Forgotten Realms is a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game. Commonly referred to by players and game designers as "The Realms", it was created by game designer Ed Greenwood around 1967 as a setting for his childhood stories. Several years later, it was published for the D&D game as a series of magazine articles, and the first Realms game products were released in 1987. Role-playing game products have been produced for the setting ever since, in addition to novels, role-playing video game adaptations, comic books, and the film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
Baldur's Gate is a series of role-playing video games set in the Forgotten Realms Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting. The series has been divided into two sub-series, known as the Bhaalspawn Saga and the Dark Alliance, both taking place mostly within the Western Heartlands, but the Bhaalspawn Saga extends to Amn and Tethyr. The Dark Alliance series was released for consoles and was critically and commercially successful. The Bhaalspawn Saga was critically acclaimed for using pausable realtime gameplay, which is credited with revitalizing the computer role-playing game (CRPG) genre.
Eye of the Beholder is a role-playing video game for personal computers and video game consoles developed by Westwood Associates. It was published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. in 1991, for the MS-DOS operating system and later ported to the Amiga, the Sega CD and the SNES. The Sega CD version features a soundtrack composed by Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima. A port to the Atari Lynx handheld was developed by NuFX in 1993, but was not released. In 2002, an adaptation of the same name was developed by Pronto Games for the Game Boy Advance.
Interplay Entertainment Corp. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Los Angeles. The company was founded in 1983 as Interplay Productions by developers Brian Fargo, Jay Patel, Troy Worrell, and Rebecca Heineman, as well as investor Chris Wells. As a developer, Interplay is best known as the creator of the Fallout series and as a publisher for the Baldur's Gate and Descent series.
Icewind Dale is a role-playing video game developed by Black Isle Studios and originally published by Interplay Entertainment for Windows in 2000 and by MacPlay for the Macintosh in 2002. The game takes place in the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms campaign setting and the region of Icewind Dale, and uses the 2nd edition ruleset. The story follows a different set of events than those of R. A. Salvatore's The Icewind Dale Trilogy novels: in the game, an adventuring party becomes enlisted as a caravan guard while in Icewind Dale, in the wake of strange events, and eventually discover a plot that threatens the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale and beyond.
Gold Box is a series of role-playing video games produced by Strategic Simulations from 1988 to 1992. The company acquired a license to produce games based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game from TSR, Inc. These games shared a common game engine that came to be known as the "Gold Box Engine" after the gold-colored boxes in which most games of the series were sold.
Black Isle Studios is a division of the developer and publisher Interplay Entertainment formed in 1996 that develops role-playing video games. It has published several games from other developers.
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II is a 2004 hack and slash action role-playing game for PlayStation 2 and Xbox developed by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay Entertainment, with distribution handled by Vivendi Universal Games in North America and Avalon Interactive/Acclaim Entertainment in Europe. It is the sequel to the 2001 game Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance.
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn is a role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by Interplay Entertainment. It is the sequel to 1998's Baldur's Gate and was released for Windows in September 2000. Following its predecessor, the game takes place in the Forgotten Realms, a fantasy campaign setting, and is based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition rules. Powered by BioWare's Infinity Engine, Baldur's Gate II uses an isometric perspective and pausable real-time gameplay. The player controls a party of up to six characters, one of whom is the player-created protagonist; the others are certain characters recruited from the game world.
Redneck Rampage is a 1997 first-person shooter game developed by Xatrix Entertainment and published by Interplay. The game has a hillbilly theme, primarily taking place in a fictional Arkansas town. Many of the weapons and power-ups border on the nonsensical, and in some ways the game is a parody of both first-person shooter games and rural American life. It features music by psychobilly and cowpunk artists such as The Beat Farmers and Mojo Nixon.
Treasures of the Savage Frontier (1992) is a Gold Box Dungeons & Dragons role-playing video game. It was developed by Beyond Software and published by SSI for the Amiga and DOS.
Icewind Dale is a role-playing video game series developed by Black Isle Studios. It is set in the Forgotten Realms Icewind Dale region, but takes place decades before the events described in R. A. Salvatore's books which made the area a part of Faerûn.
Baldur's Gate is a role-playing video game that was developed by BioWare and published in 1998 by Interplay Entertainment. It is the first game in the Baldur's Gate series and takes place in the Forgotten Realms, a high fantasy campaign setting, using a modified version of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) 2nd edition rules. It was the first game to use the Infinity Engine for its graphics, with Interplay using the engine for other Forgotten Realms-licensed games, including the Icewind Dale series and Planescape: Torment. The game's story focuses on a player-made character who travels across the Sword Coast alongside a party of companions.
Descent to Undermountain is a role-playing video game developed and published by Interplay in 1998. Based on the Dungeons & Dragons setting of Undermountain in the Forgotten Realms, it casts the player as an adventurer out to explore the treasure-filled recesses of the Undermountain dungeon. The "Descent" part of the name refers to the game's use of the 3D rendering engine from the 1995 game Descent.
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is a 2001 action role-playing video game developed by Snowblind Studios and published by Interplay Entertainment subsidiary Black Isle Studios for the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox consoles, with High Voltage Software handling the GameCube port, and Magic Pockets developing the Game Boy Advance version. CD Projekt was developing a version for Microsoft Windows, but was ultimately cancelled. In 2021, a 4K port of the game was released for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and PC.
Snowblind Studios was an American video game developer located in Kirkland, Washington. They were founded in 1997, specializing in role-playing video games.
Larian Studios is a Belgian independent video game developer and publisher founded in 1996 by Swen Vincke. Headquartered in Ghent, Belgium, Larian focuses on developing role-playing video games but has previously worked on educational games and casino games. It is best known for developing the Divinity series and Baldur's Gate 3.
Graphsim Entertainment was founded in 1991 as Graphic Simulations Corp. to develop and publish simulation games. Graphsim's first product was Hellcats Over the Pacific for the Macintosh. It was released in 1991 and developed by Parsoft Interactive.
Baldur's Gate 3 is a 2023 role-playing video game developed and published by Larian Studios. It is the third main installment to the Baldur's Gate series, based on the tabletop fantasy role-playing system of Dungeons & Dragons. A partial version of the game was released in early access format for macOS and Windows in October 2020. It remained in early access until its full release for Windows in August 2023, with versions for PlayStation 5, macOS, and Xbox Series X/S releasing later that year.
