The History of Computer Role Playing Games doc

  

The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part I: The

Early Years (1980-1983)

Matt Barton

  

Welcome, brave adventurer, to the first of my in-depth feature articles exploring the history

of our favorite computer game genre: The Computer Role-Playing Game, or the CRPG. For

many avid gamers, the CRPG is the perfect storm of gameplay, story, and strategy. Whether

we're talking about a randomized "dungeon crawler" like Rogue or a story-driven game like

Betrayal in Krondor, a click-fest like Diablo or a stat-crunching Pool of Radiance, the CRPG has

always enjoyed a tremendous appeal. Even today, when the first-person shooter and sports

games seem to have crushed all opposition, everyday millions of players login to World of

Warcraft, and each new installment in the Zelda series sends ripples throughout the entire

game industry. Whether acknowledged or not, the CRPG will always play a major role in

computer and console gaming. The CRPG is the spine of the electronic gaming industry--and

it's not hard to see why. You just can't have more fun with a computer or a console than

when you're engrossed in a well-crafted CRPG. But where did the CRPG come from? From

what deep, dank dungeon did they crawl? How has the genre evolved into the amazing games

we enjoy today? If you've ever wondered about these and other CRPG-related questions, of if

you just like reading the very best writing you can find on the net about gaming--then grab a

mug of your best ale and prepare to read an article only an author of Armchair Arcade would

ever dare to draft!

From Tabletops to Desktops

  

Although most people would probably think it's a trivial matter to trace the CRPG back to its

tabletop, paper-and-pencil based "equivalent," doing so probably obscures more than it

reveals about the two genres. As anyone who has actually played D&D is acutely aware, the

two games are as different as playing intramural basketball and College Hoops 2K7. Indeed,

the typical "CRPG" is not a "role-playing game" at all, or, if it is, that's generally the least

  

INVADERS, and even in games like Tetris you're playing a role--the unseen force that causes

those falling blocks to shift and rotate. It's probably more accurate to describe first-person

"interactive fiction" games like Zork or Myst as a "role-playing games," since in those games

the player literally assumes an important fictional role within the game. Likewise, a first-

person shooter like Half-Life seems to come much closer to the ideal of "playing a role" than a

game like Icewind Dale, in which you only indirectly control a whole group of characters.

  

Strat-O-Matic: Paper-based games like this paved the way for D&D and CRPGs.Taxonomic

quibbling aside, there is no doubt that while they are not direct descendents, CRPGs were

deeply inspired by D&D. At the very least, it's obviously more than a coincidence that so

many of the themes and trappings are shared by both genres, and both are highly absorbing

and addictive. One wonders if Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson knew the full implications of

what they were doing when they sprung Dungeons & Dragons on an unsuspecting public back

in 1974. However, Gygax and Arneson's classic tabletop "role-playing game" didn't come out

of nowhere. As near as I can tell, the clearest precedents were like Avalon Hill's

Tactics II (1958) and sports simulation games like (1961). However, while D&D

certainly borrowed (whether intentionally or not) many of the conventions of these older

games (especially an emphasis on caculation), it contained some radical new innovations. For

one thing, instead of recreating painfully-accurate historical Civil War battles or the World

Series, D&D was set in a fantasy world populated by elves, dwarves, and dragons. Although

there's some question about how deeply J.R.R. Tolkien's Ring trilogy played in the

development of D&D, most players of the game were hardcore fans of Middle Earth,

obsessively reading and re-reading the novels. Indeed, for countless Tolkien-enamored

teenagers of the 70s and 80s, D&D was simply a more enthralling way to experience these

lavish fictional places. After all, it's one thing to read about Frodo and Bilbo going on fantastic

quests, but the appeal of going on one themselves was simply too much for many teenagers

  

Authors Brad King and John Borland, authors of Dungeons and Dreamers: From Geek to Chic,

claim that "it's almost impossible to overstate the role of Dungeons & Dragons in the rise of

computer gaming." What could be more true? The "gamer" as we know him or her today was

born in the D&D era. Although there have always been games, none of them had the drawing

power of D&D. While cards and dice can certainly become disastrously addictive (see

), gambling games were always about prizes the players could win, not

the games themselves. Strategy games like chess, meanwhile, are so abstract and "mental"

that it's often not clear whether they are true amusements or really just exercises in logic.

