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Dungeons and Desktops
Aeonite writes "Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games chronicles the rise and fall of the Computer RPG industry, from Akalabeth to Zelda and everything in between. While the bulk of the book is devoted to the genre's 'Golden Age' in the late '80s and early '90s, author Matt Barton explores the entire history of CRPGs, from their origins in the mid '70s to the very recent past. While not entirely comprehensive, the book covers not only the major players and award-winners, but also dozens of obscure 'also-ran' as well as notable games in related genres." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.
Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing
author
Matt Barton
pages
451
publisher
A.K. Peters Ltd
rating
7
reviewer
Michael Fiegel
ISBN
978-1-56881-411-7
summary
A detailed history of CRPGs
Barton first defines the genre, insofar as one is able to do so, explaining that a CRPG generally includes elements such as: a system of statistics to track characters (ability scores and skills); the ability to advance characters via experience points; and randomized combat. Barton further attempts to define the genre by comparing CRPGs to what they are not, including JRPGs (Final Fantasy), MMORPGs (World of Warcraft), Adventure Games (Zork), and Strategy Games (Warcraft). A bit later, he explores the origins of the CRPG, listing Baseball Simulation Games (such as Strat-O-Matic), Tabletop wargames (Chainmail), Tolkien, Colossal Cave Adventure, and (of course) Dungeons & Dragons as having had an impact on the creation and evolution of the genre.
The next nine chapters of the book are devoted to the history of the CRPG, which Barton breaks down into six phases, somewhat akin to Hesiod's Five Ages.
The Dark Age covers the period of time from 1974 through the end of the decade, and includes PLATO and Mainframe games such as pedit, Dungeon, dnd and DND (not to be confused with each other, or with D&D or D&D), Oubliette, Moria, Avatar and Orthanc. Also included here, somewhat out of chronological order, are a discussion of Rogue and Rougelikes (Hack, Moria and Angband) and MUDs all the way through to 1989's TinyMUD. The Bronze Age of the CRPG begins in 1979 with the publication of Lord British's Akalabeth: World of Doom (which would go on to sell thousands of copies, making it the first commercially successful CRPG, if not exactly the first) and includes a host of obscure titles, including Wizards Castle, Eamon, Space and Empire, The Tarturian, Odyssey: The Complete Apventure, and Dunjonquest: Temple of Apshai. In 1983, Bronze turns to Silver with the appearance of the Ultima and WIzardry trilogies, games which truly began to lay the groundwork for all that came after. Also mentioned in this chapter are less well-known games such as Sword of Fargoal, Dungeons of Daggorath, Tunnels of Doom, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and Universe.
The Golden Age dawns in 1985, bringing with it the refinement of prior ideas and the perfection of the genre's underlying systems. Barton divides coverage of this age into three chapters. The first covers the Early Golden Age, beginning with the console crash of 1983 and ending with the arrival of the NES in 1985. The CRPG market survived the crash rather unscathed, and in fact flourished thanks to games such as Phantasie, The Wizard's Crown, Ultima IV, and Autoduel. Most notable of all, of course, was 1985's The Bard's Tale, which spawned two sequels (three, if you count 2004's "spiritual sequel" starring Carey Elwes), both of which also receive some attention here.
It is here where the book's structure begins to drift a bit. By Barton's own admission, progress in the CRPG industry is "neither linear nor orderly," and in fact the attempt to align CRPG titles, trilogies and series along a single timeline almost necessarily breaks down. The Bard's Tale trilogy seems as if it would more properly be discussed in the next chapter (The Golden Age Part I). Instead, Barton calls it "The Dawn of the Golden Age" and places it about a third of the way into the "Early Golden Age" chapter, where it somewhat loses some of its impact. Further confusion surrounds the inclusion here of Might and Magic Book I: Secrets of the Inner Sanctum; published in 1986, it is not only followed by a discussion of Alternate Reality: The City (published in 1985), but is preceded by a lengthy discussion of several games which came after it, including The Magic Candle (1989) and Bloodstone (1993). While the author has thematic reasons for covering these games here, one wonders if a strict chronological order would have served better. Even Barton seems a bit off track when he invites the reader to "turn to the second half of the Golden Age," which runs from 1987 to 1993 (for those not keeping track, the first "half" only ran from 1983 to 1985). I don't mean to nitpick over throwaway segue lines, but in a book with a historical focus, the time-shifting is just a bit disconcerting.
