Gateway to the Savage Frontier

Gateway to the Savage Frontier (1991) is a Gold Box Dungeons and Dragons computer game developed by Stormfront Studios and published by SSI for the Commodore 64, PC and Amiga personal computers. The title was the #1 selling game in North America in August of 1991.

When SSI began work on the Dark Sun game engine in 1989 after the completion of The Secret of the Silver Blades, they passed responsibility for continuing the Forgotten Realms Gold Box games to Stormfront. Designers Don Daglow, Mark Buchignani and David Bunnett set the action for the game in an area of the Forgotten Realms that TSR had labeled The Savage Frontier, north of Waterdeep and south of Luskan along the Sword Coast. The area was far to the west of the region that hosted the action for Pool of Radiance and its sequels.

Neverwinter sits in the center of the region and was made the starting point of the game. This proved to be important when Stormfront gained the support of AOL executive Steve Case to create the first-ever graphical MMORPG, and to base it on the Gold Box engine. To leverage the existing game and cross-promote the titles, Daglow based the new MMORPG in Neverwinter and named it Neverwinter Nights.

The game's principal technical enhancement to the aging Gold Box engine was the addition of wilderness play, where the party traveled long distances on the map while following the basic D&D rules for combat with wandering monsters.

The game also featured character-specific side-quests, with two NPCs who can open these optional missions. The side quests in turn open different endings for the game

The game spawned one sequel, Treasures of the Savage Frontier (1992).