Furthermore, the fact that you can become a professional chess player indicates that chess

lost its status as a mere "game." If you can earn a living doing something, you can no longer

describe it as a "pure amusement"--it's become a sport with real earning potential. Finally,

board games like Monopoly and RISK, while certainly fun and engaging, are only very rarely

enjoyed over extended periods for any significant amount of time. These are games that get

hauled off the top shelf of a closet a few days out of the year to keep idle hands busy during

the holidays. Though you can find large, highly devoted communities of UNO and ROOK

players, these seem more like exceptions rather than the rule.

  

Every childhood has its talismans, the sacred objects that look innocuous enough to the

outside world, but that trigger an onslaught of vivid memories when the grown child confronts

them. For me, it's a sheaf of xeroxed numbers my father brought home from his law firm

when I was nine. -- Steven Johnson, Everything Bad is Good for You

Not so with D&D. In so many ways, D&D was more of a lifestyle choice than a "harmless

diversion." Indeed, the closest equivalent I can think of is the children's game of "make

believe," in which a group of kids pretend to be in various social and occupational roles--such

as a father, doctor, superhero, and so on. The other kids will "go along" with the fantasy,

helping to perpetuate it (generally in return for similar reinforcement from the other children).

For instance, two boys will take turns being the "cowboy or the Indian," or I suppose

nowadays the "Republican and the terrorist" or some such nonsense. Often enough, these

games can get quite elaborate, with imaginary pals, exotic fictional settings, and plenty of

simulated action. I must confess to having played many such games with my younger sister,

when we "went on vacation" to all sorts of fantastic locales. Of course, once a kid gets to a

certain age, playing "make believe" seems too juvenile or irrational to engage in (at least

openly), so all of these impulses are repressed--at least until D&D comes onto the scene.

Suddenly, playing "make believe" is back, and players can enjoy the activity without being

  

make-believe, play-acting, and a logical, math-based rule system. As Johan Huizinga

illustrates in his book Homo Ludens, such play is a vitally important part of learning. The

more kids get to play "make believe," the more intelligent they become! As

would say, playing D&D makes you smarter!

Sadly, when enough "concerned" citizens realized that so many young people were having so

much fun playing this new game, they began insinuating and then outright accusing players of

engaging in a "Satanic ritual" or, at the very least, dangerously influenced by hidden

subliminal content (for a sickening example, see of a Chick tract). We might

perhaps be more sympathetic to these folks; they knew just enough about D&D to make them

dangerous. For instance, they quickly learned that they involved graphic violence, magic (or,

"witchcraft"), and often demonic forces (dragons, hell hounds, demons). No doubt, walking by

and hearing a 7-year old cry, "I summon forth a black demon to annihilate your cleric!" was

enough to convince any well-meaning parent that something odd was going on here.

Furthermore, as then as well as now, occasionally news surfaced of some genuinely disturbed

gamer performing some horrific crime and then blaming it all on the game. The same could be

said about the D&D-themed "heavy metal" music of the era. Obviously, Iron Maiden or Judas

Priest was a powerful catalyst for evil during all those dice rolls for initiative. The fact that so

many people are still willing to buy into this rubbish is far more fearful than any demonic foe

encountered in a D&D session! Ironically enough, many of the friends I played D&D with were

far more devout Christians than anyone else I knew. Even the ones who weren't religious

tended to live more morally upright and ethical lives than most other folks--another reason,

no doubt, for religious hypocrites to despise them.

Still, no matter how someone feels about the moral influence of D&D, no one can deny it

played a highly constructive role in developing the computer game industry. Besides creating

a new type of person--the "gamer," and sowing a generation with seeds of creativity and

imagination, adapting D&D for computers became one of the Holy Grails of early computer

programming. Although many game historians cite Richard Garriott's Akalabeth as the first

CRPG, we can find earlier precedents in the world of mainframes.