Regardless, "The Golden Age Part I" covers the period of time that many consider to be the era of the CRPG, when companies like SSI, Origin, Interplay, and New World Computing dominated not just the CRPG industry, but the computer game industry as a whole. Ample coverage is justifiably given to SSI's Gold Box games, including Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, and Pools of Darkness. Somewhat curious (to me) is the omission here of any discussion of AD&D Second Edition, which was released in 1989 and officially introduced the concept of THAC0 (which appeared in Pool of Radiance). Other titles covered in this lengthy chapter include: SSI's Krynn trilogy and Savage Frontier games; the original Neverwinter Nights on AOL; Ultima V, VI and VII; Wizardry VI and VII; Might and Magic II, III and so on; Neuromancer; and Interplay's Wasteland.
The next chapter, "The Golden Age Part II," is devoted to JRPGs and groundbreaking CRPGs with real-time 3d graphics that appeared alongside the aforementioned CRPGs. Covered here in the JRPG category are games such as: The Legend of Zelda and its sequels; The Dragon Warrior series; Final Fantasy; Chrono Trigger; Super Mario RPG; and the Phantasy Star series. The chapter also covers Sierra On-Line's Quest for Glory series; the SSI Black Box games (including Eye of the Beholder); Dungeon Master ("the most successful Atari ST game ever released") and its many clones; and other notable genre-bending games including Beyond Zork and Star Saga.
Here again, we fall into a small hole in the timeline, for The Golden Age ends in 1993 and the next age doesn't begin until 1996. The chapter covering this black hole is called "The Bigger They Come," as if suggesting that Barton was unwilling to give a name to this second Dark Age of CRPGs. Here we see coverage of a variety of bad CRPGs, including Interplay's Descent to Undermountain, Ultima VIII and IX, and the Gothic series (which surely deserves more than the two paragraphs it gets). Covered in more depth is SSI's fall from grace following the publication of an assortment of sub-par D&D titles (including Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Al Qadim, and others) and the ensuing loss of their license with TSR. Some attention might have been paid to the "fall from grace" of TSR itself, which suffered financial ruin in the years that followed and was ultimately purchased by WOTC in 1997.
Ever the optimist, Barton instead moves rapidly into The Platinum Age, which covers the period of time from 1996 to 2001 and includes "the best CRPGs ever made." Covered here in some depth are games such as Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale and its sequel, Dungeon Siege, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, Might and Magic: The Mandate of Heaven, Dungeon Keeper, Arx Fatalis, Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, Interplay's Fallout and Fallout 2, and Troika's Arcanum. The bulk of the chapter, however, is devoted to two games and their sequels: Blizzard's Diablo and Diablo II, which the author treats with noteworthy disdain, and Bioware's Baldur's Gate and its sequel, which Barton believes is "the best CRPG ever made."
While both games receive more or less equal time, it is a bit hard to swallow Barton's dislike for Diablo in the context of a historical overview; nowhere else does he editorialize quite so much, or so vividly. While at first he simply declares that Diablo's consideration as a CRPG "remains a divisive subject," he quickly moves on to less thinly-veiled potshots. At one point, he refers to "hordes of badly behaved teenagers (and middle-aged men, no doubt) scampering to Battle.net, 'pwning' each other and seeking out the latest cheats and hacks to gain an unfair advantage." Later, Barton expresses a "pang of regret over the overwhelming triumph of (the Diablo) series, since it seems to have come at the expense of the older, more sophisticated CRPGs of past eras." He insists that Baldur's Gate "offers much more strategy than Diablo," and argues that Baldur's Gate's multiplayer "helped the game compete against Diablo, whose Battle.net servers had become a swirling vortex for Daddy's money." I don't even know what that means — how can a free service be a vortex for money? The entire argument smacks of something one might find in a Penny Arcade comic strip, such as this one or this one. At the end of the book, Barton goes so far as to predict that "the real-time Diablo and Morrowind-style CRPGs that were so popular throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s seem fated to extinction, usurped by World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs." In the wake of all the buzz surrounding Diablo III's announcement in recent days, this prediction seems slightly premature.
Barton ends the book with a discussion of the Modern Age, "which we are in today." The chapter covers Neverwinter Nights and its sequel, as well as Vampire: The Masquerade and Bloodlines, and Knights of the old Republic and its sequel. After a mention of Fable, Oblivion, more Final Fantasies and Zeldas, and a discussion of why console-based CRPGs seem to be winning out, Barton closes out the book with a look at MMORPGS, from Meridian 59 through WOW and DDO (and every major title in between). He notes (quite properly, in my opinion) that an MMO like WOW has trouble handling a central story and plot as adeptly as a CRPG can, and points out several "emerging trends" concerning CRPGs, including the rise of online gaming, the tendency to announce the death of the standalone, single-player CRPG and — just because we can never have too many digs at Diablo — a mention of the increasing emphasis on action over strategy. "Whereas Ultima Online stressed role-playing, Diablo emphasized roll-playing," says Barton.
