We Played the Unreleased Game "Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen" for Sega Dreamcast

What could've been. Cover created by Dreamcast Me That.

Developed by Arxel Tribe in the late 90s, Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen is a point-and-click adventure game that would be released for the PC in 1998. It turns out that the game was supposed to be ported to the Dreamcast a few years later, but ultimately ended up on the mammoth pile of unreleased titles which never saw the light of day on Sega’s console. And no, we’re not talking about The Ring: Terror's Realm, which unfortunately for us, did sneak its way into the console’s release library.

However, thanks to the ongoing preservation efforts of Comby Laurent from Sega Dreamcast Info, this previously unreleased title is now available to download and play via emulation or, even better, on a real Dreamcast with a real controller in your sweaty hands.

But before we get into how this title should’ve ended up on the Dreamcast sometime in the year 2000, let’s talk a little about the game itself.

I asked this chap what he thought about the Dreamcast.

Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen is loosely based on Der Ring des Nibelungen; four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. Yes, that’s right, a game based on an opera. I’ve officially heard it all. Indeed, the game itself features music from various performances of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the legendary Georg Solti himself.

I had to Google Georg Solti as well, don’t worry. You’ll find out he’s a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor who’s won countless awards including a British CBE, a knighthood and a whopping 31 Grammy Awards. Bet you didn’t think you’d learn that on a Dreamcast blog, did you?

Even if you’re not an opera fan, you will absolutely know the Ride of the Valkyries score which was featured in Der Ring des Nibelungen. In fact, I’ll give you a moment to go and search for it on YouTube so you can have it playing in the background as you read the rest of this article; it’ll add to the overall experience.

Anyway, back to Der Ring des Nibelungen. The scale and scope of the story told in these works is so epic that I simply don’t have enough time to cover it all here. It follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over the eponymous magic ring that grants domination over the entire world. In the game, there are four characters which you assume control of. Alberich (a cruel and sadistic dwarf king), Loge (a fire spirit), Siegmund (the son of the god Wotan), and Brünnhilde (a Valkyrie warrior).

Some of the areas in the game are beautifully atmospheric.

There are loads of additional characters and even a family tree to help you make sense of it all. In fact, the story and puzzles in Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen are so complex that the PC release actually included an entire walkthrough in its own instruction manual! Arxel Tribe clearly had little faith that their playerbase would get their head around it all, either.

Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen released on PC in 1998. Whilst it did enjoy significant commercial success -shifting an impressive 600,000 lifetime copies according to Arxel Tribe’s Guillaume de Fondaumière- the reviews were not so favourable. IGN described it as a “complete travesty when it comes to gameplay” on the way to awarding it a 2.7/10 score, whilst GameStop said it was “so utterly uninviting” in their 3.7/10 appraisal.

Magic frogs. For the diving helmet. Obviously.

News of a Dreamcast port in the UK media at the time was sparse, despite the fact that from what we can see now, most of the game was finished and not far away from being ready to rock. Whilst flicking through some issues of the UK’s Dreamcast Magazine, I did find a small news bite in issue four which read:

“News has broken on a forthcoming Dreamcast game from Success. The game is to be a port of the hit PC game Ring: The Legend of Nibelung, which is currently in the midst of conversion and should be with us sometime during 2000.”

No accompanying screenshot or half-page spread. It’s fair to say that this port was somewhat under the radar and so it’s unsurprising that many Dreamcast fans hadn’t heard of its existence before. IGN also reported that “the makers of Rainbow Cotton for the Dreamcast will be bringing The Ring of the Nibelungen to Japanese DC gamers. Currently, this game is listed on the Success web page as being set for release on the PC in Japan on October 29th of this year.” But again, no screenshots or noteworthy details.

The Dreamcast version of Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen was seemingly lost forever at some point after this. Well, I say lost forever but what I actually mean is lost until the efforts of Laurent and his team managed to preserve the title for us all to enjoy.

A prototype version of Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen was actually discovered and dumped a few years ago, but it was only a partial dump. Some of the three discs were missing meaning that the game could not be played in any logical order. But all was not lost. In a recent post, Laurent has managed to obtain dumps of all three discs and additionally some VMU save files which allow for each of the games’ chapters to be loaded and played.

