There are few games in recent memory that have had as great an impact on me as Bethesda’s Fallout 3. I just finished the game a few minutes ago and am simply stunned at the quality of the storytelling, gameplay, and aesthetics. While the game has a few minor faults, these pale in comparison to its masterful production.

Ruined City: Fallout 3 boasts one of the best-looking gameworlds I’ve ever seen.

I was a big fan of the earlier Fallout Games, but was initially skeptical that Bethesda would be able to recapture the magic of those earlier masterpieces (particularly I and II). Although some still maintain that Interplay’s earlier Wasteland was better, I still count Fallout and Fallout 2 as some of the finest CRPGs ever designed. They eschew the stereotypical dwarves and elves for (IMO) a more interesting post-apocalyptic wasteland reminiscent of The Road Warrior. I love this setting, mostly because it’s still recognizable as the “real world” but with a fantastic but still plausible twist. The Fallout games did a great job with the setting, but also created an innovative and fun role-playing system and plenty of Monty Python-esque dark humor. The premise in all these games is that a nuclear war has devastated much of the known world, and the survivors are mostly mutants and brigands. The few remaining pockets of humanity are desperate. Add to this mix the mysterious “Enclave” and “Brotherhood of Steel,” two powerful military organizations whose motives aren’t often clear. Then there’s the vault dwellers–people who have spent their lives cooped up in a secure vault deep underground, safe and isolated. Of course, the player’s character doesn’t stay in the vault, but leaves to fulfill his or her destiny above.

VATS: The VATS system pauses the action to let you take aim at a specific body part.

Fallout 3 literally begins with the avatar’s birth in the vault, a clever idea that lets players customize the character and gradually learn the interface. It’s also charming and even disturbing, since the game cuts to various points in the avatar’s life and gives a clear picture of what life was like growing up in the vault. It’s really spooky and thought-provoking, like the best science fiction. Along the way you take a GOAT, a test to help choose your profession, which affects your stats and skill points. There are plenty of options; I chose to become a computer technician, but that didn’t really limit me in any way. I’ll come back to skills and such in a bit.

Eventually, your father leaves the vault for unknown reasons, and it soon becomes clear that you have to follow him out–the government of the vault has become too unstable for you to safely remain behind. It’s not hard to think of psychological themes here (leaving the womb, Oedipal complexes, etc.)

As soon as you leave the vault, you’re in pretty much constant danger. The wasteland is swarming with deadly creatures like molerats, rad-scorpions, raiders, and crab-like creatures that infest streams. There are also plenty of “dungeons” sprinkled around, which take you deep underground to confront more dangerous enemies. Probably the scariest are the ghouls, zombie-like creatures reminiscent of the infected in the film 28 Days Later. Eventually, though, you’ll be fighting Super Mutants and Enclave Soldiers, both of whom are very tough.

Combat is either in real-time or a hybrid system called VATS. VATS works like this: see an enemy, hit the V key, target the body part you want to hit, and hit “E” (or the left mouse button). Sometimes a brief cut scene will play if you strike a critical hit, but this is a great way to go if you’re not the fastest on the mouse. You can only use VATS so many times in a given period; players who rely heavily on this will need to find ways to boost their “Action Points,” but I generally found it sufficient. Naturally, it’s advantageous to aim for certain body parts on different creatures, and you can take perks to tailor your play style. I chose to increase my action points, damage from criticals, and improved targeting for head-shots. There’s nothing really as satisfying as taking down a particularly nasty beast with a critical strike to the head (at point blank range!), and the cut scenes are exciting stuff.

Pipboy: Fans of the original games will be happy to see the Pipboy back in action.

This talk of “perks” will be instantly familiar to fans of the original game. The RPG system is based on SPECIAL (stats, really), SKILLS, and PERKS. The stats are the basic ones seen in most RPGs (strength, agility, luck, etc.) Skills range from combat-specific things like small guns and energy weapons to things like science, medicine, and lock picking. There are lots of computers and locked containers about, so I think it’s well worth pumping up these skills. Every time you successfully open a lock or hack a computer you get XP, so it’s quite handy. Indeed, not being able to pick locks will be a severe hindrance.

One thing you’ll notice pretty quickly in Fallout 3 is that equipment, ammunition, and munitions are rare. Your gear takes damage from use, and you’ll need to use your repair skills to keep things working properly. Let’s say you’re using a combat shotgun–it may start off doing lots of damage and be fairly accurate, but with enough use it will drop off, losing both. The only remedy is either to find another shotgun to either replace or repair it. If your repair skill is high enough, you will be able to keep your gear in good shape by salvaging worn pieces for parts. Otherwise, you’re going to be going through gear very quickly. It isn’t that problematic if you’re fighting mostly humans, but can get very bad if you’re in a dungeon confronting mostly beasts or ghouls.

Combat is quite varied. I quickly found myself using melee weapons to deal with roaches and rats, saving my bullets for things that shot at me from range. The most dreadful of all were monsters with missile launchers; a missile can either kill you outright or do so much damage that you can’t move away before being hit again. These guys were seriously annoying. Although I eventually found a sniper rifle, I still wasn’t effective with it, though this was probably because of my avatar’s stats. In general, I either had to lure enemies into traps using mines or blast them at fairly close range with an assault rifle or shotgun. The combat shotgun and scoped .44 magnum are very effective, but limited ammo makes them last-resort weapons. There are also miniguns and the like about (big guns), but you really need a lot of strength for these since they will weigh you down so much.

The same is true for healing. The best thing is just to find a bed and rest an hour, which heals everything (including damaged limbs). Otherwise, you’ll need to use stimpacks or chow down on food and water. Unfortunately, almost all the food and water is radioactive, and if you get too much exposure you’ll get radiation sickness. You can also find drugs that provide certain bonuses, but if you get addicted to them you’ll suffer penalties (like withdrawal symptoms). There are ways to cure such things, but it’s important to think before popping those pills or injecting your veins with Jet.

Much of the game’s strategy concerns resource management, since you’ll quickly die if you find yourself without armor, weapons, or “aid” (food, stimpacks, etc.). The main skills to worry about here are repair, medicine, and lockpicking, since you’ll find an abundance of ammo and such in locked containers.

