I'm trying to remember what this game was called; I played it when I was little. It was probably made somewhere between 1985-1995. It must've been made for DOS, and probably ran at 320x240 or so. The game was a 2d side-view dungeon/platformer. It started out with you being in some city/kingdom, and by some unfortunate event, the princess was frozen into ice or some such. In order to save her, you had to collect ~12 diamonds/jewels from all over the world (or rather, a huge dungeon). You'd be spending the majority of your time inside the underground dungeon (looking for a way through, and fighting some trivial enemies), that would eventually lead you to other cities, where'd you talk with more people and go into more dungeons to find more crystals to save the princess. Any ideas?

Sounds like Zeliard, one of my favourite but slightly more obscure old classics.

MobyGames link for screenshots.

Yeah, that's it! It took me a while to confirm it based on screenshots and the plot, because I totally didn't recognize it at first. Thanks!

Wow, it looks so different from what I remembered, hehe. But it is pretty neat for such an old game.

Along with Thexder, Zeliard is one of those games I want to add into the design melting pot with a dash of Metroidvania to make my own game some day. I've got notes for my Zeliard/Metroidvania and my Thexder/Metroidvania in my big idea scrapbook.

In fact, my avatar is actually my concept character for my Zeliard/Metroidvania game. As you can see, there's a bit of Paper Mario in there as well. [grin]