful heir to the kingdom, but as a child you were kidnapped by the Evil Wizard Garth and exiled into a faraway village of peasants. Garth now rules the Kingdom with an iron hand and plunged the kingdom into Darkness and terror. But Garth made a critical mistake he didn't forsee. One of the peasants who raised the Prince turned out to be one of the Kingdom's greatest heroes. He trains the prince in the ways of magic and he grows up to become a mighty warrior. It's now up to the Prince to depose the wicked Garth, take his rightful place as ruler and free the land from Garth's Dark Ages.
The game plays and controls rather simple. You can move, jump and shoot magic. The hero can use his magic to battle enemies and wicked monsters. He starts out with a simple energy bolt can gather crystals that strengthen his magic attack and collect coins and hearts which restore his health meter.
The game is notable for being the earliest use of the Ad-Lib Sound Card, which was highly advanced for 1991 and lets the game play a continuous soundtrack. The game was released in three episodes, the first one being a Shareware title.
These Dark Ages contain examples of:
- Big Bad: The Evil Wizard Garth.
- Checkpoint Starvation: Each episode is a continuous run from beginning to end. Die and you're sent back to the start.
- Collision Damage: Enemies damage you by running into you, making you lose one of your life circles.
- Continuing is Painful: You have no lives and no continues, so if you die, you have to do the entire episode from the beginning.
- Hearts Are Health: One of two ways you can heal is by finding a (realistic-looking) heart, which gives you a full complement of 8 HP.
- Law of 10/20/30: Finding enough coins (depending on difficulty level) gives you a single unit of health.
- Life Meter: A series of eight green circles next to a beating heart. The heart beats faster and faster when health gets lower.
- Numerical Hard: The harder difficulty levels require more coins to get extra health.
- Retired Badass: The village peasant that raised the Prince was once of the lands' mightiest heroes. The Prince becomes trained and mastered the magic arts under his tutelege.
- The Usurper: Garth captured the hero as a child and exiled him, and now he took over the kingdom for himself and rules with an iron fist.