Fawkes: You can recruit companions, though I spent most of the game alone.

The gameplay consists mostly of exploring and doing quests. The world is huge, and there are plenty of sub-quests and areas that are entirely optional. I chose to do some of them, but focused on getting through the main quest. Still, it was always tempting to see some building or structure off in the distance and want to check it out. I did several sub-quests that were quite fascinating. One of my favorites was a ghoul-infested building where I found tapes detailing a previous adventurer’s search for his father. As I explored further, I found more tapes, and I could hear the voice on the tapes becoming less human and more ghoul-like. Of course, at the end of the dungeon I found the explorer, who had long been transformed into a ghoul (who I had to kill). This is a good example of the kind of depth you can find in an area that is entirely optional; there are no doubt dozens more such places I didn’t see. You can also find the occasional companion, though I spent most of the game alone.

The main quest involves your father’s mission to purify the water in a reservoir so the residents of Washington D.C. will have a safe, non-radioactive source. The mission gets more complicated, of course, with some spectacular twists that are really exciting stuff. I don’t want to spoil too much, but just to give some flavor here–when you finally find your dad, he’s trapped in a virtual world that looks like an old 50s sitcom. However there is something very, very wrong with the setup, and when I finally got the whole picture I was disturbed indeed. It’s creepy to the core!

The production values are sky-high, with some of the best graphics and audio I have ever seen. The settings are fascinating to explore and wondrous to behold, and the whole thing really makes you feel like you’re stuck in a Mad Max movie.

So, what are the cons? One thing that was a real disappointment was third-person view. Although you can switch from first-person to third-person with a click, the third-person aspect is very poorly implemented. The avatar doesn’t move at all realistically, and I only used this mode when I had to jump around or follow a precise route. Another minus is the rather tedious clicking necessary to get aid, check your armor, and so on. Once you have a sizable inventory, getting through it all can be quite maddening. There really should have been an easier way to sort this stuff. On the plus side, it’s easy to set hot keys (1-8) for weapons and aid, but if you lose a weapon you’ll have to reset it.

Although it’s possible to make your own gear using a workbench, I didn’t find enough schematics for this to be useful. I was also irritated that I couldn’t modify my weapons; it would have been nice to put scopes on certain weapons, etc. I didn’t really focus on this aspect of gameplay, though, and there may very well be lots of schematics around for the diligent. As usual with a Bethesda game, I think I probably only saw about 25% of the game; there are no lots of content I haven’t seen. If you really want to be thorough, you may want a guidebook or such to make sure you’ve seen it all.

On a related point, one glaring omission was vehicles. I kept finding motorcycle parts and even intact motorcycles around, but there was no way to ride them. This was a real pain, because it would’ve been very cool to have a cycle to ride around on (the world is, after all, immense). Thankfully, though, once you’ve visited an area, you can travel there instantly using your map. Still, I think having vehicles would have been a great addition.

Still, I wouldn’t consider any of these factors a deal-breaker. The game is very solid and probably the best game you could buy yourself for the holidays. I really enjoyed it and looked forward to playing it everyday. Heck, I might try it again with a different character just to see the rest of what the game has to offer. The stories and writing (in even the sub-quests) are really worth seeing; there is very little here that is repetitive or left to chance. Bethesda has really created a coherent world whose nooks and crannies are well worth exploring.

Overall, I give this game a definite 5/5 and recommend it strongly.If you are only going to buy one game for the holidays, I’d either get this one or Mass Effect depending on your tastes. Both games have spectacular stories, memorable characters, and engaging gameplay. Oh–and remember: War…never changes.

Originally posted on Armchair Arcade

Welcome back, brave adventurer, to the third and final installment of my history of our favorite computer game genre–the Computer Role-Playing Game, or CRPG for short. If you are new to this series, I’d suggest you stop now and read The Early Years, which covers the dark origins of the genre, such as Richard Garriott’s Akalabeth and Sir-Tech’s Wizardry series, and of course early mainframe CRPGs like dnd. You should then check out The Golden Age, which picks up from 1983 and extends all the way to 1993, a period which represents the peak of CRPG development.

Hundreds of games and dozens of series appeared during this time, several of which extend into the Platinum and Modern Ages. The Golden Age includes classics like SSI’s Pool of Radiance (1988) and Phantasie (1985), or Interplay’s The Bard’s Tale (1985) and Wasteland (1988), and plenty of highly innovative titles like Sierra’s Hero’s Quest (1989) and Masterplay’s Star Saga (1987). Without a good grounding in the CRPGs of these earlier periods, you might suffer from the all-too-common delusion that recent games like Diablo, Neverwinter Nights, and Oblivion came out of nowhere.

“CRPGs are natural extensions of their traditional pen-and-paper games or table-top miniatures. Instead of simply imagining monsters and moss-covered labyrinths, computer games burst with ethereal life, thanks to ever-evolving graphics and sound effects. Hard-liners may complain that the real magic has been lost; for the rest of us, however, CRPGs are the realization of our dreams – or more often, our nightmares.”

–Scott A. May in Compute!, Jan. 1994.

Instead, these games can all trace their lineage back to Golden Age games, which can in turn trace their lineage back to the late 1970s. Indeed, although it’s a commonplace in game history to blurt out things like, “We’ve sure have come a long way since Akalabeth!”, at one level we really haven’t taken more than a few timid steps.

Sure, there have been enormous changes in graphics, sound, interface, and so on, but much of what we cherish in a modern CRPG was already present in games like DynaMicro’s Dungeons of Daggorath and Texas Instruments’ Tunnels of Doom (both 1982). Furthermore, many games that come fairly late in the time line actually seem to some critics to be steps backwards. For instance, although FTL introduced Dungeon Master in 1987, which featured real-time, 3-D graphics in full color, other developers continued to release best-selling turn-based and tile-based games well into the 1990s. And even in 2007, many critics argue that ASCII or ANSI games like Rogue have never been surpassed, since snazzy graphics and intricate story lines just distract from what they think makes CRPGs fun to play.