The Mainframe Era (The Dark Ages)

  

Hackers on university mainframes got an early start on developing CRPGs, trotting out games

as early as 1974 (the same year Gygax and Arneson released the first Dungeons & Dragons).

Unfortunately, the history here seems a bit murky (thus the title "Dark Ages"), and declaring

  

CRPGs on machines like DEC's PDP-10 and PLATO, a computerized learning system. The first

of these appears to be Rusty Rutherford's pedit5 for PLATO. Pedit5 had most of the basic

features of the genre, such as an explorable dungeon, monstrous foes, collectible treasures,

and a magic system. Unfortunately, we will likely never learn much more about this game

owing to the short-sightedness of PLATO administrators, who had a rather nasty habit of

deleting this game wherever they found it (the many kids who managed to stay a step ahead

of these party-poopers were denigrated as "zbrats"). There may very well have been text-

based CRPGs before Pedit5 that may have simply been lost to history.

  

Later that year, two programmers at Southern Illinois University named Gary Whisenhunt and

Ray Wood created dnd, also designed for PLATO. This graphical game contains many features

that would become staples of the genre, such as the ability to create a character and assign

stats for characteristics like strength, intelligence, and so on. There was also a "level up"

system based on experience points. Monsters got tougher the deeper players went in the

dungeon. This game also marks the first appearance of the "general store" where players can

purchase equipment. Perhaps most important, dnd featured a story and a quest--kill the

dragon and fetch the Orb. It is certainly no surprise that fetching an all-powerful "orb" will

show up again and again as the defining quest of CRPGs! Whisenhunt and Wood's game would

later be the inspiration for Daniel Lawrence's famous Telengard game for the TRS-80 and

Commodore 64 platforms. We'll have more to say about Telengard momentarily.

dnd (mainframe): Pic from Wikipedia (public domain)Meanwhile, a student at Claremont

Graduate University in California, had designed a game called Dungeon, which ran on the

university's PDP-10 mainframes. Like dnd, Dungeon featured a level-up system. However,

one key innovation was the ability to create and operate a whole party of adventurers rather

than just a single character. To this day, there is debate about whether it's more fun to

  

system with "line of sight" vision, which meant that players could only see in the direction

their characters were facing--and took lightness and darkness into account (elves and other

creatures with infravision could see in the dark).

Perhaps the most famous of all CRPGs, however, is the UNIX game Rogue. Created in 1980 by

Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, and Ken Arnold, Rogue was known for its randomized

dungeons, ASCII-based graphics, and complicated gameplay. Rogue represented the player's

character with an at sign (@), and monsters were designated by the first letter of their name

(Z for zombie). The story was simple and would be copied (with slight modifications) in later

games like descend to a specific level of the dungeon (in this case 26),

retrieve a magic item (in this case the Amulet of Yendor), and escape the dungeon. However,

players might have just as much with the game even if they aren't aware of this quest; just

wandering about killing monsters and gaining treasure and experience points are plenty of

fun. Still, Rogue is a very challenging game with a steep learning curve. For one thing, there's

an abundance of confusing keyboard commands to learn (R for remove a ring and r for

reading a scroll), and players practically need a legend to make sense of the "graphical"

display. Secondly, besides dealing successfully with the many monsters and traps in the

game, the character must also be constantly fed. Nevertheless, Rogue was so successful that

it spawned a near limitless number of ports and derivatives called "Roguelikes." Several of

these games have also achieved lasting fame, such as Hack, Moria, Larn, and Omega. It's

very easy to find a version of Rogue or at least a roguelike on just about any computing

platform (indeed, I'm not even sure we could call something that didn't have some form of

Rogue a "computer platform" at all!). I spent any number of hours sloughing my way through

both Larn and Hack on my Commodore Amiga computer, even though I also had access to

games with "better" graphics. A boy with an imagination is content with a warm bowl of ASCII

every evening (though ANSI is quite nice once and awhile).

