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

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 war games like Avalon Hill's

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

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

Gamblers Anonymous), 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

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 Steven Johnson

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 this analysis 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)

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.

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 The Sword of Fargoal: 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

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.

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,

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."

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

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 (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.

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).

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).

DND, may have been played by contemporary developers. Regardless, Telengard is a fine game that still enjoys considerable appreciation today.

Perhaps SSI and Lord British and all the others already know how to create such a fantasy. But if they ever did publish a game in which we weren't always concentrating on the details of housekeeping, maybe we'd notice the fact that nobody in this whole genre has thought of a new idea since 1951 -- Orson Scott Card, from COMPUTE! ISSUE 115 / DECEMBER 1989 / PAGE 92

Telengard is about as close to a pure "dungeon crawler" as you can get. There are no ultimate quests or missions; the focus is entirely on survival and gaining enough experience to improve your character. Jeff McCord's The Sword of Fargoal, released in 1982 for the Commodore VIC-20 (the more familiar C-64 version followed in 1983), shares many of

Telengard's features, but restores the quest--this time, to descend into a dungeon, retrieve the eponymous blade, and escape. To my mind, it's one of the more accessible and playable of the early CRPGs. Since I reviewed the game in some detail in an earlier article, I'll focus here on what makes the game significant amidst all this competition. One nice feature is the "fog of war" effect, which essentially amounts to an auto-mapping feature. Although the game is set in third-person, top-down perspective, the inability to see parts of the map that haven't been explored add tension, particularly since the game is in real-time. For some reason, The Sword of Fargoal doesn't seem to get as much attention as its contemporaries, even though its interface is more intuitive. Indeed, I could easily see a version of this game for mobile phones.

If you habitually toss aside the instruction book in a game package, resist the urge this time. In fact, set aside an afternoon in which to play the game. -- Sherrie Van Tyle and Joe Devlin on Tunnels of Doom in CREATIVE COMPUTING VOL. 9, NO. 9 / SEPTEMBER 1983 / PAGE 135

Tunnels of Doom, like Dungeons of Daggorath, are relatively obscure titles because they were released only for a single platform. Nevertheless, they became highly successful and are considered some of the best games for the TI-99/4A and Tandy CoCo, respectively. Tunnels of Doom might be best described as a mix of themes from Telengard and Wizardry. Like

Telengard, there are fountains, altars, and thrones that have random effects on players willing to experiment with them. However, Tunnels of Doom followed Wizardry's example by allowing the player to control a party rather than a single adventurer. Tunnels of Doom also predated

In combat, the view shifts to a top-down, third-person perspective. This mode would show up in plenty of later games. Besides Ultima III, it was also a defining characteristic of SSI's Pool of Radiance and later "Gold Box Games," released after 1988. (For more information about this game, see my earlier review in Armchair Arcade.)

Tunnels of Doom (TI-99/4A): Separate game/exploration gameplay screens would become standard in many later CRPGs.Dungeons of Daggorath, developed by DynaMicro, is more like

Akalabeth in the use of wire-frame, first-person, 3-D perspective. However, this game is in real-time, and features a fatigue system similar to the one found in the Apshai series. A pulsing heart at the bottom of the screen beats faster or slower depending on the stress of the character. Taking too much damage or moving too quickly will cause the player to faint, thus becoming monster meat. Dungeons of Daggorath also departs a bit from the D&D

convention by eschewing so much emphasis on math. Instead of showing how many "hit points" the character has left, players must listen to the heart to determine how much damage their character can take before submitting. It's a fine system that adds a great deal of realism and intensity to the game! (Again, I'll point eager readers to my earlier review of this game).

Finally, I might mention that by 1983 a number of commercial ports of the mainframe classic

Final Thoughts

Whew! Now, you have to admit, it takes a writer of some diligence (or should we say, dalliance?) to bite off so much in one chew. In some ways, the first three years of CRPG development on home computers represented more progress than we'll see in the latter 26. Although no single game really contained all of the qualities that we associate with a good CPRG today, you could already pick and choose the elements from individual games. What is

Pool of Radiance, we might ask, but a combination of Tunnels of Doom and Wizardry? What is

Diablo but an updated Telengard? How far have we really come from the days of Pedit5, dnd,

and Dungeon?