In short, rather than view the history of CRPGs as a neat time line that begins with total crap and just keeps getting less crappy all the time, I see it as a treasure-filled, monster-infested dungeon. While you can get from one point on that path to any other, you’ll never travel in a straight line–and you never know what’s waiting for you around the next corner. Let’s just hope you brought your loquacious old pal Lilarcor!

To my mind, the games that really represent the best of the genre appeared during the period I’ve termed the “Platinum Age,” which begins in 1996 with the publication of three very important games, Origin’s Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992), Blizzard’s Diablo, and Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall (both 1996). Other high points of the age include Interplay’s Fallout (1997), Black Isle’s Planescape: Torment (1999), BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate (1998) and Baldur’s Gate II (2000), Troika’s Arcanum (2001) and Sir-Tech’s Wizardy 8 (2001).

The single-player, standalone CRPG reached its zenith during this period, and I’ve begun to doubt if Baldur’s Gate II will ever be surpassed. Even in many of these games, though, the presence of online, multi-player options signaled the impending doom of the old CRPG we knew and loved. At the end of the platinum age, the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, or the MMORPG, dominated the scene, and, at least to this critic, the future of the CRPG is grimmer than anything ever dreamed up by Lord British.

BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate single-handedly brought AD&D back to the masses.

Not all that glitters is platinum, however. It’s during the early 1990s that we really begin to see games marred by sloppy code, particularly on the DOS and Windows platforms. Many otherwise impressive games were doomed at the start by hundreds of game-crashing glitches, which infuriated gamers and united critics against them.

The likeliest explanation for the preponderance of bugs during this era is an industry-wide shift in development methods. Instead of just a handful or even a single person in charge of the coding, games were being built by increasingly large teams of specialized programmers, who would work on individual parts and then jam everything together. While this process occasionally went smoothly, more often that not bits of the code were incompatible, and finding bugs in such massive piles of code was like finding the proverbial unassigned pointer in the memory stack.

Another key issue was the lack of industry standards among early graphic and sound card manufacturers; developers had to slap together code to support dozens of different standards—or risk alienating hordes of money-waving gamers. While it’s now relatively easy to download and install a patch to address such issues, most people weren’t online until well after many of these bug-infested games had passed out of circulation.

The period I’ve termed the “Modern Age” begins in 2002 with the publication of BioWare’s Neverwinter Nights, and includes games like Microsoft’s Dungeon Siege and Troika’s The Temple of Elemental Evil. Although these games have probably sold many thousands more copies than games from earlier periods, they seem to represent more of a looking back than a looking forward, and I’m increasingly worried by the large number of CRPG fans migrating towards MMORPGs. In fact, I don’t even consider these games to be part of the same genre, a point I’ll get to towards the end of this article.

Up to now, I’ve tried to simplify things by postponing my discussion of MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) and MMORPGs (Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games), which can actually trace their history as far back as the stand-alone CRPG. I’ll explain why at the end of this article.

Let’s pick up our story, then, in 1992, a year which culminated in Origin’s Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, a progressive game that demonstrated new and exciting possibilities and would set the tone for much of what would follow.

Towards the Platinum Age

The early 1990s saw the publication of dozens of CRPGs from many different developers, many of whom are virtually unknown today. Although the DOS and later Windows platforms would soon dominate the computer game industry, for now both the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga were going strong.

Although highly polished, many of the CRPGs developed during this time are highly derivative and offer little innovation, but a few have managed to attain cult classic status.

“

A thousand years ago, tucked deep in the beautiful woods to the southeast of Lyramion, there was a small village called Forkbrook. The people who lived there were blond haired and good natured; they lived by fishing and hunting and traded with the nearest town which lay two days travel to the west. In this village lived a small boy named Tar.”

– from the Amberstar manual.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Several of these early 1990s games were German imports. One such game, Amberstar by German developer Thalion, features good graphics, a great auto-mapping tool, and a huge world to explore. It seemed to offer much promise, but even a well-known soundtrack by chipmaestro Jochen Hippel was not enough to win it much fame in the US. The sequel, Ambermoon, was only released in Germany, and the third game (the series was planned as a trilogy) was never completed. Nevertheless, Amberstar is among the best CRPGs for the Amiga platform.

In 1992, Sir-Tech published an English translation of Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny, another successful German game based on the RPG system Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye). The Dark Eye system was a strong competitor for Dungeons & Dragons in Germany, and offered gamers a viable alternative to TSR’s rules. One nice innovation is that characters suffer from a variety of negative attributes, such as fear of the dead or a hot temper, which have direct effects on gameplay.

The game sold well enough to warrant two sequels, Star Trail (1994) and Shadows Over Riva (1996), both of which were only available on the DOS platform (the first was available on the Amiga and Atari ST platforms). The last game took advantage of the by-then widely adopted CD-ROM, and boasted SVGA graphics, but all of the games switch between 3-D, first-person perspective in exploration mode and isometric view in combat mode (“isometric view” or “3/4 perspective” is a way of portraying a 3-D object on a flat surface; consider the familiar line drawing of a cube). The combat system is highly tactical and turn-based (reminiscent of an SSI Goldbox game). Of the three, most critics agree that Shadows over Riva is the most excellent, and I’ll have more to say about it later.

Other interesting games of the early 1990s are Imagitec’s Daemonsgate, Microprose’s Darklands, and Flair’s Whale’s Voyage. Daemonsgate (1992) seems to be an exercise in poor design, and is only noteworthy for its unusual marketing gimmicks. It suffered from a ghastly interface, and its most noteworthy characteristic is that it shipped with a VHS tape. The tape contained a goofy video entitled “Travis Sewerbreath” that had only a tenuous connection to the game. Daemonsgate also featured a “conversation system” allegedly capable of understanding over 70,000 words (few critics seem to believe this blurb on the game’s box).

If Daemonsgate is all hype and no substance, Darklands, a meticulously historical CRPG set in medieval Germany, is all substance without enough hype. Indeed, it is undeservedly obscure despite its mind-boggling attention to detail. For instance, not only does the game include historically accurate arms and armor, but even the weights and relative effectiveness are incorporated into the gameplay. It also boasts of a huge gameworld with over 90 German cities and towns, all with historically accurate place names.