The question that seldom gets asked about these early "CRPGs" is to what extent they really

recreate the tabletop D&D experience. Although they do manage to mimic some parts quite

effectively--particularly the dice rolling and number crunching--they seem to fall rather flat in

the play-acting department. Somehow I doubt that anyone sitting down for an evening of

Rogue ever donned a pair of cheap elf ears and a faux leather jerkin, though such

accouterments are common enough at real D&D games. Furthermore, although dnd players

might belt out an obscenity every so often, I doubt any of them did so in a Dwarvish accent.

What was clearly missing was the element of "role play" that was such a huge part of the

  

combat and to some extent the strategy and exploration components, but the inherent

abstractness and aloofness of the medium seemed to stop true role-playing at the gate.

Although later on we'll discuss CRPGs that have tried to address these issues in interesting

ways, it's important to see for now that D&D and its computerized "equivalents" actually have

far less in common than most people think.

The Bronze Era (1979-1980)

  

Although thousands of people may have had their first CRPG experience on a mainframe,

most of us would kill our first digital dragon on a personal computer. Although exact dates are

hard to come by, we can say that as early as 1979, at least two commercially-published

CRPGs were available for home computers. One of these was developed by a high schooler

named Richard Garriott, who was sufficiently enamored with D&D to call himself "Lord

British." Garriot's game, Akalabeth: World of Doom, featured wire-frame graphics in first-

person perspective (other parts offer top-down perspective), and was, in many ways, far

ahead of its time. Akalabeth was only available for the Apple II, and some controversy exists

over whether it was first published in 1979 or a year later. Garriott insists that it was released

in 1979, although the first disks and cassettes had copyright 1980 on their label. The other

game was Dunjonquest: Temple of Apshai, by Automated Simulations, Inc. (later re-named

Epyx). Temple of Apshai was the first of a five-game series, though only the three games

making up the "Apshai trilogy" are well known today. Temple of Apshai was first available on

the TRS-80 platform, then the Commodore PET, but was later ported to the Apple II (1980),

Atari home computer (1981), DOS (1982), and finally to the Commodore 64 and Vic 20 in

1983. Let's take a look at Akalabeth first.

  

Akalabeth (1980): Kill this thief quickly, or he'll swipe your gear!By all accounts, Garriott

was both a big fan of Tolkien and of Dungeons & Dragons. The name Akalabeth, for instance,

  

BASIC, a fact that makes the game all the more impressive from a technical perspective (and

allowed players to cheat or modify the game as they saw fit). As mentioned above, the game

features wire-frame first-person perspective, but switches to a top-down view when the

player is on the surface. This innovation would be seen in countless later CRPGs. Akalabeth's

story is straightforward enough. Lord British, "Bearer of the White Light," has recently driven

the evil wizard named Mondain from the kingdom of Akalabeth, but Mondain's monsters still

dwell in dungeons below the surface. The player's task is to descend into these dungeons,

slaughtering foes and venturing to the surface to purchase equipment and procure new quests

from British. British will raise the character's attributes upon completing quest--as well as give

him (or her?) opportunities to advance in rank, such as from peasant to knight. These quests

involve finding and killing increasingly difficult critters.

  

When players begin Akalabeth, they are presented with a few text screens with information

about the game. The first establishes the back story. Subsequent screens tell players what

"strength" and "dexterity" are good for, a list of keyboard commands, and so on. Finally,

players are given the choice between playing a fighter or a magi. As might be expected, the

fighter can't use "the magic amulet," whereas the magi can't fight with rapiers or bows

(though axes are allowed). The magic amulet was an unpredictable item--sometimes it even

turned the player into a powerful Lizard Man. Finally, although the players can select a

difficulty level from 1 to 10, the game is still challenging since the character gobbles up food

with every step. If the food supply runs out, it's game over--a situation that can easily put

even the most powerful players into an unwinnable situation. To make matters even worse,

thieves roaming about the dungeons are more than adept at swiping your character's gear--

carrying a few extra of each item is probably a wise precaution.

