What do Elton John, Aretha Franklin and The Elder Scrolls all have in common? If you said poor draw distance, you're wrong and very rude. The correct answer is a birthday in March.
The Elder Scrolls was 20 this year, and Bethesda celebrated with an expensive box set and a sweet blog post from Todd Howard. But a subsection of the series' community have begun politely nudging the developers to do a little more: namely, release the first four games of the series for free. And if they can stretch to it, their source codes too.
Petitioneer Christopher Youde is after 1994's The Elder Scrolls: Arena and its follow-up, Daggerfall - the games that shaped the mould Bethesda have been perfecting ever since.
He's also singled out An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire and An Elder Scrolls Adventure: Redguard - two '90s curios developed in-house at Bethesda but now lost without recourse to DOS emulators.
Youde would like to see all four games available on Steam - Arena and Daggerfall are already available on the official Elder Scrolls site - and love to see their source codes released to the dedicated Skyrim modding community.
"It's a little more unlikely than them just releasing all the Pre-2000 Games for free," he told PCGamesN. "But not impossible."
Who knows what's become of the PCs once used to develop Redguard and Battlespire - but I distinctly remember picking Arena off the front of a retro games mag a decade ago, so Bethesda certainly aren't averse to the occasional good-natured giveaway.
Will you sign Youde's scroll?