Indeed, it's in this spirit that we should prepare for the next installment in this series--the Golden Age of CRPGs. Things really began heating up for the genre as the Ultima and

Wizardry series continued to refine their formulas in subsequent installments, but the really exciting stuff was taking place at different companies--most notably, Electronic Arts, SSI, and

New World Computing. Next time, we'll talk about classic titles like Phantasie, Pool of Radiance, The Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, Dungeon Master, and Wasteland. Do I need to beg and plead with you to keep your eyes on this site for the SECOND massive installment in

The History of Computer Role-Playing Games

Part2: The Golden Age (1985-1993)

[Note:The following is part two of Matt

Barton's in-depth series on the history

of computer role- playing games. We

highly recommend referring to Part One:

The Early Years before reading this article!]

Welcome back, brave adventurer, to the second part of my history of our favorite genre of computer game--the Computer Role-Playing Game (the CRPG). Last time, we explored the CRPG's murky precursors, which included tabletop war and sports games like Tactics and Strat-O-Matic. Of course, I also discussed the CRPG's most direct ancestor, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson's Dungeons & Dragons game, which itself derived mostly from their earlier fantasy-based strategy game called Chainmail. Since so much of D&D consists of mathematics, programmers realized at once that a considerable bulk of the game was well suited for play on a computer. The first CRPGs appeared on mainframes like the PDP-10 and a special educational platform called PLATO. By the early 1980s, these graphically simplistic but technically masterful games had been adapted or ported to almost every home computer on the market. Although the first commercial CRPGs for home computers (Akalabeth for the Apple II and Temple of Apshai for the Commodore PET and TRS-80) are hardly ever played today, they laid the groundwork for much of what would follow.

Throughout the "Silver Age," which lasted from 1981 until 1983, change would come gradually and mostly consist of improvements in graphics and user interface. Important series like Ultima and Wizardry appeared on the market, solidifying every gamer's expectations about what a CRPG should be. Meanwhile, innovative games like Telengard, Dungeons of Daggorath (Tandy CoCo), Tunnels of Doom (TI-99/4A), and The Sword of Fargoal (VIC-20, C-64) offered new alternatives to gamers and new models for developers. In short, by 1983, the field was sown with great ideas and impressive examples, but everyone knew that the best was yet to come.

By 1985, the CRPG would enter what I have chosen to call "The Golden Age," the period from 1985 to 1993, when the very best CRPG makers were steadily releasing masterpieces in an orgiastic frenzy of creative development. Indeed, the triumphs of this period would not be matched until the "Platinum Age" of the mid-90s, when outstanding developers Bioware, Bethesda, and Blizzard arrived on the scene. However, although

Baldur's Gate and Diablo may receive far more attention and interest today than Golden Age classics like The Bard's Tale or The Pool of Radiance, we must forever keep in mind that these earlier games were their direct ancestors. Later developers would only refine, not re-define, the genre. Anyone who truly desires to understand the CRPG must turn her attention to the Golden Age, the era in which towering developers like Interplay, SSI, New World Computing, and FTL released games so superbly designed that they are still actively played by tens of thousands of gamers even today. There are few games that can arouse more passion than venerable Golden Age titles like Wasteland, Dungeon Master, and Quest for Glory. But enough of this build-up; it's time to enter the Golden Age of CRPGs!

The Transition to the Golden Age

Let's travel back for a moment and put ourselves in the shoes of a hardcore CRPG gamer living in 1983. If we were asked to wager on which company would dominate the CRPG market for the next five years, the sensible choice would be Richard Garriott's Origin Systems, and indeed, that company did achieve great things. In 1983, Origin's Ultima

series was the undisputed market leader, and the games just kept getting better with each installment. Ultima III: Exodus was widely hailed as the best CRPG ever made, and there was a good chance that the upcoming fourth game would make it look like

Akalabeth. If we wanted to hedge a bit, we might put some money on Sir-Tech, whose difficult Wizardry series was quite respectable and had its fair share of zealous, hardcore fans. Like Ultima, Wizardry was a long way from dead and had not yet released its most famous games. In short, if anyone had suggested to us that two hitherto unknown developers--Interplay Productions and Strategic Simulations, Inc.--would soon challenge Garriott's throne and put Wizardry in the "where are they now file," we'd have either laughed or scratched our heads. Yet, by 1990, gamers were just as likely to beg their parents for the next Bard's Tale or SSI "Gold Box" game as anything from Origin or Sir-Tech. In any case, 1985 remains one of the most historically significant years for the CRPG.

