The Facts
Written by Randall Don Masteller, and published by Screenplay in 1982. First in a trilogy of four, with increasingly desparate spellings (it was followed by Kaiv, Wylde and, erm, Ziggurat). My pet theory is that Dungeons & Dragons rights holder TSR might have been engaging in Tim Langdell-style trademark trolling (no pun intended) with regard to the word “Dungeon”, since Temple of Apshai was also known as “Dunjonquest”. Anyway, this is the 1983 C64 port.
The Cover
A very early example of a Western RPG influenced by an Eastern art style, the titular Warrior of Ras giving us the supermodel pout on the cover has long flowing blond hair, baby smooth skin and exceptionally well defined cheekbones, not to mention a fetching asymmetric top. So I’m sure he won’t mind me giving him a girl’s name. Technically it’s the name of a mostly imaginary mince-based dish but you have to admit it does have a feminine sort of ring to it. It’s fair to say that the androgyny factor was toned down in the artwork of the three subsequent games in the series.
The Lore
In quest of treasure you descend deeper and deeper into the dungeon.
And that’s the plot.
Character Building
Hi! My name is Keema Korma VIII, Warrior of Ras! (Ras being the name of a fantasy world that contains dungeons).
The Game
According to a message at the bottom of the screen I have been tasked with finding the Fiery Scarab of Qucaw. To be honest I’m not sure they’ve picked the right person, because I have a history of being killed quite early on by monsters in dungeon-based quest games. In this case I meet several characters who don’t seem to want to fight (skeletons, ghouls and fighters) and trip over a hidden trip wire. The first barney I do get into is with a skeleton, who kills me with a single blow to the chest.
Total play time: 5 minutes
Verdict: I haven’t the slightest idea whether I enjoyed that or not.
The Facts
Dragonstomper has the coolest name out of all the RPGs, and I know because I’ve seen all of them written down. Released by Starpath for the fetchingly wood-panelled Atari 2600 (my grandad had one of those) in 1982, it may or may not be the first console RPG (a licensed Dungeons & Dragons game was released for the Colecovision in the same year). According to Wikipedia, Forbes magazine called it “The best title ever made in the history of US videogaming” in 2005 and they wouldn’t say something that wasn’t true. Downloaded from www.atarimania.com and running on Stella.
The Cover
The should-be-iconic image of a bloke wearing a sort of dragon-headed helmet.
The Lore
Once this was a happy place to live. There was plenty to eat and drink, and the children could play safely in the forests. The King was wise and ruled with a gentle hand.
It’s a matter of fact rather than opinion when I say that stylistically that is a million times better than anything with thees or thous in it.
Then a Druid magician completed the enchantment of a powerful amulet. The amulet, thought the Druid, would subdue the dragon. The Druid, controlling the fierce beast, would become invincible. So, amulet in hand, the Druid magician entered the dragon’s cave. And fell into a trap.
So the kingdom is being terrorised by a dragon. So far, so humdrum. But here’s the twist. The dragon is not intrinsically evil, and if you can relieve him of the magical amulet that’s the source of his power it might even be possible to rehabilitate him. Fascinating.
Character Building
I am Keema Korma VII, Stomper of Dragons.
The Game
Although I wouldn’t rate this particular character’s chances against a dragon, since their entire life consisted of alternately fighting and running away from monsters until the icy hand of death closed around their throat. It went something like this:
Oh no, a slime!!! Oh no, a spider!!! You kill the spider. You gain a key!! Oh no, a monkey!!! You kill the monkey. You gain a potion!! Oh no, scorpions!!! Oh no, a snake!!! Oh no, a monkey!!!
Oh no, a ghoul!!! Trap!!! You are dead.
Total play time: 5 minutes
Verdict: Not as good as that other 2600 classic, Adventure, this game’s definitely a victim of that imperfect adaptation syndrome I was talking about before. See, if it wasn’t for the combat, you’d walk to the end and finish the game in seconds, but there’s literally no skill involved in the combat, apart from waiting to see if your hit points increase. Next!
The Facts
It’s easy to forget now, but in the early eighties, the RPG wasn’t a genre as such. There were so few examples around that each new one pretty much had to reinvent the wheel. It’ll be a while before we see these games starting to influence one another. Temple Of Apshai is another “classic” RPG that I hadn’t heard of until yesterday, and another game from Epyx. It first came out in 1979 or 1980 (it’s funny how many classic RPGs get these two years mixed up), but I don’t do the TRS-80 or even the Apple II. So this is the C64 version, dating from 1983.
The Cover
Considerably classier than the Rogue or Sword Of Fargoal covers, one version has an illustration that I can only describe as an etching. It shows an adventurer battling a pair of giant ants, and it looks like it was posed about a quarter of a second before one of the ants bit him in the “family jewels”. An alternate (later?) version has a considerably more lurid image of a warrior in an anatomically astonishing breastplate fighting a fire-breathing dragon. I hope he doesn’t have a metal shield, or he’s going to get burns literally all over his body.