Of course, it is Barton's voice which makes the book entertaining; this is no dry history, but the enlightened point of view of a student of CRPGs, shared with the reader in a casual, accessible manner; in many ways, it is a bold manifesto in their defense. Says Barton: "CRPGs are not only the most fun and addictive type of computer game, but possibly the best learning tool ever designed." You may disagree with that, but you can never dispute the author's own dedication to that belief.
Despite the book's somewhat questionable chronological structuring (or, more correctly, its occasional deviations from that structure), the only major flaw worth noting is that the accompanying artwork is, to put it mildly, hideous. The original full-color screenshots look wonderful in Barton's Gamasutra column, but in the book they are mostly reprinted in muddy, blotchy black and white, making it impossible to determine what they depict even with the help of accompanying captions. The book does contain a color insert after page 208, but this 4-page, 8-picture centerpiece is at best forgettable — I flipped past it entirely while reading, and found that upon further review I hadn't missed anything by skipping over it.
Dungeons and Desktops is a mixed bag, somewhat akin to a sack full of Halloween candy. There are some genuinely good pieces of sweetness in there, as well as a great deal of hidden, forgotten gems and some bits you never knew existed. Despite a bit of a jumble towards the middle, taken as a whole the book is well worth picking up if you're a fan of CRPGs or fantasy games in general. Less die-hard fans might find themselves preferring to stick to Barton's Gamasutra columns, and Diablo fans might find themselves gritting their teeth at some points, but then every bag of candy's got a few pieces of black licorice in it, no?
You can purchase Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page."
The next nine chapters of the book are devoted to the history of the CRPG, which Barton breaks down into six phases, somewhat akin to Hesiod's Five Ages.
The Dark Age covers the period of time from 1974 through the end of the decade, and includes PLATO and Mainframe games such as pedit, Dungeon, dnd and DND (not to be confused with each other, or with D&D or D&D), Oubliette, Moria, Avatar and Orthanc. Also included here, somewhat out of chronological order, are a discussion of Rogue and Rougelikes (Hack, Moria and Angband) and MUDs all the way through to 1989's TinyMUD. The Bronze Age of the CRPG begins in 1979 with the publication of Lord British's Akalabeth: World of Doom (which would go on to sell thousands of copies, making it the first commercially successful CRPG, if not exactly the first) and includes a host of obscure titles, including Wizards Castle, Eamon, Space and Empire, The Tarturian, Odyssey: The Complete Apventure, and Dunjonquest: Temple of Apshai. In 1983, Bronze turns to Silver with the appearance of the Ultima and WIzardry trilogies, games which truly began to lay the groundwork for all that came after. Also mentioned in this chapter are less well-known games such as Sword of Fargoal, Dungeons of Daggorath, Tunnels of Doom, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and Universe.
The Golden Age dawns in 1985, bringing with it the refinement of prior ideas and the perfection of the genre's underlying systems. Barton divides coverage of this age into three chapters. The first covers the Early Golden Age, beginning with the console crash of 1983 and ending with the arrival of the NES in 1985. The CRPG market survived the crash rather unscathed, and in fact flourished thanks to games such as Phantasie, The Wizard's Crown, Ultima IV, and Autoduel. Most notable of all, of course, was 1985's The Bard's Tale, which spawned two sequels (three, if you count 2004's "spiritual sequel" starring Carey Elwes), both of which also receive some attention here.
It is here where the book's structure begins to drift a bit. By Barton's own admission, progress in the CRPG industry is "neither linear nor orderly," and in fact the attempt to align CRPG titles, trilogies and series along a single timeline almost necessarily breaks down. The Bard's Tale trilogy seems as if it would more properly be discussed in the next chapter (The Golden Age Part I). Instead, Barton calls it "The Dawn of the Golden Age" and places it about a third of the way into the "Early Golden Age" chapter, where it somewhat loses some of its impact. Further confusion surrounds the inclusion here of Might and Magic Book I: Secrets of the Inner Sanctum; published in 1986, it is not only followed by a discussion of Alternate Reality: The City (published in 1985), but is preceded by a lengthy discussion of several games which came after it, including The Magic Candle (1989) and Bloodstone (1993). While the author has thematic reasons for covering these games here, one wonders if a strict chronological order would have served better. Even Barton seems a bit off track when he invites the reader to "turn to the second half of the Golden Age," which runs from 1987 to 1993 (for those not keeping track, the first "half" only ran from 1983 to 1985). I don't mean to nitpick over throwaway segue lines, but in a book with a historical focus, the time-shifting is just a bit disconcerting.