Oubliette (C-64): Not a pretty game, but who cares when you have an option to Seduce?

developed for the PLATO system, but is more directly based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and TSR's official dungeon guides (i.e., the "real" D&D rules). Oubliette had originally been a multiplayer game, and the home version retained the ability to create many characters and select groups of them for each "dungeon romp." Furthermore, although it is quite limited graphically, it is quite sophisticated in terms of gameplay. You could choose among ten classes (including peasant!) when creating characters, and then join guilds to further refine them. In short, Oubliette offers a range of options and depth of play that really wouldn't be equaled until the Modern Age. A company named R.O. Software also ported the mainframe classic DND to MS-DOS, offering it under a "shareware" license. Although the author, a mysterious Digital contractor known simply as "Bill," charged $25 for his game, he did not bother to get permission to do so from Daniel Lawrence, the author of the original version. Since Lawrence was trying to earn his fortune selling his own commercial version for home computers--Telengard--he bitterly resented what he saw as unfair competition. Bill claimed that he deserved the compensation for cleaning up Lawrence's "spaghetti" code. R.O. Software released an update in 1988 called Dungeon of the Necromancer's Domain, a "ground-up rewrite" of the game that apparently differed enough to avoid future conflict with Lawrence. For more information about this quarrel, see the Unofficial DND page, where, incidentally, you can also download many of the games in question.

Another interesting text-based game from this period is Zyll, a game Scott Edwards and Marshal Linder wrote while they working for IBM (the game was submitted to IBM's employee submissions program). Zyll is essentially a hybrid text-adventure with real-time, CRPG elements. Furthermore, it allows two players to either compete or cooperate with each other to find the Black Orb (the game is of the fetch-the-object variety). Although it was intended for IBM's short-lived PCjr. computer, which featured advanced graphics and sound capabilities, Zyll was a text game that would run on just about any PC-compatible (though there are issues with the keyboard layout, since the menus are based on IBM's old PC/XT function key setup).

However, these games are of little interest to modern gamers and are more the domain of historians and older gamers suffering from nostalgia. No, it was a new game from Electronic Arts that was about to strike a new chord, changing the CRPG forever, and in the meantime, the best CRPGs ever made were looming on the horizon. CRPG fans just hadn't seen anything yet.

The Dawn of the Golden Age

If you were a CRPG fan living in 1985, you were one of the luckiest gamers in history. Never before had such a torrent of high-quality commercial titles appeared simultaneously on the shelf. Perhaps the most significant of these was the launch of Interplay's Tales of the Unknown Vol. 1: The Bard's Tale, which introduced the famous

Bard's Tale trilogy. Although there were certainly excellent CRPGs before it, The Bard's Tale was intuitive and addictive enough to attract a mainstream audience, no doubt due in part to the marketing might of its publisher, Electronic Arts. 1985 also saw the launch of SSI's Phantasie series, as well as their game Wizard's Crown. Although SSI wouldn't reach its zenith until it acquired the priceless TSR license and began marketing official

AD&D games, their early games are far from shabby.

Other significant games of 1985 include Origin's Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, as well as Autoduel and Moebius: The Orb of Celestial Harmony. Like Autoduel, DataSoft's

Alternate Reality: The City offered gamers an alternative to the traditional swords and sorcery theme of so many CRPGs. In short, 1985 and 1986 were some of the most formative years for the CRPG, and there are many important developments to cover. Let's get started then with The Bard's Tale trilogy.

Down and Out in Skara Brae

Bard's Tale III (C-64): The third game is probably the best in the series, with great graphics and just the right level of complexity.

Although the Ultima and Wizardry series did more to establish the CRPG's basic conventions, it was Interplay that really refined and demonstrated that the genre wasn't just for "hardcore" gamers. Tales of the Unknown Vol. 1: The Bard's Tale, released in 1985 for the Commodore 64 and Apple II (ports for other platforms would follow until 1990), is probably the first CRPG that many readers will recognize from their youth. Indeed, The Bard's Tale's undeniable mainstream appeal was probably not matched by another company until Blizzard's Diablo in 1997. The game was so successful, in fact, that Baen Books launched a series of eight novels based on the games, some penned by such well-known fantasy authors as Mercedes Lackey! Although the final Bard's Tale

game was released in 1991, in 2004 Brian Fargo and InXile Entertainment revived the franchise with a "spiritual sequel" for the PS2, Xbox, and Windows. But what was it about this series that made it so enduring?