The Lore
For more generations than any man living could count, this entire corner of the continent was dedicated to the worship of Geb, god of the earth. Into the area came worshippers of Apshai, the insect god, who claimed knowledge far in advance of that possessed by the followers of Geb. However it was widely known that this knowledge came from dark and sorcerous practices, and the Gebite priests, fearing the results of their grisly rites, led their people to drive the outlanders from the village.
All of which could make an interesting backstory, but all you, the hero, have to do is enter the titular temple and get as much treasure as you can. What’s really interesting about this game is that it claims to be a real, actual Role Playing Game in computer game form, even going so far as to invite you to import your characters from pen-and-paper games like, erm, that one that rhymes with Bunions And Baggins. Never having played a Role Playing Game in my life, I will not be able to comment on the accuracy of this claim, but it certainly sounds ambitious.
Character Building
Essentially there are two choices when it comes to character creation. You can create your adventurer at random, or you can simply type in whatever numbers you choose for your character attributes (you can enter anything between 3 and 18.) Of course there’s nothing to stop you entering 18 for everything, but if you do that you’re only cheating yourself.
I decide to play the game, and I conclude that Keema Korma VI will have attributes not dissimilar to III when she met her fate in Wizardry. So looking that up and using Temple Of Apshai’s handy conversion kit that provides me with a decent list of stats to use. She has also inherited Keema III’s 33 gold, but inheritance tax has reduced it to 33 silver. However being a brand new character she hasn’t inherited her ancestor’s 3955 experience points.
What kind of sword hast thou? is the game’s next question. What kind of question is that? The kind of question that asked by one who expects me to know what the kinds of swords are, that’s what. I decide that randomly generating a character will be safer.
Ok, the REAL Keema VI has entirely random stats of:
Intelligence 9
Intuition 8
Ego 15
Strength 13
Constitution 11
Dexterity 7
She also has 70 silver, which is an improvement.
Shopping time. Wilt thou buy one of our fine swords, you ask. Too right I will. I go for a short sword, like those used by the ancient Romans to conquer the known world. I fear my crappy dexterity might lead me to drop anything more ambitious. Apparently the shopkeeper wants me to haggle. I did have a go at a game once, I think it was Morrowind, where the shopkeepers wanted to haggle but if you offered them anything less than the asking price for equipment they’d basically laugh in your face. But these ones are surprisingly receptive to a bit of hard bargaining. More so than my local Toyota dealer, anyway. I also invest in a small shield and some leather armour, and a salve, whatever that is.
The Game
So here we are, in Level 1, Room 1. Temple Of Apshai has a curious system wherein a text adventure-style description for each room is to be found in the manual, which is intended to add colour. However it loses points because the room descriptions don’t change when you pick up an object. Obviously.
Now that’s weird. The door from Room 1 leads to Room 3. I’m not going to make a map. I should be able to memorise it.
Now, here (in Room 11) I meet my first foe, a dirty great Antman who appears from behind a corner, nearly scaring me out of my wits. I came here to fight creatures, so fight them I shall. Gottim.
In the next room I am slain by a skeleton. Curses. And yet resurrected by a dwarf. Go me.
“The walls of the room are covered with algae. Most of the algae is black and rotten, but the few remaining patches have a nutty aroma and, if tasted, are reminiscent of spiced bread.”
Ten pounds of algae. Ten pounds of mushrooms. Ten pounds of kelp. Clearly Level 1 is fit only for greengrocers. There’s literally nothing else on Level 1, unless you like feeling every single wall several times to see if it contains a secret passage. So I leave and go back to the shop, whereupon I am confronted by a series of extremely confusing messages.
It takes another hour of faffing around before I work out that I don’t actually need to save to go down a level or buy more equipment, which is good because the game crashes every time I try to save it. So I start again and am eaten by an antman in the second room.
Total play time: 30mins
Verdict: This game is missing two things. Given its vintage, the dodgy controls and bizarre interface are understandable. Less so is the lack of motivation, which might (and that’s a big might) make perfect sense in a collaborative game, but none at all in a computer game. The difference in approach between this and Akalabeth is primarily that the latter is a pure computer game whereas this one feels stranded in swampy middle ground.
The Facts
Another “classic” RPG that I hadn’t heard of until last week. Written by Jeff McCord for the Vic-20 and published by Epyx (them again) in 1982. I’m playing the 1983 C64 port (available from the author’s site) on VICE, although an iPhone version has just been released. You’ll have to bear with me, as I’m not used to the C64 or its emulators, which is a massive oversight in my education that needs urgent correction.
The Cover
Possibly drawn by someone unfamiliar with human anatomy, the cover shows a gangly armoured warrior and a pot-bellied humanoid creature halfway between an ape and an orc. It’s not quite clear what they are doing. Both facing the artist, they are touching at the hip, and the distended belly of the monster appears to be resting upon the adventurer’s thigh. The creature is piteously raising an arm in self defence. The adventurer, holds a shield to protect his opposite flank as he prepares to deliver a killing blow with his dagger. It looks a little bit like one of those on-set photographs of a “domestic” distributed to TV guides ahead of an especially violent episode of Coronation Street.