Regardless, "The Golden Age Part I" covers the period of time that many consider to be the era of the CRPG, when companies like SSI, Origin, Interplay, and New World Computing dominated not just the CRPG industry, but the computer game industry as a whole. Ample coverage is justifiably given to SSI's Gold Box games, including Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, and Pools of Darkness. Somewhat curious (to me) is the omission here of any discussion of AD&D Second Edition, which was released in 1989 and officially introduced the concept of THAC0 (which appeared in Pool of Radiance). Other titles covered in this lengthy chapter include: SSI's Krynn trilogy and Savage Frontier games; the original Neverwinter Nights on AOL; Ultima V, VI and VII; Wizardry VI and VII; Might and Magic II, III and so on; Neuromancer; and Interplay's Wasteland.
The next chapter, "The Golden Age Part II," is devoted to JRPGs and groundbreaking CRPGs with real-time 3d graphics that appeared alongside the aforementioned CRPGs. Covered here in the JRPG category are games such as: The Legend of Zelda and its sequels; The Dragon Warrior series; Final Fantasy; Chrono Trigger; Super Mario RPG; and the Phantasy Star series. The chapter also covers Sierra On-Line's Quest for Glory series; the SSI Black Box games (including Eye of the Beholder); Dungeon Master ("the most successful Atari ST game ever released") and its many clones; and other notable genre-bending games including Beyond Zork and Star Saga.
Here again, we fall into a small hole in the timeline, for The Golden Age ends in 1993 and the next age doesn't begin until 1996. The chapter covering this black hole is called "The Bigger They Come," as if suggesting that Barton was unwilling to give a name to this second Dark Age of CRPGs. Here we see coverage of a variety of bad CRPGs, including Interplay's Descent to Undermountain, Ultima VIII and IX, and the Gothic series (which surely deserves more than the two paragraphs it gets). Covered in more depth is SSI's fall from grace following the publication of an assortment of sub-par D&D titles (including Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Al Qadim, and others) and the ensuing loss of their license with TSR. Some attention might have been paid to the "fall from grace" of TSR itself, which suffered financial ruin in the years that followed and was ultimately purchased by WOTC in 1997.
Ever the optimist, Barton instead moves rapidly into The Platinum Age, which covers the period of time from 1996 to 2001 and includes "the best CRPGs ever made." Covered here in some depth are games such as Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale and its sequel, Dungeon Siege, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, Might and Magic: The Mandate of Heaven, Dungeon Keeper, Arx Fatalis, Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, Interplay's Fallout and Fallout 2, and Troika's Arcanum. The bulk of the chapter, however, is devoted to two games and their sequels: Blizzard's Diablo and Diablo II, which the author treats with noteworthy disdain, and Bioware's Baldur's Gate and its sequel, which Barton believes is "the best CRPG ever made."
While both games receive more or less equal time, it is a bit hard to swallow Barton's dislike for Diablo in the context of a historical overview; nowhere else does he editorialize quite so much, or so vividly. While at first he simply declares that Diablo's consideration as a CRPG "remains a divisive subject," he quickly moves on to less thinly-veiled potshots. At one point, he refers to "hordes of badly behaved teenagers (and middle-aged men, no doubt) scampering to Battle.net, 'pwning' each other and seeking out the latest cheats and hacks to gain an unfair advantage." Later, Barton expresses a "pang of regret over the overwhelming triumph of (the Diablo) series, since it seems to have come at the expense of the older, more sophisticated CRPGs of past eras." He insists that Baldur's Gate "offers much more strategy than Diablo," and argues that Baldur's Gate's multiplayer "helped the game compete against Diablo, whose Battle.net servers had become a swirling vortex for Daddy's money." I don't even know what that means — how can a free service be a vortex for money? The entire argument smacks of something one might find in a Penny Arcade comic strip, such as this one or this one. At the end of the book, Barton goes so far as to predict that "the real-time Diablo and Morrowind-style CRPGs that were so popular throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s seem fated to extinction, usurped by World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs." In the wake of all the buzz surrounding Diablo III's announcement in recent days, this prediction seems slightly premature.
Barton ends the book with a discussion of the Modern Age, "which we are in today." The chapter covers Neverwinter Nights and its sequel, as well as Vampire: The Masquerade and Bloodlines, and Knights of the old Republic and its sequel. After a mention of Fable, Oblivion, more Final Fantasies and Zeldas, and a discussion of why console-based CRPGs seem to be winning out, Barton closes out the book with a look at MMORPGS, from Meridian 59 through WOW and DDO (and every major title in between). He notes (quite properly, in my opinion) that an MMO like WOW has trouble handling a central story and plot as adeptly as a CRPG can, and points out several "emerging trends" concerning CRPGs, including the rise of online gaming, the tendency to announce the death of the standalone, single-player CRPG and — just because we can never have too many digs at Diablo — a mention of the increasing emphasis on action over strategy. "Whereas Ultima Online stressed role-playing, Diablo emphasized roll-playing," says Barton.
