Welcome to Blast from the Past, an irregular series looking at great games from the PC gaming past. I’ll take you through how to install and play on modern systems, and tell you a little bit about why you should be interested in uncovering gems beneath of muck of ages.

Considering the hype surrounding the forthcoming release of The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Bethesda’s latest foray into the world of Tamriel, it could be instructive to take a look back at earlier games in the serious, and see just why fans are so eager for a new installment.

While 2006′s Oblivion and 2002′s Morrowind are wildly popular and critically praised examples of the Western approach to RPG-making, I want to tell you about the game that taught me that games could have an open, expansive world, where player choice was just as important as the writer’s narrative. This was a game where you were free to complete quests in any order you liked, where you could be a honest adventurer or contemptible assassin, where every choice had a consequence and ignoring the main plot was a workable option.

I’m talkin’ Daggerfall, baby.

This paragon of RPG design came out in 1996, running on MS-DOS. At the time, it was a massively ambitious project, and stunned reviewers at the time with it’s epic nature and expansive world. Despite some initial clipping issues, broken quests and towns populated with identical clones, it’s managed to retain a special place in the hearts of those of us lucky enough to play it at the time.

Now, thanks to the miracle of the Internet, you can share some of what we experienced. Come, time travel with me back to the mid-nineties, and let’s get this thing going.

How to get set up

For the purposes of this tutorial, I’m going to assume that you are running a relatively recent version of Windows. Those of you using Mac or *Nix platforms, despair not, you can find comprehensive tips on how to get the game running on your systems at the Unofficial Elder Scrolls wiki.

Bethesda, those generous and giving souls, released the game for free on their website in 2009. Download, install, job done, right?

Not quite. You see, Daggerfall is a DOS game, which depends on a certain operating system environment that new versions of Windows no longer provide. In addition, display and audio technology has moved along quite a bit in the intervening time, making running it on anything more powerful than a microwave an exercise in frustration.

It’s a good thing that clever open source developers have figured out a way around these issues. DOSBox is a useful little program that emulates a DOS environment and hardware on Windows, fooling programs running inside it into thinking the previous two decades never happened. Downloading and setting up the program can be a little involved though, so we’re going to use a pre-compiled version with the game already set up.

Just download this package, designed by hacker Ancestral Ghost, and install. It contains the full retail version of Daggerfall, patched up to the fullest extent. In addition, it includes a number of community-made improvements, that tamper with the game’s files to fix broken quests and dialogues, add new elements and skins, and so on. During install, you can choose what you’d like to include, so if you want the classic experience just turn them all off.

One thing I do suggest adding is the Eye of Argonia mod, which improves the draw distance to let you see further across towns and country, and lessens the annoying mist that obscures distant detail.

Enjoy it, mortals

Welcome to High Rock, traveller! It’s dangerous to go alone, so answer the questions to build your character with an eye on surviving in a hostile land. Satisfied? That’s good, because the first thing that happens to you is your ship sinking, followed by washing up in the dungeon of a pirate hold. No way out down here, so the only way is up.

Fight, magic or run away from the bandits and monsters, and make your way out into the world proper, and the game opens up in front of you like a man plummeting speedily to earth. From here, you can choose your own path.

Fancy following the main quest, working for nobles and guilds and trying to rid the land of an implacable evil? How about working towards one of six different possible endings? Then just follow the note in your inventory.

Sound boring? Okay, well how about exploring a map that according to one of the game’s programmers is about 10,000 times the size of Morrowind’s, and filled with three quarters of a million NPCs to help, hinder or viciously murder for their stuff.

Or you could go explore ancient tombs and dark fortresses, stab some monsters and run off with your pockets overflowing with ill-gotten gains.

It’s up to you, hero.