Achievements have been added to The Bard's Tale. There are 51 in total.

@Eurogamer InXile have surprise released The Bard's Tale Remastered for PS4 and Vita players.

UPDATE 5PM: Sony via InXile has confirmed to us the European launch dates for The Bard's Tale: Remastered, which are 21st August on Vita and 22nd August on PS4.

ORIGINAL STORY 12PM: The Bard's Tale: Remastered and Resnarkled has just been released by developer inXile Entertainment.

Writing on The Bard's Tale official Facebook page, the developer revealed it has released a remastered version of the game for PlayStation 4 and PS Vita.

"inXile Entertainment is proud to announce that a remastered version of its first title, the action RPG "The Bard's Tale", is now out on PS4 and PS Vita," the developer wrote on Facebook.

"Featuring doubled resolution for all textures, the game also runs at 4k 60fps. Sharing only a name with the original series, this "Bard's Tale" is instead a comedic send-up of the fantasy RPG genre starring Cary Elwes as the Bard and the late, great Tony Jay as the bemused Narrator of the tale. 13 years later, it endures as one of our most popular titles on PC and mobile. Today, we are pleased to return the game to the console realm."
[...]

GOG has released Inxile's version of The Bard's Tale - the GOG version includes the three original games:

Includes the original classic games The Bard's Tale 1, 2, and 3.......
Over 14 hours of outstanding voice-acting from top Hollywood talent, including Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride) as the Bard, and the inimitable Tony Jay as the Narrator.

And a quote on what the game is all about:

You play as the titular Bard, a roguish, manipulative and lewd songster whose priorities in life are the acquisition of material wealth and carnal pleasures. The Bard's pretty sarcastic by nature, but you get to decide just how scathing he is by selecting 'Nice' or 'Sarky' responses. Watch out you don't get too cocky though; folk you've upset may come back to haunt you.

A new Tweet from Brian Fargo, InXile's CEO, indicates that the Android version of The Bards Tale from InXile is soon to be finished.

Bard's Tale Android is nearly complete and plays cool on the XPeria.

Apparently there's a video on how this game plays on the smartphone mentioned by Fargo.

The CRPG Addict has wrapped up playing The Bard's Tale III with updates titled The Age of Aggression is Just About Done and Swan Song:

Like many games on my list, The Bard's Tale III might have been reasonably fun to play, map, and win when I was 15, didn't have any other responsibilities, and only bought one game every three or four months. It isn't addictive enough for modern gamers. Despite an interesting premise, the worlds are too empty, the gameplay too long, the mapping too unrewarding. I've quit a lot of games because of bad interfaces, or absurd difficulty, or inadequate documentation; this is one of the few that I've quit because I was just bored.

The Bard's Tale (remake) release for iOS has been updated to include the original as promised and is now available.

Thanks, mute!

After a hiatus, the CRPG Addict is back and facing down The Bard's Tale III. With a post titled Don't Make Me Do It. Please., he lists a tract of faults with the game and asks for input on why people do like it:

The basic problem with The Bard's Tale series is this: by the end of the first game, your characters were already developed as much as they were going to develop. Oh, sure, there's a "chronomancer" class in this game that has a different set of spells, but they don't add much of anything to the game and you can max out your spell levels in about half an hour of gameplay. So after spending a relatively short and non-torturous game getting from level 1 to 15 or 20, you get to spend two more games of twice the duration getting from level 20 to...I don't know...probably 100 or so, but you don't really gain anything from these level increases except more hit points and spell points. This is why most other series (Ultima, Might & Magic, Wizardry) have you start over at Level 1 or, at most, allow you to continue your level progression through two games. If The Bard's Tale III had me start over at level 1, with level 1 foes, I wouldn't have complained for a second. As it is, with characters so over-powered, the game has no choice but to throw hordes of over-powered monsters at me.

I know I'm going to get a lot of comments urging me to just drop it if I hate it that much, so I'm more interested in hearing from people who see some value in this game. For god's sake, what do you like about it?

From Brian Fargo, CEO of inXile Entertainment, comes word, via IGN, that if you buy the 2004 version of The Bard's Tale on iTunes, you'll get the original Bard's tale trilogi for free.

