Broken Sword

Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is a point-and-click graphic adventure game developed by Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive, released in 1996. Released as Circle of Blood in North America, the game follows George Stobbart, an American patent lawyer on holiday in Paris whose café visit is interrupted by a bomb planted by a man dressed as a clown. Witnessing the explosion, George teams up with Nicole "Nico" Collard, a French photo-journalist, to uncover a conspiracy involving the Knights Templar. The duo travels across Paris, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, and Syria, solving puzzles and unraveling historical secrets. The game features hand-drawn 2D animation, a fully voiced cast led by Rolf Saxon, and an orchestral score by Barrington Pheloung.

DOS

Released in North America on September 30, 1996 and in Europe on October 14, 1996 for MS-DOS, the game runs on the Virtual Theatre engine. Minimum requirements include a 486DX2 66 MHz CPU, 8 MB of RAM, 18 MB of hard drive space, and an SVGA graphics card with 1 MB of VRAM. A Pentium 60 MHz with 16 MB of RAM is recommended. The game operates under DOS 5.0 or higher and requires a 2x CD-ROM drive. The soundtrack is stored in CD-DA Red Book format, requiring the disc in the drive. The DOS version ships on two CD-ROMs. Broken Sword was a critical and commercial success, selling approximately one million copies. A sequel, Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror, followed in 1997. The game is widely considered a classic of the adventure genre.