The Game That Started It All
Arena actually began life as a gladiatorial fighting game - the player was meant to be part of a group of fighters who would travel from arena to arena defeating opponents until they eventually became the champion of the Imperial City, with a few roleplaying sidequests scattered in between. However as development went on the tournaments became gradually less important, and the roleplaying parts more so, until eventually Arena became a fully-fledged RPG. However (super-interesting fact moment:) they had a problem with the name; developers Bethesda had already had all the game materials printed with the 'Arena' title on them, but the arena combat had been dropped completely. That's when developer Vijay Lakshman came up with the idea of naming the game 'The Elder Scrolls: Arena', despite not having a clue what 'The Elder Scrolls' were, and retconned that 'The Arena' was a nickname for Tamriel, the continent that it's based in. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why Elder Scrolls play such a tiny role in the Elder Scrolls games, and why you will never hear Tamriel referred to as 'The Arena' outside of it's first installment.
The First Dungeon
Arena's first dungeon is an absolute nightmare. Given the game's downright weird controls (right-click and swipe to attack) you'll die at least once before you've even figured out how to use your sword. As if that wasn't enough you've got goblins to compete with (often placed badly and hard to attack), and the rats in this dungeon are some kind of freaks that despite looking normal are incredibly strong and you've got to be pretty quick because given your lack of heals, a few run-ins with rats mixed with slow reactions will result in this:
...Arena's death screen, which you will be seeing a lot of (I once heard that it took Morrowind's lead level designer twenty attempts to escape Arena's first dungeon). However, eventually you will be greeted with the beautiful sight of the Shift Gate, and probably do a little happy dance, because congratulations, you've found the exit! The game will then ask you to enter the value of a random spell, found in the ReadMe file (that's 21-year-old piracy protection for you), and then you're free to explore Tamriel. Fortunately it gets a bit easier after that. There's just a small matter of battling across the continent to collect the pieces of the powerful Staff of Chaos in order to defeat the Imperial Battle Mage and rescue the Emperor that he's kidnapped. No biggie.
Why It's Awesome
Despite not getting the greatest reception, Arena rightly became a cult hit and spawned the rest of The Elder Scrolls series, one of the best and most successful series out there. Not just that, but Arena raised the bar for RPGs in general and became the standard for what could be made. If you've played an RPG made in the last 21 years then it's pretty much guaranteed that it's been influenced, even indirectly, by The Elder Scrolls. And if that wasn't already a good enough reason to play it (assuming that you haven't already), you can get it for nothing!
The Elder Scrolls: Arena is free (yes, FREE!) to download from the official Elder Scrolls website.
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