Did you buy The Bard's Tale for iOS? Well, whether you buy it now or bought it before, you're going to get the classic Bard's Tale games for free. Series creator and inXile CEO Brian Fargo hopes for the first update to launch next week. The update will include the 1987 The Bard's Tale. In subsequent updates, which Fargo estimates should roll out in four-week increments, players will get access to The Bard's Tale II and The Bard's Tale III.

Screenshots can be viewed at Gamebanshee.

And here's the trailer from Youtube.

The trailer seems to be from the remake from 2004 insofar as Ican tell.

When RPGs had teeth: The Bard's Tale is a restrospective blog post that looks back at Interplay's seminal game:

The meat of why this particular game remains immortal in my memory is that it genuinely challenged the player in ways that modern RPG’s dare not do today. First, there was no auto-mapping feature, which meant that you would have to map the dungeons by hand in order to survive. This was no small feat considering that the dungeons you had to trudge through were incredibly complex with frequent traps which would spin or teleport you around without any indication that it was doing so. And there was no question that you needed these maps. You could not simply walk into the catacombs or Harkyn’s Castle and blindly make your way through. The sewers alone were a complete nightmare.

Matt Barton - known for his CRPG history series - has a fascinating interview with Rebecca Heineman, co-founder of Interplay and developer on The Bard's Tale series at Gamasutra.  Her history, old days at Interplay and the demise of The Bard's Tale are among the topics covered, with side references to John Carmack and all sorts of things.  I'll quote the first question because, while not the most interesting answer, it sets the scene for the sort of discussion you'll experience:

I found this on your website: "Who am I? I'm a 46 year old woman, computer programmer, game designer, writer, engineer, pastry chef, markswoman, loving mother of 5 even though my kids have grown up and moved on." Do you feel that pretty much covers everything? Markswoman, really?

Rebecca Heineman: Yes. I used to have a Ferret 50 caliber, long time ago...Not anymore, I don't have any firearms. They've long since disappeared in the divorce, etc. But I used to go out with some friends shooting, and here's a little piece of trivia: in the game Wasteland, in the packaging there's a picture of Alan Pavlish, Michael A. Stackpole, and so forth all dressed as Mad Max road warriors -- the guns they're holding are mine.

...and I can't resist a second grab:

I saw where someone had asked you if you could design any game, what would it be, and you said Wasteland II. I know a lot of gamers who would love to see that. Is there any possibility at all that you might do it?

RH: Ask Brian.

He's the one with the keys to the franchise?

RH: Talk to Brian Fargo. Leave it at that.

Speaking of him, what did you think of his Bard's Tale game?

RH: [Sticks finger down throat, makes gagging noises.] When he first described it to me -- he wanted to do a parody role-playing game. In my opinion, the Bard's Tale that Brian released was The Princess Bride. It even had Cary Elwes as the bard; the humor and everything was The Princess Bride and was not Bard's Tale.

Bard's Tale is a game, a gritty role-playing game, with a party fighting monsters in a fantasy role-playing setting. It wasn't The Princess Bride or Shrek. Now, the game that was shipped was one Brian wanted to make, so that's fine. But to me that Bard's Tale game, I would disavow any connection.

If I were allowed to do Bard's Tale IV, I would do what I did in Dragon Wars but with the next technology. It would have 2011 technology. I would make something that would be pretty damn awesome. I just need someone to give me ten million dollars to do it. Unfortunately, my pockets -- let me look in my purse. There's fifty bucks in there.

Thought I'd mention inXile's Bard's Tale was added to Steam a couple of days ago and is currently on sale.

RPG Codex has taken a stroll down the discount isles to bring readers a review of inXile's The Bard's Tale.  There's no score as usual for this site but the intro is pretty clear:

Unfortunately, inXile’s The Bard’s Tale is literally a Bard’s Tale game in name only. Despite carrying the name of the series, Fargo only managed to acquire the rights of the name from Electronic Arts through a legal loophole, but not the rights to the content of the original series. Interesting then, that this was revealed to the public only after months of misleading marketing ploys such as touting the game as a “re-envisioning of the series”, and right after the game went gold, by the game’s very own lead designer during an interview. Even more unfortunate is that all the things that were hinted at during the game’s publicity – the irreverent humor, the entertaining gameplay, the reworking of RPG cliches – were by and large absent as the game ends up being a short and forgettable action romp that handles none of those elements particularly well, while still carrying issues of its own caused by its console origins.

Thanks, Role-Player!