Believe it or not, this isn't a Metroid Prime 4 screenshot.

So with all three discs now dumped, Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen can now be played in its entirety, right? Well, sort of. Whilst each disc is now available, given the unfinished state of the game things are a little clunky. As an example, the opening prologue of the game takes place on disc one. It isn’t particularly long (or eventful) and at some point you will reach a Wheel of Fortune-style plate which is essentially where you pick the chapter you want to have a crack at. Selecting the first option available prompts you to switch to disc two. You can’t just switch to disc two, however. First you have to load up the relevant save file for that chapter (all of which are provided to download on the Sega Dreamcast Info website), reset your console, and load into disc two. If everything works (and it might take a few tries), the game will start right as you enter the chapter.

It’s very fiddly to get everything working and it does take some perseverance if you want to experience the game in its logical order, but it can be done. As an aside, the prototype also has a strange bug which means it will not recognise your controller inputs unless it is unplugged whilst the game is loading and plugged back in just before you hit the main menu. It is pretty annoying, to be honest, and I found myself having to reload multiple times to get things right...

But I did get it right, and so I managed to play through the opening prologue and the first chapter of the game. And despite all of the odds, I had a good time! You can actually watch a video of everything I played below, or over on the Junkyard’s YouTube channel.

For those of you who’d prefer to read about what I accomplished with my time in Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen, here’s what I got up to. Things get ridiculous and often make no sense, but with a little trial and error, you can usually work out what you’re supposed to do. I’m starting to understand why a full walkthrough guide was included in the manual!

Many of the puzzles will require a lot of trial and error.

After walking around and getting your bearings in the prologue area, the game really begins when you load chapter one. The first adventure starts with you assuming control of Alberich, and you learn that the character was once king of this area and has awoken from a significant slumber. You start by finding a Dwarf who gives you a magic frog and some weird creature. Punch the Dwarf in the face and he’ll also give you a glass plate (which you’ll need for a puzzle a little later on). Next you need to hop onto your motorbike (which is on a train track) and insert the creature gifted to you by the Dwarf into the engine compartment. If you feed him some minerals from your inventory, he’ll be able to power the bike so you can progress to the next area.

I’m not making this up. It really is this insane.

From here you enter an area with multiple train tracks where you must navigate to press various buttons and end up in a control room with a computer. Here you’ve got to use the glass plate you roughed up the Dwarf for to complete a puzzle, but the machine doesn’t work and so you’re left wondering what you did wrong. So you resort to brute force again and give the computer a whack with your fist. This kicks things into life and once again, you can progress. One part that did particularly amuse me was Alberich humming the Ride of the Valkyries tune as he works feverishly on the computer terminal.

Feed this guy some minerals and he'll power your motorbike. Yeah.

I won’t go on but this is what gameplay in Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen is like. It is your standard point-and-click affair as you scramble around searching areas for new times and things you can click on. The cursor icon does slightly change when it is something you can interact with, but this isn’t always the case. Some things make sense, but many things absolutely don’t, so you’ll find a lot of the time you’re clicking around aimlessly trying to establish what the game wants you to do.

The story, however, is fascinating and it is played out in glorious late 90s/early 00s CGI. Accompanied by some great (read: awful) voice acting, and -obviously- a fantastic soundtrack, it is quite easy to get sucked into the storytelling world of Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen. 

And now you can, too.

As we always say on the Junkyard, any opportunity to play an unreleased game for our beloved console is a great thing, regardless of the quality of the game. Whilst I certainly wouldn’t be recommending Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen as a must-play title for the Dreamcast, it is always lovely to play something like this on real hardware. It’s certainly a game that I plan on revisiting on a rainy weekend, with a nice cup of tea, to lose myself in a world where you can just chill out, take your time, and work through the story.

You can find everything you need to download and play Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen on the Sega Dreamcast Info website here. It includes all three GDIs and the VMU files you’ll need to access each chapter of the campaign.

One of the easier puzzles requires you to spin the top and bottom sections to match.

The prototype game menu is very bare bones and there is no title screen at all.

PRESS ALL THE THINGS.

I had to put a frog in this hole. I can't remember how I figured that out.