Of course, it is Barton's voice which makes the book entertaining; this is no dry history, but the enlightened point of view of a student of CRPGs, shared with the reader in a casual, accessible manner; in many ways, it is a bold manifesto in their defense. Says Barton: "CRPGs are not only the most fun and addictive type of computer game, but possibly the best learning tool ever designed." You may disagree with that, but you can never dispute the author's own dedication to that belief.
Despite the book's somewhat questionable chronological structuring (or, more correctly, its occasional deviations from that structure), the only major flaw worth noting is that the accompanying artwork is, to put it mildly, hideous. The original full-color screenshots look wonderful in Barton's Gamasutra column, but in the book they are mostly reprinted in muddy, blotchy black and white, making it impossible to determine what they depict even with the help of accompanying captions. The book does contain a color insert after page 208, but this 4-page, 8-picture centerpiece is at best forgettable — I flipped past it entirely while reading, and found that upon further review I hadn't missed anything by skipping over it.
Dungeons and Desktops is a mixed bag, somewhat akin to a sack full of Halloween candy. There are some genuinely good pieces of sweetness in there, as well as a great deal of hidden, forgotten gems and some bits you never knew existed. Despite a bit of a jumble towards the middle, taken as a whole the book is well worth picking up if you're a fan of CRPGs or fantasy games in general. Less die-hard fans might find themselves preferring to stick to Barton's Gamasutra columns, and Diablo fans might find themselves gritting their teeth at some points, but then every bag of candy's got a few pieces of black licorice in it, no?
You can purchase Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page."
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
> what is a grue?
The grue is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its favorite diet is adventurers, but its insatiable appetite is tempered by its fear of light. No grue has ever been seen by the light of day, and few have survived its fearsome jaws to tell the tale.
Start a happiness pandemic
I'm glad he at least acknowledges the MUD (multi-user dungeon). I personally doubt we would have ever seen MMO's like Meridian 59, et. al. without their text-based MUD predecessors. And, unfortunately, many people overlook them when talking about modern MMO's.
.
And, as a recovering KobraMUD addict myself, I can definitely attest that the classic MUD's were every bit as addictive as their modern MMO counterparts. Though they required a little more imagination, their miniscule system requirements and free online play helped make up for it (not to mention that their low overhead allowed them to be played without shards or multiple servers--letting you play with all your friends without having to jump servers).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I want my glass sword.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I grew up on Ultimate I and II and played the board game along with Apple and I'm quite surprised that this early era, where SSI was dominate, along with others, was not indeed the first golden age.
I have to say that I disagree with his assessment of Diablo as an RPG. To me, Diablo fit right into the proud tradition of the likes of Ultimate and was in many ways a spiritual successor.
To me a good RPG is like reading a book - its an individual thing and I think there's alway going to be room for that in gaming...
This is my sig.
Finally a book review I'm actually interested in. I love classic CRPGs, I'm in the middle of Phantasy Star III right now actually. It's nice to see someone treat the subject of video game history seriously. I can see this book useful both as a history of the video game industry, as well as a refresher on any RPGs you may have missed. There are literally thousands of hours of CRPGs available, you can't play them all, so a historical review like this can really help you pick the important ones to play.
I just have to ask, does he mention nethack?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
apparently he didn't call any of us from the P.V.H.S. computer/role playing club (the membership for both was the same people - so they are kind of interchangeable) to ask us about the crpg we wrote for the apple IIs in the computer lab in '86. which is a shame when one takes into account the oppressive conditions we worked under. mr. cornell would rip a floppy right out of the drive and staple it to the wall if he caught someone playing a game.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
My first experience with CRPGs was a PC port of Rogue around 1983. I was instantly hooked.
I have many fond memories of playing Oubliette around 1983, and eventually hacking the encryption on the save file. The encryption consisted of adding 0x71 and 0x72 to alternating bytes in the save file. After that I was able to hack the save file to find out if characters could actually survive the 9th level. It turns out having 6 totally maxed out characters might survive a single move on level 9, but certainly not two.
Way, way too much fun (and time wasted) for what was something like a 60k executable.
I still have the Turbo Pascal code for encypting/decrypting the save files and doing other operations like restoring age (characters would eventually age and die from the time spent resting to heal).
Shortly after that (around 85 or so) I discovered a little game called Hack (around version 2.0.3 IIRC). I think heard somewhere it's still around. (Actually I occasionally run Nethack 3.4.3 on my PocketPC for kicks. My oldest kid likes playing it too, but he only plays with tiles, I think anything other than character mode is tantamount to blasphemy.).
