The Elder Scrolls: Arena Released For Free

Bethesda Softworks issued a press release earlier today announcing that their award-winning RPG series, The Elder Scrolls, is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Arena is now free!
Bethesda Softworks Announces 10th Anniversary of The Elder Scrolls Series

Month-Long Celebration Includes Giveaway, Free Copy of The Elder Scrolls: Arena

April 5, 2004 (Rockville, MD) - Bethesda Softworks® is proud to announce the 10th anniversary of its award-winning RPG series, The Elder Scrolls®, and will be celebrating the event over the next month on the official Elder Scrolls web site: www.elderscrolls.com. The series, which began in 1994, helped usher in the resurgence of computer role-playing games and the series as a whole has been played by millions of gamers around the world and won hundred of awards.

Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series pioneered open-ended worlds and freeform gameplay, where players could go and do whatever they wanted. The series began in 1994 with the release of Arena™, and continued with Daggerfall® in
1996 and Morrowind® in 2002. In addition, Bethesda released two spin-off
products: An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire™ -- an action game released in 1997, The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard® -- an adventure game released in 1998, and The Elder Scrolls Travels™ -- a series of games released for mobile phones in 2003.

"We're incredibly excited to reach this milestone. With each game, we try to create something unique that we'd love to play, and it's great to have an audience that shares that passion with us," said Todd Howard, executive producer for The Elder Scrolls series. "The first decade of The Elder Scrolls has meant a lot to video games and gamers, and we hope the second decade will mean even more."

The anniversary will be marked by an updated section on The Elder Scrolls series as well as an Elder Scrolls Giveaway, featuring tons of prizes including Elder Scrolls memorabilia, original artwork, and great prizes from Hip Gear, Logitech, Creative Labs, ATI, and NVIDIA.

In addition, for a limited time Bethesda is making the full version of the original Elder Scrolls game - The Elder Scrolls: Arenaâ„¢ - available for download. This classic RPG from 1994 allows players to explore all of Tamriel as they seek to restore the power of the Emperor. (A DOS emulator is also available for download that will allow gamers to experience Arena on today's hardware and operating systems.)