Silver

Genre: Role Playing

Release Year: 1999

Developer: Spiral House Ltd

Publisher: Infogrames

Age Rating: 12+

Playability Status: Perfect

Tested On: Windows 8 x64

Availability: Copyright retained - Out of print/unavailable

Don’t want the hassle?

Get this game pre-fixed, DRM free and ready to play from GoG.com. Fully working or your money back.

Emperor Silver demands a new wife! Being a busy sort of chap, he decides that the most efficient way of doing this is to kidnap every woman in the kingdom and then arrange some sort of marathon speed-dating session where he meets each and every one of them. While sending out his soldiers to complete this task, he understandably annoys a few of the locals and as one such perturbed citizen, you’ll start off on your epic quest to rescue the womenfolk and defeat the evil emperor. Silver was a critically acclaimed role playing game when it was released back in 1999. While it was overshadowed some by other big-name RPG releases of the time, such as Diablo 2 and Final Fantasy 8, the game enjoyed moderate commercial success and is fondly remembered by many PC and Dreamcast gamers.

Installation

The game should install on modern PCs without any major difficulties. At the end of the installation process, the installer will offer to install “DirectX Media”. You should decline this option since the version of DirectX on the CD is very much out of date.

Remember that Silver places its save game files into the same directory it is installed to, so you might want to install to an alternative path, such as C:\Games\Silver. See the troubleshooting section for more information.

Patching

Our initial attempts at getting Silver to run on our Windows 8 PC were met with disappointment. This of course led us to search for patches. There are an awful lot of patches for this game floating around the internet, from what look like official fixes to specific fixes for bugs you may encounter while playing the game. Our search took us to some of the more shady parts of the internet and its here we found a download of the game that worked absolutely perfectly on Windows 8. Inspecting the files in this download it is highly probable that this version was the one once sold by those lovely folks over at GoG.com.

We initially created a patch based on the files in this download, but since Silver is now available again at Gog.com, we’ve removed our patch. If you need a version of this game that works on modern PCs, please buy one from GoG.com.

Other fixes

We found a few other fixes lurking around the net and after virus checking them we decided to put them up here too. These fixes are for specific points in the game where you may encounter difficulties. We haven’t played the game far enough to know if they are necessary or not. Below are the files with the descriptions they came with. If the links are broken for any of these patches, let me know here.

Mansion fix – When you’ve defeated the last boss (I won’t say who) your character will remain still while the whole mansion is collapsing. This fix will allow your character to move out of the mansion before it collapses. Unzip the files then copy them into your Silver game folder under data\levels\Outro\ and overwrite all files when prompted.

Sewer fix – You will come across a room with a wooden gate and a bell right above it. For some people, the gate will not open when they shoot at the bell. This fix will solve that and allow you to open the gate by shooting the bell with any projectile weapon or magic. Unzip the files then copy them into your Silver game folder under data\levels\rain\Ray_sec\ and overwrite all files when prompted.

Final thoughts

Unusually for a PC game, there aren’t any other visual quality options to tweak, so you can simply start playing now. Unlike the Dreamcast version, Silver on the PC supports mouse and keyboard only. Combat initially feels a little clumsy compared to the Dreamcast version but we soon got used to it.

Troubleshooting

Problems saving games and configurations – Like many old titles, Silver saves its game data into the same folder as the game itself. In some instances on more modern versions of Windows, this will mean that save games cannot be written. To solve this problem you can either run the game as administrator (right click on the games icon and choose “Run as administrator”) or, better still, set the permissions on your game folder so that your user account has full control/read write permissions. You can find a tutorial on how to configure folder permissions here. The games default installation directory is “C:\Program Files (x86)\Infogrames\Silver”. The actual save game files are stored in the “SAVEGAME” sub directory. Remember the game doesn’t save your progress automatically, you must find a save point in order to save.

Screenshots

Click on any screenshot to enlarge it.

Those red things look unfriendly!

Managing your inventory, a full-time job for an adventurer.

Seeing stars