A three zine volume adventure by J.P. Coovert, Asterlan Odyssey is a love letter to those magical 8-bit video games of the 80s.  The adventure is system neutral, so whatever game system you prefer should work.  Obviously, as many video games of that era (and to this day) take a lot of inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons, any of the various D&D clones, variations, etc., should work just fine.  

Volume one is Drakon’s Curse.  This sets up the overall premise and some suggestions for how to use the adventure.  For example, when monsters are killed, they don’t die.  They disappear in a puff of smoke, back from whence they came.  NPCs might be very on-dimentional, even to the point of repeating a few simple phrases.  And of course, “death is only a mild setback.”  There’s a write-up on how to set the stage for adventure, some specific characteristics to add to your player characters, and a nice, colorful hex map.  

Volume two is The Ruinous Voyage.  This is the meat of the adventure.  As it is made to be a hex-crawl, the whole thing is sort of a “sandbox,” meaning there isn’t one specific direction or progression that the players must take in order to succeed.  Consequently, this presents the various places that appear on the hex map, and gives a gist of what’s there, so that your players can follow whatever path they will in order to find the needed objects and reach their goal.  There are a few mini-dungeons and plenty of opportunities for roleplaying and combat.  That said, I do think you’ll have to stretch your improv skills to run this, as is.  Sadly, my improv abilities are well and truly calcified, so I feel like I would need to go in and flesh out each location, perhaps make 3X5 cards for NPCs that include two or three dialog lines for them to repeat, that sort of thing.  Though it is a sandbox, PCs are limited on their ability to just speed-run to the end because, echoing the old games, they need a raft in order to cross water and something that flies in order to reach the final enemy lair.  

The final volume is A Monster Draws Near!  This is the creature book.  Each is presented with some 8-bit inspired art, a general sense of how strong/dangerous it is so that the GM can fill in whatever stats they might need for their particular rules system, and a few suggested special moves.  There are also a few short lists of items and artifacts.  

I really enjoy J.P. Coovert’s lighthearted, colorful take on classic video games.  I played a bit of the original Zelda, but I put a LOT of time into Dragon Warrior on the Nintendo, and this very much puts me in the mood for that game.  I think it would be a ton of fun to run this, and maybe expand it with some other 8-bit inspired side-quests and whatnot.  Sadly, I’m not sure how much this would excite folks who don’t have a specific nostalgia for that kind of video game.  While it might be age appropriate for a 10 or 12 year old kid, what kid of that age is thinking, “oh, cool. It’s an adventure inspired by 40 year old video games!”  Still.  I liked reading it, and I really hope I can bring it to the table at some point.  Coovert recently did an expanded version of his Dragon Town adventure (hope to have a review of that sooner than later…but we’ll see when I get to reading it).  I’d kind of like to see him do a similar expansion for this.  Though, again, I’m not sure about the audience for it.  

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