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
For you cheap folks, a version of this work was on Gamasutra last year:
* Part 1
* Part 2
* Part 3
Not sure if this is the entire book or not.
...since Baldur's Gate 2. NWN's story sucked but some of the mutliplayer was great; it's a shame NWN2 didn't follow through. The Temple of Elemental Evil could have led to a new golden box age by licensing out the engine if it wasn't such a bug ridden mess. Oblivion just didn't do it for me and Fable/Mass Effect were o.k.
Fable 2 looks interesting and Dragon Age is supposed to be Bioware's spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate 2; hopefully it will pan out and not just be another Jade Empire/Mass Effect.
Diablo is a graphical Roguelike; in particular, it's basically a somewhat-dumbed-down*-but-much-prettier Angband. If Hack/Moria/Angband make the cut, there's no way to exclude Diablo.
(*: Not really a criticism. The Roguelikes often take advantage of their essentially textual nature to do things that simply can't be done graphically, or would be fantastically difficult. Anybody want to write the code that morphs any given monster type into any other given monster type for NethackGL? Not me!)
You can, in fact, still play Avatar by starting here. Unfortunately, every time I've tried, there's not a soul on- and of course, playing with others was the whole reason it was fun in the first place. It still amazes me that I'm old enough to have played some "dark age" foundational computer game. My 6-year-old son would no doubt simply blink in incomprehension if I ever tried to explain Avatar or Arctic, the mud I eventually graduated to.
The book packs a lot of mini reviews, history and, at least for those of us who had the chance to play and feel attached to some of those games, a lot of 'oh, wow, those were the days' moments. If you enjoy CRPGs, you should read this book.
Technology ramblings : Simple is Beautiful
...without RTFR or RTFB, the book doesn't discuss the emergence of the comical RPG/MMO like Dungeon Runners and Kingdom of Loathing. I'm certain both came about with some hint of inspiration from Dead Alewives' D&D sketch and the over-geekification of RPG enthusiasts.
Some of my fondest memories of computer gaming was when I was about 11 and my parents bought an Apple //e (Upgraded too! This thing had 128K of RAM and TWO floppy drives). I spent a lot of hours playing Wizardry, Ultima 2 & 3, Apshai Trilogy, Phantasie, etc.
I'm not sure if it was just the review missing it out or if it was that books fault, but where the hell is the mention for Nethack? It is easily the best rouge-like, it holds several crowns in the gaming world (probably including most die-hard fans) and is, for me the pinical of gaming excellence; the evolving new features and areas are also a nice touch too.
Just so you all know, the greatest RPGs of all time are:
1. Ultima 5
2. Wasteland
3. Planescape: Torment
That is all. It's sad that the two best computer game genres, CRPGs and adventure games, mostly vanished under a horde of FPSes and wretched japanese console RPGs.
It was my first introduction to CRPGs (played during lunch on the two available Apple II computers in the Junior High library) and there were dozens of 5 1/2 disks with adventures being traded in the school. If I remember correctly there was on adventure on the main game disk, but others could be loaded in (including one based on Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail).
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Ah, the great games of old...
I never played that many, I did play a few though.
Might and Magic I, M&M III, M&M IV (By time we got a PC that could handle 2, 3 was out...)
PoolRad was a great game. I got it just as I was learning about D&D. I remember so many great things about that game.
I was going to protest a few omissions till I remembered the starting criteria. The Space Quest games, Civilization I etc.
I would have hoped he'd mentioned Dark Heart of Uukrul. It was uniquely styled if nothing else. Puzzles out the wazoo (luckily you only needed to solve like 8 out of twelve to beat the game. at the time I barely got half of them. there were built in limits to power leveling (at least it slowed you down a bit).
How come nobody here has mentioned Eye of the Beholder and the dungeon-crawling genre?
Is it strange that I played a bunch of the "obscure" titles: Eamon, Dunjonquest : The Temple of Apshai, Odessey : The Complete Apventure, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves?
One of the first "programming" things I did was rewrite pieces of the BASIC parts of Temple of Apshai on my Commodore 64... like to make the shopkeeper say "Thou dost smell like a fart!" I loved me some Infocom, Ultima III-V, and Phantasie.
I have to disagree with his criteria for what makes an RPG. He mentions having a character that can get more powerful as you play, which is a common element, but I think the essence of what really makes it a role-playing game would be the ability to interact with other characters and the world in a variety of ways. Having choices lets you select a "personality" for your character, even if it's only from a limited set of choices. Even if they all end up going the same place, being able to reply to the king wanting you to save the princess with "of course, your majesty. ", "What's in it for me?", or "Hm, I wonder what the Dragon's offering." can go a long way.
