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Games like nethack don't need constant updates to be interesting, and there are enough variants to nethack and angband around to keep them from getting stale. My favourite, zangband, hasn't had any updates in very long time but it's still fun. It was the first roguelike I found that had a proper overworld, something I found to be awesome. Interesting classes and some unique systems made it more amusing than baseline angband, too.

MAngband was another interesting one that had an explorable overworld. Plus it was multiplayer, which is pretty unique for these games.

I know it's been mentioned before, but here are the actual links to the game and the literally hundreds of variants.

A couple of notable features are the AI is very good and the game has the only truly fully random number generator in it that I know of, so every game really is unique and odd things can occasionally happen.

My son plays it and has been known to hit the screen in frustration. :) Not bad for a game that will run on most any machine out there. There are also versions that run as a self-playing screen saver. Quite possibly the most interesting screen saver that I know of.

http://www.thangorodrim.net/
Older files, but then again, not much has been changed in the last few years, either.

http://www.zangband.org/
The most popular variant out there that I know of.

http://www.simugraph.com/simutrans/iso_angband/download.html
3D isomorphic version.

http://rephial.org/
This was mentioned before. Get the newer version here, though you likely will have to compile it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ToME_(video_game)
http://www.t-o-m-e.net/main.php?tome_current=0
The most recent surviving variant. Well worth your time to read these pages and ask around on the forums.

Personally, I love both Nethack and Angband. Why limit yourself to just one? ADOM deserves mention here, too, as do the *band variants (ToME, ZAngband & Enteroband are all personal *band variant favorites).

There's no reason you can't play them all. Some, like ADOM, are very well-developed. It has the most 'plot' of them all, IMHO. But I wouldn't want to be limited to playing just one of them!

So far, I've beaten everything except Angband (unless you count watching that Borg winner, but the Angband Borg is another story, and a very cool bit of AI!)

I linked all those variants up for you because I want to encourage people to play these games. And if you're stuck, I like to read spoilers. Some people help that, but they REALLY help you appreciate the depth of the games, IMHO. If you don't like that, though, don't read them. But there are lots of crazy things about what resistances you need, or what gear is important, or even what to wish for that are really hard to figure out. I mean, how many would notice that herbs grow in a pattern according to Conway's game of Life? That's important if you want to farm them (what did you think farmers were good at, other than polearms?).

Anyhow, these are rich & fun games that shouldn't be ignored just because you think text based interfaces are too retro. Good times, all around :)

Very true, an I can't believe your comment was the first I read here that said that. Levels are a _good_ thing for most games, be they direct or contrived. I will not ever generally save in the middle of a firefight in a FPS or other game, because I'm playing it right now, and it's a dumb time to save. No one wants a game that is 100% action throughout for 24 hours plus (I think). Levels are also analogous to time dependent events in lots of games - it's harder to describe World War II if the player has to play through 6 years of a game (less if you're American obviously ;))

I made a similar point about this a while ago - Why do console titles always place save points immediately prior to dangerous sections? The obvious reason is that people can save and reload and try again, and don't have to worry about dying. In game characters dying is par for the course nowadays - people expect to die loads of times. I personally think that games haven't got easier (I think games have generally got a lot tougher), but games have introduced save/reload as a required feature.

I also personally _love_ Angband and its variants. My favourite two are Zangband and TOME

If you're a fan of Angband, a variant of it might be of interest:

http://www.zangband.org/

Basically, it's Angband with quite a few ideas borrowed from Roger Zelazny's epic Chronicles of Amber series, including a totally changed magic system.

Zangband is the Zelany varient of Angband, which is descended from Rouge - a common ancestor of Nethack. There are a bunch of different developement versions available on the Sourceforge site.

Zangband is one of those weird projects on Sourceforge which is not OSS. There's an explainer there about it...

NetHack can be graphical. Never heard of Falcon's Eye? It's graphical, mouse driven and a pretty good interface for NetHack.

Even Zangband has graphical clients... Tile based, but a far cry from pure ASCII symbols.

Games don't eat time? This guy hasn't played Zangband...

Don't get me wrong. Nethack is a neat game that I use as a diversion on occassion, but I am not as dedicated a player to it as I might be for graphic adventures. If I were to categorize Nethack, it would be hack-n-slash, or dungeon delving, or something like that.

Roguelike.

Well, where to begin.

Nethack was such a big influence in the lines of RPGs... and a great Thief of Time in so many of our lives.

Its a great game - it was an early online D&D style RPG - its fun. very fun.

But it requires that you get into it because you loved D&D and love the RPG genre. If you cant get over the lack of wild 3D fragging madness - then move on...

I know that it may be hard for "newbies" (i.e. people who didnt play it when there was no such thing as 3d graphics) to get into it... but when it came out it quenched our thirst for a time by filling the RPG wish we had.

You should definitely give it a go. I would recommend starting it at the same time as a friend - that will help engender competition between your characters... and help you get into it a little easier.

Dont be fooled it is not lame. But I would recommend that you try Zangband.....

While I generally agree with you, there are games that have been in continuous development for over 10 years, and are all the better for it. Angband (and its finest variant) is continually improving, and is far in advance of any commercial game in terms of long-term playability. Nethack is another one that has been around for a very, very long time now, and continues to improve. It is amazing how much gameplay can get squeezed into a game over a decade or so, especially when no one cares about the graphics :)