"When the going gets tough, the bard goes drinking." –from The Bard's Tale instruction manual.

After all, like Wizardry, the first Bard's Tale is a challenging game even for expert D&D

upgrade to sorcerers and wizards. Truly ambitious players could even combine all these

to create fearsome archmages.

Nevertheless, anyone who has played the game for any length of time discovers that it is much greater than the sum of its parts. There's just an indefinable quality that seems to hold the game together. No doubt, much of the game's playability is owed to the clean interface and striking color graphics (many of which are animated). Even novice players can learn the game's rules in a few sessions, and if the characters can survive to reach a few levels, the difficulty eases up considerably--and it's quite rewarding to go about whomping monsters who made a meal out of your former parties. Furthermore, the ability to travel outdoors as well as indoors lends a certain coherence to the game world. Unlike other CRPGs in which cities and towns were little more than places to buy equipment, Skara Brae felt like a real place. Again, this coherence is almost surely an effect of the game's rich graphics. Even if the graphics look primitive today, in 1985 they were stunning. Each building in Skara Brae looked like it belonged there.

Interplay followed up its success with two sequels, The Destiny Knight (1986) and The Thief of Fate (1991). The Destiny Knight was essentially a rehash of the first game, using the same engine but expanding the game world to include five other cities (the first game had occurred entirely in Skara Brae) and a wilderness area. It also added banks and casinos to the services available in the towns, special spells for archmages, timed puzzles, and ranged combat. Though players can import their characters from the first game, the difficulty level is better balanced for new parties (i.e., you have a much better chance of making it to Garth's store to buy equipment before dying).

Although the characters dispatched the evil Mangar the Dark in the first game, another evil mage named Lagoth Zanta decides to shatter the "Destiny Wand" into seven pieces, scattering them across the land. Since the wand has protected the world for some 700 years, things don't bode well unless your characters can restore the wand and use it to slay Lagoth Zanta (one wonders what the wand was doing during the first game, but so it goes). Solving the game will require gaining insights from a Sage, a process that utilizes a rather infantile and frustrating text parser.

The Thief of Fate is probably the overall best designed game of the series, since it incorporates helpful new features like auto-mapping and the ability to use items to solve puzzles, thus opening up many interesting opportunities for thoughtful gameplay. The third game is also the most ambitious in terms of the game world; now the players must explore whole different "universes," including a trip to Nazi Berlin!

Electronic Arts also published Interplay's The Bard's Tale Construction Set for Commodore's Amiga and the MS-DOS platforms. This construction set included an updated version of the first game in the series (rechristened the Star Light Festival). However, more importantly, the set allowed CRPG fans to construct their own new games based on the enhanced Thief of Fate engine. The construction kit was popular on many platforms, but the most useful version available for MS-DOS, which had support for hard drives, VGA, mouse, and the usual slew of sound cards. Strangely, while music was played through the sound card, all sound effects were delegated to the PC's totally inadequate internal speaker. The two most well-known games created with the set include The Bard's Lore: The Warrior and the Dragon created by John H. Wigforss, and

Nutilan by Dennis Payne. Both of these games were for the PC version. Of course, there were undoubtedly many thousands of other "homebrew" titles created by other fans, but the Internet as we know it had not yet arrived on the scene. Since these hobbyist developers had no way to cheaply distribute their games, most are lost to history. Thankfully, at least one ambitious developer is still releasing games built with the system--see Warrior's Tale, released in 2006.

the genre, The Bard's Tale was not alone. Another company that was beginning to flex its muscles was SSI, an old publisher of war games who had now set their sights on the budding CRPG market.

The Infant Phantasies of Strategic Simulations, Inc: Any

Questrons?

Today, Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) is best known for its fabulous "Gold Box" games, a series of CRPGs that bore the official seal of TSR, holder of the sacred Dungeons & Dragon copyrights and trademarks. This invaluable license was sought after by nearly every other CRPG developer, but SSI emerged victorious. No doubt TSR's decision was swayed by SSI's legacy as a developer and publisher of computer-based "war games" (as you remember, D&D emerged from tabletop war games). SSI's first game was Computer Bismarck, published in 1979 for the Apple II. SSI quickly became the market leader in this niche, even with the premier wargames publisher Avalon Hill competing against them. SSI's most famous non-CRPG game is probably Cytron Masters (1982), one of the first (if not the first) real-time strategy games. It was designed by Dani Bunten, creator

of M.U.L.E.