Of course, this is just a long-winded way of pointing out that Star Control 2 was by far the best CRPG ever made and I hope they do another one like that some day.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
I never thought of Diablo as a CRPG, button mashing, face smashing, wtfpwning FFA, yes.. but RPG? nah.
Awesome!
I know about the silly lawsuit over the old Hero's Quest...but how can you leave that out in favor of the later, far crappier, Quest for Glory series? In my humble opinion, Sierra has sucked ever since discarding the command interpreter. Hero's Quest 1 and 2 raised my typing speed by 20 wpm. That might have been the most professionally beneficial thing an RPG has ever done for me.
Chapter 1:
I put on my robe and wizard hat...
No Wizardry? What a gyp.
Does the book mention Gemstone III or Dragonrealms at all? Those MUDs were very influential in my addiction to role-playing games. Also, when I used to play Asheron's Call or World of Warcraft I would constantly think that this or that feature was not as good as Dragonrealms. MUDs are just way more interactive than a graphical MMO.
http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/29/1926224
The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part III: The Platinum and Modern Ages (1994-2004)
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Apparently the author met a purple "h" in the mines on the way to writing the book. Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss was in 1992 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Underworld:_The_Stygian_Abyss), not "the period of time from 1996 to 2001". The above summary would put this smack at the end of the "Second half of the Golden Age".
(Knew it sounded odd because I remembered playing it in my first round of college... ). Kind of makes you wonder what else they got wrong, frankly.
Played most of those games. It was a much quicker response to those "play-by-mail" games that came before them.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
Any mention of Darklands? I loved that game.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
The Legend of Zelda isn't an RPG. Well, unless you're talking about Zelda II. Surely with the research that's been done in the making of the book, Barton must've noticed the existence of the console adventure genre (of which Zelda is the archetype) in the video-game magazines of the day, a convention that still persists despite many people miscategorizing Zelda as an RPG. Perhaps he included the series because it was arguably the second biggest outside influence on the console RPG genre (behind the Ultima series).
Rob
...and yet, I still can't play an Elf Assassin due to completely arbitrary and inconsistent ideas of Elven ethics that /nobody/ actually roleplays. *grump*
You can play an elf assassin, you just can't start as one. You need to become that unique character in play.
There was an elf necromancer some years back. Can't create one of those either.
I am glad to hear that he is broad minded enough to include Autoduel, which breaks from the traditional fantasy theme.
For a long time I thought that Ultima V was the best Ultima ever made. Then I met someone else who shared that opinion and then knew that I may not be crazy. Ultima IV was also not far behind, or at least it's equal. That's probably why a group of people went through great pains to recreate Ultima V using the dungeon seige engine. (see this link for info.)
A lot of the other games mentioned I remember playing on the C=64, Amiga, Apple II and PC.
Another good one is Sentinel Planets. That was a hybrid space combat / planetary exploration game with EGA graphics on the PC. Probably one of the first PC games that was vaguely well done.
I do disagree with the assessment of Diablo. It sounds to me like he turns a nose up at diablo because it emphasizes action more than the roleplaying aspect. In comparison to his favorite, Baldurs Gate, it is a completely different game. Personally, I enjoy the more action based games myself, mostly due to a lack of time and brain power to want to do anything else after a long work day. Just a sign of getting older I suppose. The Diablo games and Starcraft are the perfect balance. You can jump in, have a good game and put it away for a while.
Good times...
It seemed as though the review is implying that the Gothic series belong to 'bad' CRPGs. I couldn't disagree more. So far I've played the first and second, and it's doubtlessly one of my favorite CRPG series. And this is from someone who has played and enjoyed many of the Bard's Tale, Wizardry, Magic Candle, and Might & Magic games, and yet doesn't even like Diablo. Granted, I've had the benefit of patches, and playing these games on an above average PC when taking the requirements into account, both factors which probably hurt this series.
or Exitilus.
Now THOSE were awesome RPGs.
If you weren't around during the time of BBS and door games, disregard. This throwback is for older nerds.
I guess strictly speaking, the Diablo series isn't that great of an RPG . . . but man, in terms of just being good games, they definitely will beat out most other games mentioned in that book . . .
That really irks me. Nintendo classifies Zelda as an adventure game, precisely because it is an adventure game. Some people assume anything with a sword in it must be an RPG, because they so closely associate a fantasy setting with the RPG genre. Game genres are defined by gameplay mechanics. Thusly you can have Auto Wars, which as Mad Max-esque RPG that centered around cars. That is firmly an RPG. You can have RPGs set in the old West, or in space. Chris Avellone of Obisidian Entertainment (he was also the lead design on Planescape: Torment) has talked about doing an RPG based in high school.
