Using Wizard's Crown's detailed combat system as a base for their work,[4] the development of the Gold Box engine and the original games was managed by SSI's Chuck Kroegel[5] and George MacDonald.

This was followed by Curse of the Azure Bonds (1989), Secret of the Silver Blades (1990), and Pools of Darkness (1991),[2] the games forming one continuous story rooted in the once-glorious city of Phlan, later encompassing the entire Moonsea Reaches[9] and four outer regions: Dalelands, Cormyr, Cormanthyr (where Myth Drannor is located),[10] and Thar.

[13][14] Released in 1990, Champions of Krynn was the first of SSI's Gold Box spin-offs based on TSR's very popular Dragonlance universe, and roughly in the novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

After Secret of the Silver Blades came out, Chuck Kroegel passed the Gold Box engine and the Forgotten Realms location to Beyond Software (later Stormfront Studios).

[15]: 139–159 SSI also adapted the Gold Box engine from fantasy to science fiction for a pair of Buck Rogers games: Countdown to Doomsday (1990) and Matrix Cubed (1992).

[12] In March of the same year, SSI's last release was Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures, an editor that allows players to create their own games using the Gold Box engine.

[12] Game developers had access to 127 different monsters, 100 different event triggers, and a framework that could hold an adventure consisting of four different wilderness areas or 36 dungeon levels.

[25][15]: 271–279 Although the interest in the series eventually waned, the mantle of this genre was later assumed by more recent role-playing games such as Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment and Neverwinter Nights.

[28] In addition, characters from Pool of Radiance could be imported into Hillsfar, a game based on an entirely different engine, and then exported into Curse of the Azure Bonds.

Westwood Associates was in charge of some ports for the Amiga, which added mouse support and improved the graphics well before SSI's own MS-DOS versions going to VGA display mode.

[12] MicroMagic made the only port of the series for the Atari ST home computer, Curse of the Azure Bonds;[32] following this, they developed The Dark Queen of Krynn and the Unlimited Adventures for SSI.

[33] For video game consoles, there were only two ports: Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday for the Sega Genesis[29] and Pool of Radiance for the Famicom/NES (from the Japanese company Marionette).

[34] With 264,536 copies sold for computers in North America, Pool of Radiance became by far the most-successful game in SSI's history,[4] outselling Ultima V and Bard's Tale III.

[37] Dave Arneson, one of the creators of Dungeons & Dragons, expressed his disappointment that the Gold Box games did not innovate enough from previous CRPGs, comparing them to "a cross ... between Questron and Wizard's Crown presented in a new setting".

[42] GOG.com released the Pool of Radiance and Savage Frontier Gold Box series digitally on August 20, 2015, as a part of "Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection Two".