SSI's first CRPGs were published in 1984: 50 Mission Crush and Questron. 50 Mission Crush is more like a traditional war game than most CRPGs, and is probably better described as a turn-based strategy game. The game consists of fifty B17 bomber missions flown in World War II, and the player assigns each position in the plane to his characters (i.e., tail-gunner, bomber). These characters receive experience points each time they survive a mission, eventually gaining competence and winning promotions. The magazine Computer Gaming World published an intriguing review of the game written by an actual B-24 bombardier named Leroy W. Newby, who found it realistic enough to evoke dozens of wartime memories, which he duly juxtaposes alongside his gameplay narrative (see issue #35).

Phantasie (C-64). It took SSI a while to really get away from the model established by Ultima.

games with monsters that could only be defeated with certain types of weapons. Perhaps the most unusual and disturbing "feature" is the option to "kill self," featured prominently in the main menu. SSI would publish a popular sequel to Questron in 1988, which was developed by Westwood Associates. The game followed the same basic formula as the first, but was set in the past. The mission this time was to depose six insane sorcerers and prevent the creation of the "Book of Magic." An auto-mapper was added and the dungeons were rendered in 3D, but it's essentially the same game in a new costume. Let's talk next about the Phantasie and Wizard's Crown games, which are more direct precursors to the famous Gold Box games.

In 1985, SSI published the first of what would become a trilogy of Phantasie games. These games allow players to create and control a party of up to six adventurers, with several classes and races to choose from (including unlikable critters like goblins and minotaurs!). Another nice feature is separate screens and menus for purchasing equipment, exploring dungeons, roaming the world map, and vanquishing foes. There's even a bank where characters can store their money--a nice trade-off for the limited coin-carrying capacity of the characters (try saying that three times fast). Furthermore, the game tracks where your characters have been, eliminating the need for graph paper. There were also new problems--the characters aged, and could even die from old age if the player took too long to complete the adventure.

Combat in Phantasie is handled in much the same way as console CRPGs like Final Fantasy. The player first chooses from a menu what each character will do, then enters the next round of combat. A simple animation shows which character (or enemy) is attacking and how much damage was dealt (or received). If the players win, they do a comical dance which again reminds one of so many console CRPGs. Although the combat system is simplistic compared to Wizard's Crown, which we'll discuss in a moment, it nevertheless offers players fine control over how characters attack. For instance, fighters can choose to attack, thrust, slash, and lunge. These options control how many swings the character takes at an enemy, with varying degrees of damage and likeliness of a hit. "Lunge" attempts to hit a monster standing behind the first row of enemies.

The story behind the first Phantasie is simple enough--kill the "Black Knights" and their master, the evil sorcerer Nikademus, who supplied the knights with powerful but soul-sucking magic rings (ring a bell?). However, to accomplish this, the characters must round up twenty scrolls, each of which contains vital clues to help the characters accomplish their goal. The story is more deeply interwoven into the game than in most CRPGs, and the player's choices make a real difference in how the game unfolds. The many riffs on Tolkien and occasional humor help distinguish Phantasie from the typical dungeon-crawler.

"Phantasie, from Strategic Simulations, may be the best fantasy role-playing game to come down the silicon pike since Sir-Tech conjured up Wizardry. As a matter of fact—at the risk of sounding blasphemous—in some ways Phantasie surpasses Wizardry."—James V. Trunzo in Compute!, December 1985.

probably the best game in the series, even if it is noticeably shorter than the first two games. In 1990, a company named WizardWorks released the first games in a "retro-styled" package called Phantasie Bonus Edition for the DOS and Commodore Amiga platforms. Unfortunately, despite its initial popularity and many innovations, the

Phantasie series has not managed to attain the enduring legacy it deserves, and has been long overshadowed by SSI's later "Gold Box" CRPGs.

Questron (C-64). The game may get frustrating, but is the "kill self" option really necessary?