Just because Zelda has a fantasy setting, that does not make it an RPG. I refuse to take a book seriously that supposedly dedicates itself to the study of the COMPUTER RPG genre, that list a game that is neither a computer game, nor an RPG.
However, just last year someone wrote a great retrospective on the CRPG genre in three parts. I think Gamesutra ended up buying the articles. Google would likely pick them up. The articles can be read for free, and they were really great.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Umm, Ultima, not Ultimate. Are you implicitly taking spell-checker corrections?
Healorr: /ignore Steveland
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Try The Witcher.
One of the best RPG's in a long time, but seems to have slipped under the radar a bit.
LORD and the like are a big part of MUD/MOO/MMO history!
Wizardry I: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was 1981 (sequels in 1982 and 1984). Ultima I was a year after Akalabeth ('82 was 2, '83 was 3, I believe). In 6th grade I co-wrote wizedit, the wizardry scenario editor (but a bigger, better one found later made mine die - that was 1982).
Diablo was originally intended to be hack with graphics and evolved into a realtime monster masher. To say it isn't a CRPG is like saying hack isn't. Same premise, different execution. As far as CRPGs go, it's a regression, but still an CRPG.
it was a text based adventure game on the Trash-80. Zork was a lot like it--i got further in Rakka Tu because there weren't any dang grues...
my memory is too lousy to remember if we (my dad and I--because I was fairly young he was helping me play) finished it or how far we got. i kept wishing someone would port it to my PDA like they did so many of the Infocomm text adventure games so i'd stuff to do in all-hands meetings.
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
JRPG = Japanese RPG ? When was this term coined ? This is new to me. Personally I think Japanese abbreviations make more sense because they subdivide RPGs according to the gameplay not by support/origin. They have the terms A-RPG for Action RPG (that would be Zelda II, Ys, Secret of Mana...) and S-RPG for Simulation RPG (T-RPG in the West, tactical RPGs such as Shining Force, FF Tactics, Fire Emblem...).
At a glance of the summary, I'd say this book must be pretty thorough for computer RPGs but lacking for console ones. Console RPGs would need their own book and that would be more like an encyclopedia considering the overwhelming number of games that has been released. The thing is that many of them were Japan-only, which would take quite a bit of search to list them all as I'm sure this book only refers to RPGs translated in English for a US release (Dragon Warrior's just the US name for the Famicom episodes of the almighty Dragon Quest series).
And I echo the complaints of people saying Zelda isn't a RPG. It's just too tempting for authors to slip in such a popular name as Zelda.
I didn't see any mention of LoRD, Tradewars (BBS faves) or my VERY old fave, Rakka-Tu (TRS-80).
Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny and it's sequels. I spent so many hours playing the first one on my Amiga. I even paid £300 for a 20MB (yes, that's 20 MEG) external HDD so I wouldn't have to swap disks so much. God I loved that game!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realms_of_Arkania:_Blade_of_Destiny
"...AD&D Second Edition, which was released in 1989 and officially introduced the concept of THAC0".
Uh, no.
The Blue Book (D&D) had thac0. I had it. It just wasn't part of the monster description.
had me actually sorry for the character at the end of the game.
That's a good way to prove its provenance.
I still play NetHack couple times a month. Excellent.
http://www.nethack.org/
And, indeed, the depth of NetHack is impressive.
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20011107&mode=classic
was primitive in terms of gameplay,but thats only on the surface.
The game was full of obscure glitches and hidden things. Many players calculated stats that were not shown on screen.
There is "Jarulfs guide to diablo and Hellfire" which compiled these stats.
RPG's don't exist without a GM/DM. Does this computer based pseudo-RPG sound familiar?
"You are faced with a sleeping man blocking a linear plot line, what do you do?"
>Try stepping over the sleeping man in the path
>Wake up the sleeping man so I can move through
>Squeeze past the sleeping man, there is plenty of space, come on!
>I attack the sleeping man... wtf, I can attack tree's and chickens but not this sleeping guy in my way?
>Fine, I'll go to the castle, defeat the evil, trade the crystalline shield for a bag of weeds, take the bag of weeds across the ocean to a random farmer, listen to his long story about weeds, graciously accept a feather as a reward, and attempt to wake up the sleeping man with said feather.
"The sleeping man awakes, and moves from the path."
Dungeon Master. I believe it was originally an Amiga game? Ported to Java. Very cool spellcasting system that you actually have to figure out for yourself via symbols. This was actually the first game that creeped me out. heh Footsteps in the distance and other creepy sounds. Here's the download page. http://homepage.mac.com/aberfield/dmj/download.html
Give it a look see and just remember this game was out very many years ago.