Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern

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Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern
Dragon Riders - Chronicles of Pern Coverart.jpg
Developer(s) Ubi Studios UK
Publisher(s) Ubi Soft
Designer(s) Oliver Sykes
Series Dragonriders of Pern
Platform(s) Dreamcast, Windows
ReleaseDreamcast
  • NA: August 8, 2001
  • PAL: February 8, 2002
PC
  • NA: August 12, 2001
Genre(s) Adventure
Mode(s) Single-player

Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern is an adventure game published by Ubi Soft in 2001.

Contents

The game takes place on the fictional planet Pern created by science fiction writer Anne McCaffrey for her Dragonriders of Pern series of novels. The story, divided into four chapters, follows the dragonrider D'kor who, with the help of his dragon Zenth, searches for girls to be candidates for Impressing a new young gold dragon. Various side-plots are developed throughout the game including a bit of intrigue involving an epidemic sickness that is somewhat reminiscent of the storyline in McCaffrey's novel Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern . The game contains over 120 locations on three continents. The player interacts and speaks with over 170 characters.

Critical reception

The game received "generally unfavorable reviews" on both platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. [1] [2] The initial version also caused performance problems for users with Pentium 4 processors until a patch was released. [11]

Several sites reviewed the PC version more positively, particularly praising the story. Games Domain called it "an absolute must for fans of the series – it's as engrossing and complex as the best of Anne McCaffrey's novels, and as a stand-alone story, it's fun and well worth it". [12] Quandary said: "It's an absorbing adventure-cum-interactive story with a lot of people to converse with, a lot of good deeds to do, and an arch baddie to expose". [13] The Dreamcast version was better received than the PC version, with GameSpot saying: "Dragonriders is hardly a terrible game, but it has its share of issues and won't appeal to a large group of gamers". [4]

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Dragonriders of Pern is a science fantasy series written primarily by American-Irish author Anne McCaffrey, who initiated it in 1967. Beginning in 2003, her middle child Todd McCaffrey has written Pern novels, both solo and jointly with Anne. The series comprises 24 novels and two collections of short stories. The two novellas included in the first novel, Dragonflight, made McCaffrey the first woman to win a Hugo Award for writing fiction as well as the first to win a Nebula Award.

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References

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  2. 1 2 "Dragonriders: Chronicles of Pern for PC Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved August 31, 2016.
  3. Todd, Brett (October 29, 2001). "DragonRiders: Chronicles of Pern". Computer Games Magazine . theGlobe.com. Archived from the original on August 12, 2004. Retrieved November 20, 2014.
  4. 1 2 Shoemaker, Brad (September 4, 2001). "Dragonriders: Chronicles of Pern Review (DC)". GameSpot . CBS Interactive . Retrieved August 31, 2016.
  5. Dulin, Ron (September 5, 2001). "Dragonriders: Chronicles of Pern Review (PC)". GameSpot. CBS Interactive. Retrieved August 31, 2016.
  6. Bub, Andrew S. (October 2, 2001). "Dragonriders: Chronicles of Pern (PC)". GameSpy . IGN Entertainment. Archived from the original on October 3, 2001. Retrieved November 30, 2018.
  7. Chau, Anthony (September 4, 2001). "Dragon Riders - Chronicles of Pern (DC)". IGN . Ziff Davis . Retrieved November 30, 2018.
  8. Sulic, Ivan (October 1, 2001). "Dragon Riders - Chronicles of Pern (PC)". IGN. Ziff Davis. Retrieved August 31, 2016.
  9. Preston, Jim (December 2001). "Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern". PC Gamer . Vol. 8, no. 12. Future US. Archived from the original on March 15, 2006. Retrieved November 30, 2018.
  10. "PC Review: Dragonriders: Chronicles of Pern". PC Zone . Future plc. 2001.
  11. IGN staff (September 14, 2001). "Dragonriders Gets a Little Padding". IGN. Ziff Davis. Retrieved August 31, 2016.
  12. Hildrew, Steve (August 2001). "DragonRiders: Chronicles of Pern (PC)". Games Domain . Yahoo!. Archived from the original on January 10, 2004. Retrieved November 20, 2014.
  13. Young, Rosemary (September 2001). "DragonRiders: Chronicles of Pern (PC)". Quandary. Archived from the original on June 22, 2008. Retrieved November 20, 2014.