The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall turns 15

As if we aren't feeling old enough as our horrible birthday looms off in the distance like a black, moist cloud just waiting to rain upon the last of our ill-gotten youth, Bethesda announced that today is the 15th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.

The first-person, RPG for MS-DOS was released in 1996, as the sequel to Arena, and has been available as a free download since 2009 on the official Elder Scrolls website.

In Daggerfall, players are sent to the Breton homeland of High Rock at the request of the emperor who tasks the player with releasing the ghost of the late King Lysandus from his earthly prison. But that's not all: he also wants the player to find out what happened to a letter the sent to a Blades spy in the court of Daggerfall.

This letter, which fell into the hands of an orc named Gortwog, reveals that Lysandus's mother, Nulfaga, is knowledgeable of the whereabouts of the Mantella, which would bring back to life one of the Numidium, a iron golem.

Nulfaga must be forced to reveal the location of the Mantella so that the Blades can finish reconstruction of the golem.

All sorts of adventures, quests, and mishaps follow on the players quest to retrieve the letter, and once in possession of the Mantella, players are presented with various choices on what to do with it.

It was a cracking good game for its time, and we spent many hours playing it.

You can download the game through the link up top, but note that DOSBox is needed to run the game.

The latest game in The Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim, is to be released on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 November 11.