Created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Gold Box series of PC games represents a whole bunch of classic Dungeons & Dragons based RPGs. So if you're in the mood for some heavy nostalgia, or simply curious about the early days of D&D RPGs, you'll be happy to hear that the Gold Box games have now landed onto Steam.
However, instead of everything being a part of a single collection, the Gold Box games have been separated by series and are now a part of eight separate 'collections'. Since trying to track them all down is a bit of a nightmare, allow me to give you a hand by listing all of the bundles and what they contain:
• Forgotten Realms: The Archives Collection One (Eye of the Beholder I, II, and III)
• Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection Two (Curse of the Azure Bonds, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, Hillsfar, Pools of Darkness, Pool of Radiance, Secret of the Silver Blades, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, and Unlimited Adventures)
• Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection Three (Dungeon Hack, Menzoberranzan)
• Krynn series (Champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn, The Dark Queen of Krynn)
• Dark Sun series (Shattered Lands, Wake of the Ravager)
• Ravenloft series (Strahd's Possession, Stone Prophet)
• D&D Stronghold: Kingdom Simulator
• Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse
In terms of improvements, the biggest one is that the games come with a special Gold Box launcher that not only makes it easier to manage all of the different games, but also lets you simply transfer your parties between them. You can also expect to see enhanced DOSBox support to make everything run properly on modern hardware, as well as companion apps for most of the games in order to help you out with things like dungeon mapping and spellcasting.
Despite not being listed on Steam, it does also look like the games come with the original manual. This might not sound like a big deal, but some of these games are so arcane in their design that you simply won't have a chance of getting anywhere without the manual by your side, so having it included is definitely welcome.
That's pretty much everything you need to know, so whatever collection you end up going with, I hope you have fun with it!