  

I can't spell, have no grammar techniques, and have read less than twenty-five books in my

life. -- Richard Garriot (Lord British), as quoted in Hackers by Steven Levy

Unlike Akalabeth, which is easily found online and also available in some Ultima compilations,

Dunjonquest: Temple of Apshai is a very difficult game to come by. Epyx re-released three

games in this series as the Apshai Trilogy in 1983, which featured updated graphics. Try as I

might, the only version of the original game I could find in working condition was the Coleco

Adam version! Unfortunately, that version is comparatively crude to the versions offered on

other platforms and probably not very representative. The Trilogy is very easy to find on a

variety of platforms, however. I played the Apple II version, which I hope is at least similar to

the original.

  

Anyway, I was able to find a scan of the original manual, which is a true treasure for any

historian interested in the early history of CRPGs. Back in 1979, game developers couldn't

expect players to already be familiar with most of the conventions of the genre (they didn't

even exist, yet!). What's interesting about the Apshai manual is the great lengths it goes to

try to convince players they should give RPGs a chance. I'll quote an excerpt here from the

manual's introduction:

Did you grow up in the company of the Brothers Grimm, Snow White, the Red Fairy Book,

Flash Gordon serials, The Three Musketeers, the knights of the Round Table, or any of the

three versions of the The Thief of Bagdad? Have you read the Lord of the Rings, the Worm

Ouroboros, The Incomplete Enchanter, or Conan the Conqueror? Have you ever wished you

could cross swords--just for fun--with Cyrano or D'Artagnan, or stand by their sides in the

chill light of dawn, awaiting the arrival of the Cardinal's Guard? Ever wondered how you'd

have done against the Gorgon, the hydra, the bane of Heorot Hall, or the bull that walks like a

man? (...) If any or all of your answers are "yes," you're a player of role-playing games--or

you ought to be.

The manual goes on at some length in this vein. "RPGs allow you a chance to step outside a

world grown too prosaic for magic and monsters," it claims. Although players may be total

losers in the "real world," the RPG offers them a chance to test their true mettle.

Furthermore, RPGs "can and often do become, for both you and your character, a way of life."

What's even more interesting is how the manual introduces CRPGs as a more convenient way

to role-play. "Ordinary role-playing games require a group of reasonably experienced players,

an imaginative dunjonmaster willing to put in the tremendous amount of time necessary to

construct a functioning fantasy world, and large chunks of playing time." Indeed, "twenty-

hour marathons are not unheard of." What the CRPG offers is a pre-constructed world and

automatic handling of all those complicated math problems. "While there are greater practical

limits to your actions that is usually the case in a non-computer RPG, there are still a large

number of options to choose from." Indeed, many of the more intriguing features of the game

seem to be attempts to bridge the gap between RPGs and CRPGs. For instance, instead of

merely buying items for a set price, players must haggle with the storekeeper. Furthermore,

much of the in-game text is "in character," with "Medieval" tendencies like using "ye" for

"you" and "thy" for "your." The manual also includes textual descriptions of each room of the

dungeon--probably a concession to the limited memory of early home computers.

Interestingly, though, this same "feature" would show up in some later games, particularly

  

Pool of Radiance. My guess is that by then, placing important information in a game manual

was a subtle form of copy protection.

  

Temple of Apshai: Players could get textual descriptions by looking up the "Room No." in

the manual.Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Apshai series is its combat system. The

manual claims that the developers were inspired by "historical research, a knowledge of

various martial arts, and practical experience in the Society for Creative Anachronisms." At

any rate, a "fatigue" system that limits how often you can attack and how far you can run

(your character's wounds and the weight of his equipment also influences the fatigue rate).