The goal of the game is simply to win fame and fortune; the game is quite open-ended and avoids many of the stale D&D clichés. Magic, for instance, is based on the ancient art of alchemy and is quite intricate, and clerics can call on 140 different saints, each with a unique personality.

Many gamers appreciated its intelligent character generation system, which involved adding years on to the character’s starting age in return for valuable skills. Unfortunately, the game’s code was riddled with show-stopping bugs, and gamers found the save game system irritating at best. Nevertheless, it remains a cult classic with a small but highly dedicated following.

Darklands is the most historically accurate and detailed CRPG yet designed.

Whale’s Voyage is perhaps best described as a combination of Firebird’s epic space-trading game Elite and SSI’s Eye of the Beholder, and vaguely reminiscent of Binary System’s earlier and much more successful Starflight series (1986, 1989) and Electronic Art’s Sentinel Worlds (1989). Whale’s Voyage did not fare well among critics, many of whom bashed it for its cumbersome control scheme, which required dozens of mouse clicks just to get one of the player’s four characters to attack.

The game does feature a unique character generation method involving eugenics and DNA manipulation. After choosing an appropriate set of parents, players can “mutate” their characters’ DNA in exchange for better stats. The trade-off, however, is greater susceptibility to disease. Players also get to choose which schools and universities their characters attend. In any case, the game was not a hit, and although there was a sequel released in Germany, an English version never arrived on American shores.

While we’re on the subject of rotten tomatoes, we should probably mention Cybertech’s Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace, which almost certainly contributed to its publisher SSI’s fall from grace. Although TSR’s Spelljammer universe was successful among tabletop role-playing gamers, Cybertech’s effort to bring the world to DOS failed just as miserably at Cybertech’s, and for much the same reason. Besides lackluster graphics and the lack of a good plot, the game was not properly play-tested and frustrated gamers with bug-infested code.

Ultima and Ultima Underworld: Who’s the Dungeon Master Now?

We saw in the last installment how FTL’s Dungeon Master represented a significant breakthrough for 3D CRPGs. Although there had been plenty of other 3D, first-person perspective CRPGs before (including the real-time game Dungeons of Daggorath), turn-based games were by far the majority. However, even though Dungeon Master was the best-selling game of all-time for the Atari ST platform, and achieved remarkable success on other platforms like the Commodore Amiga, many gamers and developers seemed reluctant to jump on the real-time 3-D bandwagon.

The first big developer to do so in major way was Westwood Associates, who developed an extremely successful series called The Eye of the Beholder, published by SSI (their so-called “Black Box” games). However, although these games were set in real-time, movement was not fluid but discrete. For instance, if your party turned left, the perspective instantly shifted 90 degrees, cutting rather than panning to the new viewpoint.

Nevertheless, many Dungeon Master clones were published in the early 1990s, such as Raven’s Black Crypt, ArtGame’s Abandoned Places: A Time for Heroes, and Silmaris’ Ishar: Legend of the Fortress (all 1992), a highly-polished game that was successful enough to spawn two sequels (Messengers of Doom in 1993 and The Seven Gates of Infinity in 1994).

Another popular game from this period is Virgin Games’ Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos, developed by Westwood Studio–the same company that produced Eye of the Beholder. Throne of Chaos was noted for its excellent graphics, music, and interface; Westwood was an experienced CRPG maker at the height of their game. Westwood developed two sequels, Guardians of Destiny (1997) and Lands of Lore III (1999), which we’ll discuss later.

Cute, vibrant graphics and humor distinguish the Lands of Lore series from most CRPGs of its day.

Origin’s Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss was the first 3D CRPG to finally achieve fluid camera movement (and is said to have inspired id’s famous first-person shooter engine). Developed by Blue Sky Productions (later Looking Glass Technologies), The Stygian Abyss is a spin-off of Origin’s celebrated Ultima series, but its gameplay focuses more on quick physical reflexes than its predecessors.

On the surface, it seems like Origin’s attempt to mimic Dungeon Master. It’s set deep in a dungeon, and the Avatar needs to constantly search for food and light sources (e.g., torches). Even the magic system is similar; spells are cast by arranging sequences of “rune stones” found sprinkled throughout the dungeon. However, unlike Dungeon Master, Ultima Underworld features fluid 3-D movement. Players can not only turn left and right smoothly, but also look up and down, climb up, and even swim.

Players also have more direct control during combat: The type of attack (slash, stab, hack) is indicated by the position of the mouse pointer, and the strength by how long the player holds down the mouse button. Many gamers and critics argued that these innovations made the game realistic and thus more immersive, as though players were actually in the game rather than simply controlling it from a distance.

Another nice feature was a “map,” which not only tracked movement but allowed players to enter notes. In any case, you don’t have to be a game historian to see how this game paved the way for the Elder Scrolls series.

The Underworld series was ahead of its time, but that’s not always a good thing. How much immersion does it take to kill rats with a hatchet?

The storyline is fairly straightforward. Somehow, the Avatar has found himself back in Britannia just in time to witness a creature carting off a Baron’s daughter in a sack. Naturally enough, the guards suspect the Avatar of being an accomplice. Fortunately, he’s spared the noose, but only on the condition that he enter a fearsome dungeon called the “Great Stygian Abyss”, and return with the Baron’s daughter.

Soon enough, the Avatar encounters some survivors of a failed colony, and eventually learns that the kidnapping is only part of a much more sinister plot. It’s a good storyline that makes the game more than just a 3D coding feat.

In designing the Underworld system, one of the things we attempted to do was to merge traditional fantasy RPG elements, such as quests and combats and explorations, with a sophisticated three-dimensional simulation of a sensible and believable world.

– from the Ultima Underworld II manual.