In 1985, SSI released another party-based fantasy CRPG called Wizard's Crown, which was probably the most "hardcore" CRPG of its time. Players could create up to 8 players, and multi-class them as much as they liked (i.e., a character could be a thief/fighter/mage/cleric). Instead of "levels," characters improved their stats and skills, such as hunting, haggling, alchemy, and swimming. This skill system would show up again in modern games like Fall Out and Neverwinter Nights. Likewise, the combat system was more dynamic than anything offered up to that time. There were over 20 combat commands alone, including unusual ones like "Fall Prone," which made a character harder to hit with arrows but easier to hit with melee weapons. Like Questron

and Phantasie, different situations called for different weapons. However, Wizard's Crown

went a step beyond with added realism--shields only worked if the character was facing the right direction, for instance, and characters were still vulnerable to axes and flails, which could destroy or circumvent a shield, respectively. Ranged weapons were implemented, as well as an intelligent magic system. Although a major battle could last up to 40 minutes, players could also choose "quick combat," which would automatically resolve the combat in seconds. While the storyline was droll (find a wizard, kill him, and take back a crown), the extraordinary attention to character development and strategic combat made up for it. It remains one of the most complicated CRPGs and a strategist's dream. SSI released a sequel to the game called The Eternal Dagger in 1987. Demons from another dimension are invading the world, and the only item that can seal the portal is the titular dagger. Besides the new storyline, the sequel is nearly identical to the first game, though some elements like the "fall prone" option mentioned above were omitted.

screen and interface is an early form of the one SSI employed in the Gold Box games.

There are at least two other early SSI CRPGs worth mentioning: Shard of Spring and

Rings of Zilfin, both released in 1986. Shard of Spring is a game written for the Apple II by Craig Roth and David Stark, and ported to MS-DOS by D.R. Gilman, Leslie Hill, and Martin deCastongrene--who did the whole game in Microsoft QuickBasic! It's a bit crude compared to the other SSI games of the era, and falls somewhere in between Wizard's Crown and Phantasie in terms of complexity. The story is that an evil sorceress has stolen the Shard of Spring, a magical item that brings eternal springtime to the land. Now that it's gone, the world has fallen into chaos, and the solution is obvious. Roth and Stark wrote a sequel called Demon's Winter, which was published by SSI in 1988. While very similar to the first game, Demon's Winter features an exponentially larger game world and two new characters classes, the scholar and the visionary. Visionaries have some unusual abilities, mostly dealing with reconnaissance--for instance, they can view a room to check for monsters without being seen. The story this time is perhaps even more straightforward than the first--the land of Ymros is faced with eternal winter unless the characters can find and destroy the evil demon god Malifon. Both games feature some interesting twists on religion, allowing characters to become acolytes of different gods and pray to them for aid during combat. Unfortunately, neither game had polished graphics or quality sound (even on the Amiga platform), factors that no doubt led to lackluster reviews in most game magazines.

The Shard of Spring (DOS). Ah, killing rats with swords. The fun never ends.

Rings of Ziflin (Apple II). Early cut-scenes like this helped establish a story and carry it along.

Ali Atabek's Rings of Ziflin, released in 1986, is a game intended for novices--and thus focuses more on story and atmosphere than tactics and stats. It features plenty of amusing "cut scenes" that establish and maintain the storyline, which amounts to keeping an evil necromancer named Lord Dragos from finding both rings of power and using them to take over the world (sound familiar?) Rings of Zilfin puts the player in the role of Reis (though the name can be changed), a budding magic user who must develop his abilities and take on Dragos and his minions. Players are spared the bother of creating characters and rolling for stats, and the combat sequences are more like mini-arcade games than tactical combat. Most of the game is spent traveling between towns, and along the way the character can collect plants--such as magic mushrooms, as well as drink from pools. Overall, it's an interesting game and quite different from most of SSI's other offerings. Atabek would go on to create a trilogy of Ultima-like games called The Magic Candle. The first of these, published by Mindcraft Software, appeared in 1989, with the sequels following in 1991 and 1992--both published by Electronic Arts. Of these, the first is generally considered the best, and is known for its creative storyline and abundance of mini quests. The gist is that a demon is trapped in a candle, but once the candle burns down low enough, it will escape--and then al hell will break loose. Like

Rings of Zilfin, The Magic Candle did not allow players to roll their own characters, but did allow them to build a party by selecting non-player characters (NPCs) found at the castle. By the way, an "NPC" means a character that that may assist the player, but cannot be directly controlled; it is controlled instead by the computer. In this way, The Magic Candle series predates the "henchman" system of later games like Neverwinter Nights.

