The Elder Scrolls: Arena

The Elder Scrolls: Arena is a 1994 action role-playing game developed and published by Bethesda Softworks. The first game in the Elder Scrolls series, it was released for MS-DOS on March 25, 1994. The game follows the player trying to uncover a conspiracy against Emperor Uriel Septim VII. Arena takes place on the entire continent of Tamriel, complete with wilderness, towns and dungeons which are procedurally generated. The game features a day/night cycle and includes a spell creation system that allows players to mix various spell effects. Development for Arena was initially planned to have the player travel in towns across Tamriel, fighting other teams in their arenas until the player became "grand champion". As development on the game progressed, side quests took more importance, and the tournament aspect of the game took a back seat. Role-playing elements were added to the game, and the game expanded to include towns outside the arenas and dungeons beyond the cities. Arena spawned later sequels that together have gone on to become one of the best-selling Western RPG series of all time. The game received praise from critics and won several awards such as Computer Gaming World's 1994 "Role-Playing Game of the Year". It set a new standard for its type of CRPG and demonstrated just how much room was left for innovation. Although not as popular as the later Elder Scrolls games, Arena generated a cult following and sold 120,000 units. The game was followed by Daggerfall in 1996. In 2004, a downloadable version of the game was made available free of charge as part of the tenth anniversary of the series.