The character can also "hearken," or listen for the presence of a monster in an adjoining

room, and even try to talk monsters out of combat. If your character dies, he will suffer one

of four fates--either consumption by a roaming monster, or rescue by a dwarf, mage, or

cleric. If it's the dwarf or mage, your character will lose equipment. Temple of Apshai was

quickly followed up by Datestones of Ryn, Morloc's Tower, and Curse or Ra. The other Apshai

games included Upper Reaches of Apshai and Gateway to Apshai. Epyx released the Trilogy

compilation for a variety of platforms in 1983, but perhaps the best of these was the

Commodore Amiga version released in 1986. Anyone seriously desiring to play the series

today will prefer the Amiga version's enhanced graphics and control scheme.

  

I jumped every time one of those swamp rats appeared. My sword arm got sore from gripping

the hilt of the joystick, and there are wrinkles in my permanent-press armor from hours in

front of the monitor. -- Steve Hudson on Gateway to Apshai, from COMPUTE! ISSUE 60 / MAY

1985 / PAGE 56

Although neither Temple of Apshai nor Akalabeth are particularly playable today, their

historical value cannot be overestimated. Both games were successful in their own right, and

helped launch vitally important series (particularly Akalabeth, which led to the Ultima series).

  

design. There was tremendous room for extensive development. Although the "Golden Age" of

CRPGs wouldn't happen until the mid to late 80s, the "Silver Age"--which we'll discuss next--

introduced some games that are still playable and rewarding today.

The Silver Age (1981-1983)

  

In 1981, the CRPG wasn't nearly as recognizable as a genre as it is today. Only a precious few

commercial games took on the title, and these were cumbersome and hard to play compared

to arcade and adventure games. What the genre really needed was a definitive game (or

preferably a series) that would help garner momentum for the genre. This boost would

happen in 1980 with the release of Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, developed by Richard

Garriott and published by California Pacific Computer Co. Ultima, of course, would quickly

become the premier CRPG series which enjoyed some two decades of installments. Another

series that spawned an important franchise was Sir-Tech's Wizardry, which began in 1981

with Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. Wizardry would also enjoy a very long

career--the eighth installment arrived in 2001. Together, these two series helped define the

genre. However, Ultima and Wizardry weren't the only CRPGs on the shelf. Daniel Lawrence

released his Telengard in 1982, a game based on the old mainframe dnd game described

above. Two other important games released in 1982 are Tunnels of Doom for the TI-99/4A,

and Dungeons of Daggorath for the Tandy CoCo. Rounding out this era are The Sword of

Fargoal, released in 1983 by Epyx, and Ultima III, a game that many CRPG enthusiasts cite as

the first modern CRPG. Let's start, then, with the Ultima series.

The Ultima Series

  

Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness marks a number of important firsts for the genre. Perhaps

the most important is the game's use of tiled graphics. Tiled graphics required much less

storage space and allowed for large, colorful environments. Like Akalabeth, the game was

originally available only for the Apple II platform, though Sierra On-Line released an Atari 8-

bit port in 1982, with more ports to follow in 1986. At the time, the game was hailed for its

immense size and "evolutionary" aspect--players started off in the Middle Ages, but later

traveled through time. What other game started with daggers and leather and ended up with

blasters and spaceships? It was truly an ambitious game. The game also abandoned the

"parser" control scheme of Akalabeth and was played by simple keystrokes like Apshai. The

game even features some arcade space combat action!

  

Ultima I (C-64): Tile-based graphics for CRPGs would become a distinguishing feature of

console RPGs.The storyline is related very much to Akalabeth's, and features many of the

same characters. The player's mission is to seek out and destroy the evil wizard Mondain's

"gem of power," which he's used to enslave the lands of Sosaria. However, Ultima is a much

more sophisticated game than its predecessor, and players soon learned the values of

creative gameplay. For instance, players could steal powerful items from the shops that would

make them nearly invulnerable--at least at the early stages of the game. Of course,

successful thieving might require a few reloads, but for frustrated players, it was a price

worth paying.