SSI also experimented with hybrid CRPGs, mixing together adventure and arcade elements to varying degrees of success. Gemstone Warrior (1984) and Gemstone Healer

(1986), both developed by Paradigm Creators, are two fairly well-known examples. These games are perhaps best described as CRPG/shooter games. SSI also released one game solely for the Commodore 64 called Realms of Darkness (1987). This very rare game, written by Gary Smith, is a hybrid adventure/CRPG. However, these games are aberrations from the type of CRPGs SSI would become famous for making--namely, the celebrated "Gold Box Games," which we'll discuss next.

Unforgettable Realms: SSI's "Gold Box" Games

However, we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves. Let's back up to the year 1988, when the Gold Box series first debuted.

Pool of Radiance (C-64). The game's smooth, carefully-laid out interface made up for the rather "paper doll" look of the characters.

The first Gold Box game is Pool of Radiance, a game which marked an important turning point in CRPG history. The game shipped in a distinctive gold-colored box (hence the nickname for the series), which sported artwork by celebrated fantasy illustrator Clyde Caldwell (Caldwell also designed the covers for Curse of the Azure Bonds and several other TSR-licensed games and books). It was initially available only on the Atari ST and Commodore 64 platforms, though soon ports were available for most major platforms, including the NES. Pool of Radiance was an instant best-seller, and not just because it was the first officially licensed AD&D computer game. Awash with strong competition, SSI took the sensible approach--take the very best elements of its own and rival CRPGs and pool them together. Indeed, the Gold Box engine is essentially a medley of Bard's Tale and Wizard's Crown, which can trace their own ancestry back to Ultima, Wizardry,

and Tunnels of Doom. Nevertheless, Pool of Radiance is much greater than the sum of its parts, and more than deserves its reputation among serious CRPG critics as one of the best (if not the very best) CRPG ever designed. Though later Gold Box games would refine the engine and address some annoying flaws in the interface, all of the qualities that made the Gold Box games so legendary are present in Pool of Radiance.

Before I go on, let me put my cards (or, should I say, dice?) on the table here. Every critic has those few games that it's just impossible to be truly objective about. We all have that "first love," that first game that taught us that playing computer games was something we'd be doing for the rest of our lives. For me, that game is most certainly

Pool of Radiance. Although I had played earlier CRPGs like The Bard's Tale and Ultima,

there was just something about Pool of Radiance that made these other games look hopelessly mundane. I loved the game so much that I bought every other Gold Box game and even the pulpy novels that were based on them. I would've bought the breakfast cereal and the underwear if they'd made them. In short, Pool of Radiance awakened me to a whole new world--the world of D&D, fantasy, Tolkien, Dragonlance, and, most importantly, CRPGs. How can I be objective about a game that shaped me into the man I am today? I adore Pool of Radiance, and so should you! After all, you wouldn't be reading

this article if I had never played it.

sense in the context of the story. Eventually, the player learns that an evil dragon named Tyranthraxus is at the root of Phlan's problems, but defeating him is going to take much

more than a longsword +1.

Like The Bard's Tale, Pool of Radiance features a coherent game world that feels like a real place. No doubt much of this realism is caused by the 3-D, first-person perspective players see in "exploration" mode. The interface has a rectangle on the top left that shows where the characters are currently facing, and the rest of the screen is neatly divided to display pertinent information. However, no interface can make a dull and repetitive game fun to explore. SSI was luckily able to draw upon the rich body of literature TSR had created for its Forgotten Realms universe of tabletop AD&D games. The Forgotten Realms world was nearly as well-developed as J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, and possibilities for new stories were virtually unlimited--indeed, novels set in this fictional universe are still being published, most notably those by R.A. Salvatore. The

Forgotten Realms are an ideal environment for CRPGs, and added great depth to Pool of Radiance and its sequels.

Pool of Radiance (DOS). The Gold Box games are noted for their superb tactical combat system.

When the characters must engage in combat, the screen changes to a top-down mode very similar to the one found in The Wizard's Crown. Each round, or "turn," the player decides what action his characters will undertake, though these actions are taken immediately rather than after all the commands have been issued (as in Phantasie or

Wizardry). There are plenty of options available to each character depending on his or her class. For instance, fighters can wield melee or ranged weapons, and magic-users function like artillery or sharpshooters, depending on the spell (fireball vs. magic missile, for instance). Thieves also have the option to "back-stab" an opponent, a devastating move that requires very strategic positioning. Furthermore, retreating characters (or enemies) are penalized by giving all surrounding enemies a free swipe at their backside. An intense battle can easily last 45 minutes to an hour, and even simple battles can quickly turn disastrous if the player rushes through them (or, worse, puts his characters in computer controlled "quick" mode). If a character's hit-points fall below 0, he or she is wounded and must be bandaged by another character to avoid death.

party totally vulnerable to a troll attack. Finally, some creatures are more vulnerable (or invulnerable) to certain kinds of attack--i.e., the undead can be "turned" by clerics or dealt extra damage by silver weapons.