Like this, basically.
Oh yeah, and there’s a massive sword on a table in front of them, its handle close to the creature’s right hand, though he doesn’t go for it. The publisher’s name is considerably more prominent on the sleeve than the game’s title.
The Lore
The misty powers of magic have settled over the Great Forest lands, twisting, swirling into every nook of the village of Ferrin. Evil spells wisp about like fog, draining courage and trust from the hearts of men. Good magics have vanished, and no longer are there brave warriors who wield weapons of steel against the land’s enemies. The Protectorate Sword is gone!
Good lands turned bad are becoming something of a theme. It turns out that the protagonist’s task is to retrieve the sword and get it to the only man who can defeat the evil wizard, or in other words they couldn’t be bothered to end the game with a boss fight.
Character Building
No need for that here. Keema Korma V is a standard adventurer, with 11 hit points.
The Game
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go into a dungeon, kill monsters and/or people and steal their treasure. Looks very much like it’s going to be a roguelike, but with real-time features, which makes it something of a first for this list.
On playing, the term roguelike turns out to be slightly misleading. It certainly goes over the same territory, but in a slightly different car. Compared to Rogue, the levels tend to be more mazelike in appearance, and you can only see unexplored regions of the map one square in front of you, which calls to mind a first-person game. The role playing experience is highly simplified, even more so than Rogue. There are six spells, one potion and no choice of weapons.
But the game’s innovation is that it takes place in real-time, giving it a notch on the Action axis of the RPG graph, although it’s no Gauntlet. Combat strategy is entirely limited to knowing who not to mess with.
So I make damn sure I’m going to level up as much as I can on weak monsters before facing tough ones. This works well at first, but if you hang around for too long on any given level, bad guys from the lower levels become impatient and start to climb up to look for you. I’m only on the second level of the dungeon, having defeated orcs, trolls, werebears, a mercenary and a monk) and have been hiding in a chapel (a “safe zone” that appears on every level) to restore my lost hit points. That done, I head for the stairs down when I meet an assassain. Much tougher, since you ask. Before I could run, my hit points spurted across the dungeon floor like warm arterial blood. Once more, cut down in my prime.
Total play time: 15 minutes
Verdict: Definitely feels like an imperfect adaptation of the concept of a roleplaying game, as though the author has cast away some of the elements that would never work on computer but hasn’t yet figured out what to replace them with. Of historical interest only.
Filed under: dosbox live arcade, man vs genre | Tags: hack, roguelike, rpg
The Facts
The Unix-based roguelike which was originally developed by Jay Fenlason circa 1982 and which later became Nethack. This is the uncredited DOS port, known as Hack121, obtained from http://www.roguelikedevelopment.org/archive/index.php. There is no plot, just get in them dungeons and do your stuff.
Character Building
The game doesn’t know this, but I’m Keema Korma IV.
I have 12 hit points and 14 strength.
The Game
Starts the same as Akalabeth, funnily enough, in a shop. I have 90 gold pieces (the international currency of fantasy). I need weapons, armour and food. I decide to postpone death by getting expensive armour and cheap everything else. I buy “splint mail” for 80gp, a hand axe for 1gp and nine rations of food.
I find myself in a small room with what according to the documentation is some gold and a scroll. These I take. As in Rogue, the scrolls are labelled in gibberish. This one says “Kernod Wel.” I read it, and it makes my armour rust.
In the next room is a monster, represented by the letter j. j for jackal. It dies under my axe. Another room contains a pair of kobolds and a lizard. Dead now. I am down to 5 hit points. I check to see if eating food will increase my hit points. It doesn’t, but they seem to regenerate with time anyway. Then I meet a bat. Then a pickpocket. Then another jackal, and a goblin. And now I am Level 2. Fear me, creatures of darkness.
To celebrate, I head back to the shop with the 88gp I found in the dungeon, to buy better weapons. Or at least, I go back up the stairs thinking it will lead to the shop, and the game thinks I have wimped out and ends with a message that flickers onto the screen too fast to read. Running the game in Dosbox and turning the CPU speed down from 3000 cycles to 5 reveals that it was a high score table.
Time to break my own rule and play again.
This time I have 170gp to spend in the shop, so the starting amount of cash must be randomised. God knows what I’m supposed to do with any money I do find in the dungeon; perhaps there are more shops further down. Once again I want the most expensive armour. This time I notice the shop is selling light sources, so one of those might come in handy. I take the splint mail, a two-handed sword, a shield, twenty torches, twenty rations of food, and two random potions.
That sword I bought? Cursed. I’d take it back if I could without the game ending. (Actually I think Cursed just means it’s stuck to my hand, which is probably not going to be a major problem since that is very much where I want it.) The potions turn out to be speed and extra hit points. These should come in handy if I meet any tough monsters further down the dungeon.
Start in small room. Go to next room. Fight kobold. Cut down in my prime by a kobold. This isn’t how it was supposed to end.
Total play time: 10 minutes
Verdict: Unfair. Of course it’s unfair, it’s a roguelike.
