Tales of the Unknown: Volume I, better known by its subtitle The Bard’s Tale, is a fantasy role-playing video game designed and programmed by Michael Cranford, produced by Interplay Productions in 1985 and distributed by Electronic Arts. It spawned “The Bard’s Tale” series of games and books.
The Bard’s Tale was noteworthy among other role-playing computer games for its unprecedented 3D graphics and partly animated character portraits. The concept of the Bard was also an innovation: “The Bard was author Michael Cranford’s contribution to the genre, a character who casts spells by singing one of six tunes.”
It was originally released for the Apple II, and was also ported to the Commodore 64, Apple IIgs, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Macintosh, and NES platforms.