If you’re thinking of backing The Bard’s Tale IV, but you haven’t played the dungeon crawling romps, or you’ve maybe just lost your very old copies, then here’s a spot of good news: Kickstarter backers will receive the original trilogy for free if they pledge $20 or more. So you’ll end up with four adventures in, under and around Skara Brae.
It’s a bit of a surprise to see the first three games being turned into a backer reward, since EA currently owns the rights to them, and gosh does EA like holding on to them. Apparently, however, EA had no objections to inXile giving them away to backers.
“It’s pretty amazing to see how far the graphics have come since these first games and it’s fun to think that people will still be playing these classics decades after release. These games made my career so it’s only fitting that we are doing another game.” said Brian Fargo. “Of course playing them will not be necessary to understand the new title, but we wanted to give our backers the opportunity to and are always happy to give our supporters some free extra value!”
On top of the first three games, updated versions of them all are in the works. At first, backers will get emulated versions, but The Bards Tale III programmer, Rebecca Heineman, is working on updated versions based on the Apple IIGS edition of the games.
The Bard’s Tale IV has just under a month left to get funded, and it’s already 93 percent funded.