Dungeons & Dragons Gold Box Series

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The first licensed D&D video games that actually emulated the game (AD&D 1e at least) fairly accurately. The engine would later go on to be used for five distinct game lines. Licensed out by TSR and programmed by both Stormfront Studios (no, not that Stormfront) and Strategic Simulations Inc., these are about as accurate a D&D video game can get to a game going purely by RAW as one can find.

Pool of Radiance

The original Gold Box games begin with the player rolling up a party of level 1 characters using AD&D rules with a number of caveats, namely Half-Orcs and a number of classes are missing. Still, it's fairly accurate right down to just flat out replacing your stats with ones you want. The very first game also had you make character portraits by matching a series of heads to a series of bodies leading to the obvious results.

The beginning game's (Pool of Radiance) story is that the party made by the player arrive in the city of Phlan in the northern areas of Faerun and have to slowly retake the city from monsters while learning of the mysterious "Boss". After slaughtering your way through much of the city you then go on a bit of a wilderness exploration run where you deal with slavers, kidnappers, lizardmen and a keep full of undead before dealing with a graveyard full of undead. Around this time you learn one of the questgivers is secretly working with the "Boss" and that said boss is a dragon. Needless to say it ends with an epic dungeon and fight against a dragon. The dragon is revealed to be possessed by some demonic entity but the party saves said dragon and make it back to town with enough loot to build several castles and have enough left over for many rounds of ale and lots of wenches.

The series continues through three more games (technically four but one of them is literally just a short game meant to level up your characters for the actual second entry). And yes, you read that right - you get to take your characters through every single game. You do this by copying some of your game data (specifically relating to your characters) and pasting it into the game folder for the next game. And with all four games played you could end the game with a party full of up to level 40. Most likely you won't get to 40 though especially if you roll any demihumans who are not thieves since, again, this uses AD&D 1e rules and that means level caps!

The second game, Curse of the Azure Bonds, is a mix of a pointcrawl and dungeoncrawl as the players try to get rid of some terrible tattoos that compel them to murder certain people. It's a bit of a railroad due to this but not as bad as the later games.

The third game, Secret of the Silver Blades, goes all in on dungeoncrawling. Despite this it's also technically the largest game in the whole lineup mapsize-wise. The characters have to beat up "the Dreadlord".

The fourth and final game, Pools of Darkness, is more dungeoncrawling but you do team up with Elminster at one point. The party has to slaughter some lieutenants of Bane to prevent him from taking over the world or some shit. Has some delicious drow cheesecake on the cover as well. Also includes an optional "ultra mega death final dungeon" after you complete the final quest. It was designed by one of the creators and named "Dave's Dungeon." Shit is a slog to get through but it's a badge of honor to get through it all since so very few people have.

A spinoff from this line, Unlimited Adventures, was kinda like TSR's and SSI's take on RPG Maker.

The first two games also got written down as actual adventures for 1e called FRC1 Ruins of Adventure and FRC2 Curse of the Azure Bonds respectively.

Savage Frontier

Using the same engine as the Pools of Radiance line (though spruced up and looking quite nice for the time), this series focuses on the titular Savage Frontier.

In the first game, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, the party rolled up in this game series has to stop the Zhentarim from taking everything over while also going on a number of fetch quests and rescue missions. And the opening is pretty accurate to shit that goes down in almost any D&D game - the party gets drunk, slipped drugs and then robbed for every penny they're worth. Half the reason they get off to adventuring is for some payback and to regain what they lost.

The second game is called Treasures of the Savage Frontier and has the party working as bodyguards for some folks in the Lord's Alliance. The Zhentarim return and fuck everything up (as they are wont to do) and ends with the players getting some "lucky papers and crystals" before nabbing treasure from a dragon.

This series is actually most notable because it was this specific variation of the Gold Box engine that went on to make the first graphical MMO, Neverwinter Nights, back in the heady days when no one knew how to handle an online game so AOL had the rights to it and charged up to $6 a fucking hour to play! And people think modern MMOs are scams...

Dragonlance

A trilogy of games taking place in the Dragonlance setting and ends with the party helping out the Heroes of the Lance stop the return of Takhisis.

Buck Rogers

Lorraine Williams, heiress of the Buck Rogers series and head of TSR at the time, took one look at the love and attention the Gold Box games had and immediately demanded they try to use the engine to make a Buck Rogers game since she could double dip on royalties (AD&D and Buck Rogers). The games are well made and reviewed quite well but damn near no one played them because why the fuck would anyone want to?

Spelljammer

The only series to get just one game, Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace, updates the engine to play more like AD&D 2e and has some of the best graphics of any of the games. That said it was filled with bugs and overly long load times and some slowdowns in gameplay.