Phantasie was written back around 1985. It was a great game where you could create teams of up to six characters. It was similar to early D&D type games and Ultima. It was put out by strategic simulations. The characters you created had different features or abilities. As you went around the screen killing things your characters gradually became more powerful and moved up levels. It was common for some of your men to get killed during a battle, especially when you were first building them up so you had to save your game often, then reload it.
The original game was only in CGA (Colour graphic array) which meant it displayed on the screen in four different colours, being white, black, magenta and cyan. Back then, this was quite acceptable and was far better than one single colour. The version that was developed after Phantasie I on the PC was Phantasie III. To my knowledge there was never a Phantasie II on the PC which was disappointing as a kid way back then.
Phantasie III was even better than I because it HAD SOME NEW FEATURES and the game wasn't as slow. The really exciting part was entering caves or dungeons and trying to find your way out again. Dungeons were challenging because once in there you couldn't get out
easily without having many battles. This was unlike being on the main playfield where you could go back to town, rest in an Inn or tavern or some place similar, build up all your hit points again then go adventuring. Yes, it was certainly challenging inside those caves.
In these games you met all sorts of creatures. Sometimes you battled against one thing, sometimes it was two three or up to about eight unusual creatures. Phantasie I was so good that I actually think I went out and bought Phantasie III which was something no one did back in 1986, 87 - 90. Back then everyone was using copyright, copywrite or copyIIpc to copy games. But since I enjoyed phantasie so much I just had to get phantasie III.
Me and my girlfriend used to play it for many hours on end. She would map out the dungeons for me as I explored them. We eventually got married and now we're still married about 15 years later.
These days I love Real Time Strategy games like Age of Empires. But Phantasie is my all time favourite game. It really got me hooked into computer games.