Origin followed up in 1993 with a sequel named Labyrinth of Worlds. The sequel made few innovations other than the implementation of digital sound effects and an expanded viewing area. The storyline is also more complex and more closely related to the main Ultima series. A magical crystal of “blackrock” has formed over Lord British’s castle, isolating the land of Britannia from its foremost defenders. Fortunately, the Avatar can use a smaller crystal to travel to eight different dimensions in search of a solution to the dilemma. It’s a massive game, and the alternate dimensions allow for many intriguing scenarios, such as a fortress floating in the sky, an icy wasteland, and a surreal “Ethereal Void.”

Surprisingly, the Ultima Underworld series is not as well known today as later games of its type, such as the Elder Scrolls series. Perhaps the key reason for this is that the games demanded more computer power than most PC gamers could afford in 1992. It’s a rare case of when a lengthy production delay could have resulted in better sales.

Stygian Abyss was released for Sony’s Playstation in 1997 and was ported to Windows Mobile by Zio Interactive in 2002.

Ascending Pagans at the Black Gate

We might expect that Origin would have incorporated Ultima Underworld’s 3-D engine into its main Ultima series, but this was not the case.

Ultima VII: The Black Gate, released the same year as The Stygian Abyss, featured much better graphics than its predecessors, but still relied on the familiar top-down perspective. Perhaps the biggest interface change was a switch to real-time gameplay, which drastically altered the way combat is handled. It was also the first game in the series that can be controlled entirely by the mouse–the manual indicates that mouse play is “highly recommended by Lord British.”

We might not think much of this issue today, but this was at a time when many PC owners didn’t even own mice, much less see them as a game device.

Even though Black Gate didn’t take the leap into 3D, it is still widely hailed as the best Ultima game, rivaled only by Ultima III in terms of popularity. The key assets are the game’s gripping plot, well-developed characters, and painstakingly-detailed environments. Much was made of the game’s high level of interactivity. How many CRPGs do you know that will let you milk cows and change a baby’s diapers just for the heck of it?

Perhaps the best of all the Ultima Games, The Black Gate sports one of the most fully interactive gameworlds ever presented in a video game .

To put it mildly, The Black Gate is an unforgettable experience to those who have taken 60+ hours required to complete it, and will probably always enjoy a loyal and dedicated fan base. Unfortunately, the original games exploited some memory routines that render them incompatible on modern Windows-based systems. Thankfully, gamers can play Ultima VII using Exult, a GPL-licensed program that attempts to recreate the game on modern operating systems.

The Black Gate’s plot is quite sophisticated compared to most games of the era, and like most other Ultima games, it has plenty of references and allusions to religion and politics. As the game opens, the Avatar is taunted by the infamous Guardian, then whisked away to the land of Britannia some 200 years after your visit, just in time to investigate the scene of a ritualistic murder. Eventually he learns about a cult called “The Fellowship,” which some critics argue satirizes the Church of Scientology.

Perhaps more endearing than the plot are the characters, who are far better developed here than in almost any other CRPG. Instead of merely standing in one place for all eternity just to offer you a thinly disguised hint or geographical tidbit, the characters are shown walking about, engaging in their daily activities–they even to go to bed at night. Conversations with these characters are also more convincing, and can speak about several topics.

The game is also praised for its open-ended gameplay. There are very few guard rails in The Black Gate, a fact that can either thrill or intimidate inexperienced players. It’s quite easy for players to end up wandering about the game without the faintest clue what they’re “supposed” to do. Obviously, this lack of clear direction wouldn’t bother players weaned on Rogue and other “sandbox” style games, but players more accustomed to “Do X, Y, and then Z” type games may find themselves quite disoriented.

Just to give you some idea of how intriguing the world of Black Gate can be, I’ll quote a bit from Oleg Roschin’s detailed review of the game on Mobygames. At one point in the game, Roschin’s party met up with a unicorn, who, as legend has it, can only communicate with virgins. The first time around, Roschin’s Avatar was, in fact, a virgin, and admitted as much to the unicorn, who then talked to him.

On a later visit, however, the Avatar had slept with a harlot at Buccaneer’s Den, and the Unicorn refused to speak with him. As usual, we see that Garriott subtlety; sure, you can do sinful things, but you won’t always get away with it. Later on, Bethesda would capitalize on this high level of interactivity in its celebrated Elder Scrolls series.

Origin released an expansion for the game called The Forge of Virtue later that year, but it wasn’t until 1993 that Serpent Isle appeared. Instead of calling this game Ultima VIII, Origin chose to label it as Ultima VII: Part Two. This odd naming convention seems to arise from Garriott’s principle that no two Ultima games should share the same game engine.

Serpent Isle may have shared the same game engine, but was much more linear and story-based than The Black Gate, a fact which divided critics pretty evenly between the two games. The story begins 18 months after the first part, and involves traveling to a land named “Serpent Isle” to restore the balance destroyed there by the Guardian.

Apparently, the game was rushed through production by Origin’s new owner, Electronic Arts, and thus contained many dead ends (players who found themselves in one had to restore to earlier saved games). Origin’s struggle with Electronic Arts bear an uncanny resemblance to Garriott’s earlier conflict with Sierra On-Line. That conflict had also led to a lackluster entry in the series, Ultima II. Origin did release an expansion to the game called Silver Seed in 1993.

On a side note, in 1997 released its Ultima Collection for DOS and Windows, which includes the first 9 games (including a PC port of Akalabeth) and both expansions. Unfortunately, not all of the games run properly in Windows, but with a little work and a tool like DOSBox can run them under emulation.

In 1994, Origin released Ultima VIII: Pagan, a game with a somewhat controversial title that aroused even more controversy among long-term fans of the series. Again, Garriott seems to have returned to the drawing board and decided that what players really needed was more physical than intellectual challenges. Thus, like so many console hits of the day, in Pagan the Avatar can run, jump, and climb across moving platforms.

Combat was reduced (or, enhanced, depending on your perspective) to a series of rapid-fire mouse clicks, requiring more dexterity than strategy to win. As you might expect, the game gravely disappointed some fans and thrilled others, but the general consensus was that the game wasn’t up to the Ultima standard. Many of the key innovations that had made The Black Gate so successful, such as a realistic night and day system, were abridged or altogether omitted.