  

Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, released in 1982, is an even more ambitious

game than its prequel. Like the first game, this one involves both fantasy and sci-fi elements,

particular space and time travel. The basic plot here is that Mondain's apprentice, Minax, has

come of age and is now threatening the space-time continuum itself. The fact that the player

has to travel to so many different places and times brings to mind Sierra On-Line's colossal

Time Zone, released the same year. Unfortunately, Ultima II was riddled with bugs, and some

critics think that Garriott's deteriorating relationship with Sierra led to a less-than-polished

product. Apparently, Garriott didn't feel that Sierra was playing fair with royalties from the

  IBM PC version of the game.

The final Ultima game of the Silver Age was Ultima III: Exodus, released in 1983. The game is

aptly named because, by this time, Garriott had left Sierra and formed his own company,

Origin Systems. It's often hailed as one of the most influential games ever made, both on

American and Japanese CRPG development (a fact that's almost painfully clear in console

games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy). The story this time is that Mondain and Minax's

evil progeny, Exodus (after all, anybody who names their kid "Exodus" should know from

whence it came). The game differs from the earlier Ultima games in a number of ways. For

  

combat system is also enhanced and gets its own special gameplay screen, so that players

must battle multiple creatures and develop much more complicated tactics. The player also

spent time talking to townspeople to gather clues and information. Furthermore, this game

features coherent dungeons that don't change across sessions, so that players are

encouraged to make their own maps on graph paper. Finally, the characters' actions are much

more unified towards a single goal than in the other games, where many dungeons were

simply "irrelevant." The game was a tremendous success for Garriott and Origin, and versions

were available for most major computing platforms and even the NES.

Wizardry

  

Although Ultima was quickly laying the foundations of the genre, it wasn't the only kid on the

block. A company named Sir-Tech began publishing a prominent rival series in regular

installments starting in 1981. While it had much in common with Akalabeth, it differed in

some key respects. First off, it was a party-based rather than a single-character dungeon-

crawler. Like Rogue, the mission here was to descend into a dungeon and find an magical

amulet, smashing whatever got in the way. However, this game had better graphics and a

very intuitive layout. While most of the screen was taken up by relevant statistics and other

information, the top left corner offered a first-person, 3-D perspective of the dungeon (or a

picture of the enemy during combat). The dungeons were always the same from game to

game, so again players were rewarded by making their own maps (or purchasing them).

  

Wizardy (NES): The NES version has the best graphics and is probably the most reliable

version.The second installment, The Knight of Diamonds, was published in 1982, and required

that players complete the former game to play--a "feature" that was quickly corrected in later

versions. In modern parlance, the game was an "expansion pack" for the first game.

  

armor needed to fight off a city's besiegers, to complete the game. The third game, Legacy of

Llylgamyn, released in 1983, is yet another "dungeon crawler," but this time players begin at

the bottom of a volcano and work their way up. The goal is to find a dragon named L'Kbreth,

who can save the city of Llyamyn from earthquakes and the volcano's eruption. Again

characters had to be imported from previous games, but were stripped of their experience.

Furthermore, players had to choose moral alignments for their characters, a fact that

determined which parts of the world could be visited.

  

All in all, the first three Wizardry games are much more consistent across titles than the

Ultima series. Unlike Garriott, who seemed determined to revolutionize the series with each

installment, Sir-Tech seemed to follow the old "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" adage. Regardless,

the Wizardry games are still fairly playable today, though perhaps more for historical or

nostalgic value than pure enjoyment.

One-Shots

  

There are at least four other games that make up the Silver Age of CRPGs. These include

Telengard, The Sword of Fargoal, Tunnels of Doom, and Dungeons of Daggorath. While these

games are perhaps not as well known as the above mentioned series, they are nevertheless

significant and deserve our attention.

  

The first of these, Daniel Lawrence's Telengard, was released by Avalon Hill in 1982 for the

Commodore PET (though quickly ported to many other platforms, most popularly the C-64).

  

Telengard was directly inspired by the PLATO dnd game mentioned above, with minimal

graphics and randomized dungeons. The game contains many features that were repeated in

many later games, such as fountains, thrones, altars, and teleportation cubes, all of which

characters could interact with (with random and occasionally quite nasty results). The game is

also set in real-time (players who take a bathroom break during their game will likely find