"Some will undoubtedly see the strict enforcement of these rules as a nuisance, but it seems to us like a logical extension of the kind of resource management which is necessary to any sophisticated strategy game." –Johnny L. Wilson in Computer Gaming World, July 1988.

The city of Phlan has many intriguing areas to explore, such as a bizarre pyramid and a haunted library. But eventually players will get to go across country in "wilderness" mode, which anyone familiar with older SSI games like Questron and Phantasie or Ultima

will instantly recognize. Later SSI games experimented with different "wilderness" modes, such as showing the player a large map and having him click on different regions. In any case, the wilderness mode makes Pool of Radiance seem even larger, and gives gamers something to do after they've completed the game (e.g., slaughtering groups of wandering monsters).

Buck Rogers (DOS). With a few cosmetic changes, SSI's Gold Box engine became the perfect vehicle for sci-fi adventure.

SSI eventually released three sequels: Curse of the Azure Bonds (1989), Secret of the Silver Blades (1990), and Pools of Darkness (1991). It also spun-off a series based on TSR's Dragonlance universe. These include Champions of Krynn (1990), Death Knights of Krynn (1991), and Dark Queen of Krynn (1992). While these games give players a chance to meet beloved Dragonlance characters like Tanis Half-Even and Raistlin Majere, the trade-off is more rigidly linear gameplay. There were also two more Forgotten Realms games that took place in another part of the realm: Gateway to the Savage Frontier (1991) and Treasures of the Savage Frontier (1992). Finally, as if SSI wasn't already milking its Gold Box engine enough, it released two games set in TSR's Buck Rogers universe: Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (1990) and Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed (1992).

Sick of Swords and Sorcery: Non-Fantasy CRPGs

Before moving on such important CRPG classics as FTL's Dungeon Master and the later

Ultima and Wizardry titles, we should take a look at some of the CRPGs that departed from the "swords and sorcery" conventions that dominate the genre. We've already mentioned a few in passing, such as SSI's 50 Mission Crush, set in World War II, the

Buck Rogers games, and Origin's Ultima series, which featured many sci-fi elements as well as fantasy. Another game worth mentioning is Polarware's Expedition Amazon

(1983). Although it suffers from some pretty serious design flaws, Expedition Amazon

explored new possibilities for the CRPG. Set in modern times, the goal of Expedition Amazon is to guide a team of four explorers (Medic, Field Assistant, Radio Operator, and Guard) as they study ancient Incan ruins. Instead of dragons and orcs, players fought with recalcitrant natives and malaria-carrying mosquitoes. However, the game wasn't a success, and can hardly be said to have much influence on the CRPG genre. Thankfully, other CRPG developers were willing to try to push the CRPG out of the Middle Ages.

Alternate Reality (Atari 8-Bit). A colorful interface and countless innovative features make this sci-fi themed CRPG a classic.

In 1985, a Datasoft published Philip Price's Alternate Reality: The City, the first of a planned series of five games based on the same premise: aliens abducting the character and transporting him to different "realities." Even though only two of the games were ever published (the second part, The Dungeon, appeared in 1987), the series maintains a cult status, particularly among fans of Atari 8-bit computers (where it originated). Atari Age even hosts a competition for the game that is still going strong! The games feature first-person perspective and nice graphics, and are in many ways much ahead of their time. Both The City and The Dungeon are located on Medieval worlds, so most of the standard fantasy conventions still apply (mages, dwarves, etc.) However, Alternate Reality is more realistic than most CRPGs of its era--the avatar gets thirsty, hungry, and tired. The only way to address these problems (and get better equipment) is to raise capital. Thankfully, players can store their money and earn interest at banks, though the really profitable investment plans are risky. Even the treasures weren't always good; many items were cursed and had dire consequences for unwary players. And, as if all this isn't enough--it often rains, which apparently brings out the truly dangerous denizens of Xebec's Demise. Frustrated (or evil) players are free to prey upon the innocent. In any case, the high degree of realism and complexity makes Alternate Reality one of the most challenging of all CRPGs. Downloads and emulator information is available here.