As if these faults weren’t enough to commit Pagan to the flames, a plethora of bugs surfaced, frustrating even fanatical Ultima fans. Again, Garriott blamed the problems on Electronic Arts and a rushed production schedule. However, the worst was yet to come.

The last and worst of the single-player Ultima games, Ultima IX: Ascension, was published in 1999, and fans were even more disappointed than they had been with Pagan. The problem this time seems to lie mostly in a bait-and-switch game played by Garriott, who had promised a game more in line with the classic Ultima games, and went to fans for advice—who provided it, diligently. Unfortunately, the production cycle hit gravel early on, and the code went through at least four different versions and no small amount of drama.

Ultima Online was also in production as this time, and no doubt added to the chaos (I’ll have more to say about that game in a later section of this article). The end product was a buggy and even more action-oriented game than Pagan, and abandoned the by-then conventional isometric perspective for a fully 3-D world in 3rd-person perspective.

Most Ultima critics bitterly dismissed Ascension out of hand, but the game has managed to attract a small but dedicated fan base. The complaints and defenses are many. One of the most often heard is that it’s really more of an “action adventure” than a true CRPG, a claim based on Ascension’s rather limited “leveling up” capabilities and rather linear plot structure. Fans of The Black Gate were also irritated by the rigidity of many of the game’s events, such as a love story that some felt was “shoved down their throats.”

At any rate, no one complained about the game’s lush graphics, and the day/night cycle returned, and the music is quite excellent. There is also a high level of interactivity with objects. However, a combination of poor voice acting, lackluster dialog, and rather banal characters certainly haven’t helped the game win over diehard Ultima fans, much less large audiences.

Indeed, even a special “Dragon Edition” large-box version of the game that included several trinkets–a nod towards older and more revered Ultima games–wasn’t enough to win over jaded fans. Needless to say, Ascension was a sad way for this grand old series to end. It was as if George Lucas had died just after rushing Jar Jar and the Ewoks Save Christmas into theaters.

Transcending Ascension: The Gothic Series

Even though Ascension failed miserably, German developer Pirahna Bytes was able to follow more successfully in its footsteps, pushing the “action” and “adventure” boundaries even further. The Gothic series debuted in November of 2001, and features a real-time, 3D world set in 3rd-person “over the shoulder” perspective. Gameplay focuses on inventory-based puzzles as well as a difficult arcade-style combat system.

The game is most noted for its dark, realistic ambiance and open-ended gameplay, which seems similar to that found in the Elder Scrolls series but with more focus on character interaction. Despite some irritating interface problems and bugs, the game attracted a loyal and dedicated following. Pirahna Bytes followed up with Gothic II in 2003 and just released Gothic 3 in 2006. Both games offered graphical and interface enhancements over their predecessors.

“When the scenery looks like a postcard, but the Hero wears his shield inside of his humerus, there are some major quality control issues going on.”

– Tim Tackett reviewing Gothic 3 on Game Revolution, Dec. 18, 2006.

In some ways, these games hark back to those aforementioned German imports, the Realms of Arkania series. The games have much to offer, but for some reason haven’t received the attention they deserve. While the strong competition has undoubtedly been a factor, there are other rationales for Gothic’s mediocre ratings. The second game suffers from bad voice acting and poor translations, and the third game has enough bugs to make an entomologist’s career.

Critics have remained unwilling to forgive the awkward combat system, though there doesn’t seem to be any hope for a general consensus on the overall quality of these games.

SSI’s Utterly Forgettable Realms

If the Ultima series was showing its age by 1999, SSI had entered a much steeper downward spiral by 1993. Although the publisher and developer had triumphed during the Golden Age with its TSR-licensed “Gold Box” and “Black Box” titles, unimpressive games like Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace turned fans away in droves.

Nevertheless, SSI trudged on for several more years, though they would eventually shift their focus back to strategy games before officially entering the “Where are they now?” file.

SSI developed and published other TSR-licensed titles after their Gold and Black Box heydays, but none seemed to command the respect of their earlier games. In 1993, SSI published Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, a top-down CRPG based on TSR’s post-apocalyptic Dark Sun campaign. Despite an intuitive interface and intriguing setting, the game’s mediocre graphics, jerky animation, typos, and buggy code kept it out of the limelight.

The Pirates of Realmspace introduced gamers to “steampunk,” but nobody paid much attention.

SSI released a sequel called Wake of the Ravager in 1994, but even though the graphics were improved, the bugs were back. One particularly bad one was quickly dubbed “The Bug” among the many players who encountered it. The Bug would suddenly prevent monsters from attacking the avatar, making the game a cakewalk rather than the intense experience it was supposed to be.

Although such bugs would be easily enough addressed today by downloadable patches, such a practice wasn’t widely practiced in the early 1990s. If you were unlucky enough to buy an early version of the game, you just had to live with the bugs.

Set in one of the lesser-known of TSR’s campaign settings, Dark Sun: Shattered Lands didn’t break any records.

SSI also published games based on TSR’s horror-themed Ravenloft campaign. The first of these, Ravenloft: Strahd’s Possession, was developed by DreamForge and published in 1994. Like Ultima Underworld, Stradh’s Possession is a first-person perspective, 3D game with smooth scrolling, though a “step” mode is available. A sequel named Stone Prophet appeared in 1995, offering enhanced graphics and some new abilities like flying and levitating.

Both of these games are based on “Gothic” themes and seemed poised to take advantage of the vampire fad spurred by Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire, which descended into packed theaters on November of 1994. Why these games didn’t receive more recognition is a bit hard to determine. Perhaps they were damned by faint praise from critics, who couldn’t find anything particularly good or bad about the series. In any case, these games are surely better than Take-Two Interactive’s Iron & Blood: Warriors of Ravenloft, a truly rotten fighting game published by Acclaim in 1996 for DOS and Sony’s PlayStation.

The last TSR-licensed game SSI published was the infamously wretched (and hard to spell) Menzoberranzan, which appeared in 1994 for DOS. Another first-person, 3-D game in the style of the Ravenloft games, Menzoberranzan seemed to have all the ingredients necessary for a hit. It featured one of TSR’s most famous characters, Drizzt Do’Urden, a dark elf of the Underdark popularized by the novelist R.A. Salvatore. Furthermore, the developer (Dreamforge) had responded to earlier criticism and improved the game engine considerably.

Nevertheless, gamers quickly complained about the endless number of boring battles that dragged out the game and ruined its pacing. This is particularly noticeable in the crucial first stages of the game; the game requires considerable patience before anything remotely interesting happens.

The lack of strong sales in these games, and SSI’s two dismal console action titles Slayer (1994) and Deathkeep (1995) were no doubt the straw that broke SSI’s lucrative licensing agreement with TSR. TSR decided to eschew exclusive licensing and extended the franchise to several rival companies, most notably Interplay, who along with Black Isle Studios published BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate in 1998. I’ll discuss some of these games in a moment.

SSI also published several other CRPGs during this era, mostly developed by Event Horizon (later Dreamforge). These include The Summoning (1992) and Veil of Darkness (1993), both isometric games that again met with faint praise from gamers and critics. SSI released Alien Logic in 1994, an isometric game developed by Ceridus software based on the tabletop Skyrealms of Jorune RPG. Despite being praised for its innovative premise and gameplay, critics complained about the difficult install procedure and steep learning curve of the game’s interface, and the game has faded into obscurity.

In 1995, SSI developed World of Aden: Thunderscape and co-developed (with Cyberlore) Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall. Both of these games are based on a world similar to the one found later in Sierra’s Arcanum; it’s swords and sorcery meets “steampunk.” The first game features first-person perspective, but the second reverts back to the familiar isometric perspective.

Sadly for SSI, these well-crafted and highly playable games seem to have attracted little interest from CRPG fans then or now.

Is it a CRPG or an adventure game? Just shut up and kill the vampire.

The story of SSI’s slow but steady demise can probably be summed up in one phrase: Death by mediocrity. The company just couldn’t seem to develop or publish another masterpiece like Pool of Radiance or Eye of the Beholder.

Games like Menzoberranzan and Shattered Lands just lacked the glamour of games from rival companies, and even better graphics and updated interfaces couldn’t disguise the old engine under the hood. Sloppy coding and play-testing nailed the coffin shut.

Don’t let the “ring” business fool you–Arcanum’s “steampunk” masterpiece is far from the stereotypical “Tolkien-inspired” CRPG.

AD&D Gets Dumber and Dumberer

Although TSR was likely correct in their assumption that SSI was no longer the best company to represent their interests, they didn’t exactly strike gold with their next few licensees. Many of these games were action or strategy titles, but there were a few CRPGs in the mix, such as Sierra’s Birthright: The Gorgon’s Alliance (1996) and Interplay’s Descent to Undermountain (1998).

Birthright was developed by Synergistic Software and is a mix of adventure and strategy as well as more conventional CRPG elements. It’s based on TSR’s highly successful Birthright game, and features a great story about a menace named “The Gorgon,” who is hellbent on killing and extracting the divine blood of kings to secure his power. The game promised plenty of political intrigue and many multifaceted characters, and players can control not just single heroes but an entire kingdom. Finally, Birthright had Sierra’s powerful name recognition behind it, which included their stunningly successful and highly innovative Quest for Glory series.

Unfortunately, Birthright: The Gorgon’s Alliance failed for rather banal reasons. Yet again, a promising game was stymied with game-crashing bugs that irritated even the most forgiving players, but the bigger problem is that the game is a “jack of all trades, master of none.”

Birthright wasn’t content with being a strategy, CRPG, or adventure game–it tried to please fans of each of these genres. The result was a learning curve steeper than Mt. Everest, a fact that eliminated all but the most dedicated gamers right from the start. The so-called “adventure mode” is also rather tacked-on, and isn’t well integrated into the gameplay as it should have been.

Although it has its moments, Birthright amounts to little more than a few freckles and a mole.

Think of a giant landfill, and thousands of unsold games descending into it.

Interplay’s Descent to Undermountain is an even less satisfying game than Birthright. Descent to Undermountain attempted to ride some of the hype surrounding their immensely popular Descent series by modifying its 3-D, first-person shooter engine for use in a CRPG. The plan may have seemed like a good one, but an apparently harried production schedule resulted in one of the worst CRPGs of all time.

The task of transforming Parallax Software’s brilliant FPS engine into a CRPG platform proved far more formidable than anyone had assumed. Besides sloppy coding and countless game-stopping bugs, the game suffered in general from a lack of polish. The levels were dreary and looked too much alike, and many players didn’t appreciate their confusing, maze-like arrangement.

Poor graphics coupled with worse artificial intelligence added up to what we might expect–the game promptly descended into the landfill. Undoubtedly, TSR was beginning to wonder if it hadn’t been better off with SSI!

Fortunately, things would soon take a major turn for the better with the publication of Baldur’s Gate, the game that finally returned TSR-licensed CRPGs to the public eye. I’ll return to this game momentarily.

The Dawn of the Platinum Age

So far, I’ve painted a pretty bleak picture of CRPG development in the early to mid 1990s, but things were not all bad.

Perhaps the key problems developers faced was how to bring the CRPG “up to date” after id’s Doom and Cyan’s Myst hit the scene. These two games had taken the industry by storm, and publishers were frantic to rush anything that looked like them onto the shelves.

By 1996, almost all serious PC gamers (and plenty of not so serious ones!) had upgraded their computers with the latest game hardware, which included CD-ROMs and expensive graphics and sound cards. Furthermore, what was formerly a forbidding mess of incompatible cards was solidifying into a few recognized industry standards, and a huge market was opening up for games that could really push this advanced hardware.

The publisher’s creed was simple: Real-time, first-person perspective 3D or shareware. Origin’s Ultima Underworld series fit the bill, but was too far ahead of the curve for most gamers to appreciate. Therefore, the field was open for some talented newcomers who could bring Doom-style graphics and gameplay to the CRPG, and a company named Bethesda soon had their foot in the door.

Bethesda and The Elder Scrolls

Bethesda entered the fray in a really big way with its Elder Scrolls series, which is still going strong today. The fourth game in the series, Oblivion was just released in 2006 and is selling quite well. However, those new to this fine series might not know much about its origins, or that it played an important role in the ongoing development of the genre.

The first Elder Scrolls game, Arena, was published by U.S. Gold in 1994 for DOS. Like its many sequels, Arena features real-time 3-D graphics in first-person perspective. It also boasts of a huge gameworld with over 400 cities, towns, and villages, all of which can be explored–it’s a veritable cornucopia of CRPG delights.

Although it is not as well known today as Morrowind or even Daggerfall, you don’t have to look too hard to find fans who rank it as not only the best game in the series, but the best CRPG, period. While I wouldn’t go that far in my praise, it’s hard to deny it a venerable place in the CRPG canon.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Bethesda.

One way of thinking about Arena is as a combination of two Ultima games: The Stygian Abyss and The Black Gate. While Arena offered real-time, 3D, first-person perspective like The Stygian Abyss, it also features a realistic game world like The Black Gate’s. Not only do players observe the passing of time from night and day, but it even rains and snows according to the season!

Indeed, it’s really the sophistication of this virtual world that makes the game so notable. The plot–find the eight missing pieces of the “Staff of Chaos” and use it to rescue the Emperor from a dimensional prison–is hardly original. What impressed gamers was the incredible size of the world, the open-ended nature of the gameplay, and the supposedly high replay value (starting a new game reset the locations of quest items–though it’s truly debatable how much this added to the game’s replay value).

Though the game offers considerably more freedom of action than most games of its type (particularly regarding stealing items from merchants), players hoping to win still need to perform a fairly linear sequence of quests. Arena also has a nice combat system, in which the position of the mouse pointer determines which of eight types of attacks the avatar performs.

Nevertheless, the game is far from perfect. Like so many other games of this period, it suffers from bug-infested code. The battles are also quite a bit tougher than some gamers could handle, and the game’s formidable specs limited its appeal to those with cutting-edge machines.

In any case, the game set a new standard for this type of CRPG, and demonstrated just how much room was left for innovation. Bethesda has been kind enough to re-release the game as freeware, and currently offers it for free download on their website. I only wish more CRPG developers would follow their lead!

“No longer forced to play the way The Man wants, we are now free to ignore the pleadings of the princess, wander off, and get involved in other complex tales that change and evolve in response to our actions!”

- Trent C. Ward in GameSpot, Sep. 26, 1996.

Bethesda followed up the modestly successful Arena with Daggerfall in 1996, a game that is still widely regarded as one of the most immersive CRPGs ever designed. Players were offered Tamriel, one of the largest gameworlds ever seen in a CRPG, and almost limitless possibilities for gameplay. The leveling system was also made more dynamic; players improved their skills simply by practicing it. Furthermore, the old rigid “class structure” was abandoned in favor of a much more open-ended guild system.

Players can customize their characters however they see fit, letting their creativity run wild. There is even an Ultima-style morality quiz option for players who don’t want wish to muck about with statistics. In fact, many (if not most) players soon forgot all about the game’s storyline and devoted their time simply to exploring Tamriel and honing their character.

Unfortunately, gamers were again presented with irresponsibly buggy code, though by this time they could probably use the net to find and install a patch to fix the worst. Another big problem is the lack of balance in the game’s difficulty. It doesn’t take experienced players long to gain enough experience to simply walk through the game, obliterating even the most powerful enemies with ease.

Bethesda developed and published two spin-offs before releasing the third entry in the official Elder Scrolls series. These were An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire (1997) and The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard (1998). Battlespire is in many ways a simplified version of Daggerfall, and is often described more as a first-person shooter than a true CRPG.

Redguard departs from the first-person perspective of the other games in favor of a third-person view, with the player’s avatar visible on screen. If Battlespire leans towards the FPS, Redguard leans towards the traditional adventure game. Completing the game requires conversing with a great many characters and plenty of backtracking, but also some Tomb Raider-like action sequences including climbing, jumping, and swimming.

Although both games have their good points, neither seems to have won over as many fans as the main series. In any case, it’s likely that Bethesda’s team used these games as an opportunity to experiment with different interface and gameplay techniques.

Perhaps the best known of all the Elder Scrolls games appeared in 2002: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Morrowind combined the first-person perspective of the earlier Daggerfall with the third-person of Redguard--for the first time, players could choose between the different perspectives as they saw fit. Players soon discovered that each mode had its advantages. For example, third-person perspective makes it easier to dodge ranged attacks.

The leveling system had also been revamped a bit, and split into two: Primary Stats (speed, personality, luck, etc.) and Secondary Abilities (combat arts, magic arts, etc.). Primary stats only rose when the character gains a level, but secondary abilities improve with use. The system may sound complicated, but it’s actually quite intuitive. Characters who run and jump often will see a spike in their acrobatics score. Characters who wield an axe will see their “axe” score raised, and so on. Besides just practicing a skill to gain experience, characters can also buy training or read special books sprinkled throughout the game.

“No matter what your preference, there’s no right or wrong way to play Morrowind.”

- From the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Manual

Indeed, there have been very few CRPGs as complex and flexible as Morrowind’s. Even after I had completed the main quest, I still hadn’t explored but maybe 60% of the incredibly massive and diverse game world.

Unfortunately, Morrowind has its problems. Like Daggerfall, players will eventually reach a level of experience that reduces even the game’s most formidable foes into pushovers. There are also many ways to exploit the game’s leveling system, such as standing in one place and casting the same spell over and over again. Nevertheless, the game continues to attract gamers and is still actively played today.

Bethesda produced two expansions for its third game: Tribunal (2002) and Bloodmoon (2003). Both expansions met with fairly good reviews, though the latter is perhaps the better of the two. I’ll discuss the fourth game in a later section of this article.

Morrowind: Beautiful graphics, open-ended gameplay, boundless possibilities…See you next year.

Although Bethesda’s CRPGs didn’t necessarily bring anything new to the genre, they did introduce a nice alternative to the highly linear, story-based games that dominate CRPGs. Even though each of the games has a plot and a “main quest,” players could choose to entirely ignore it, and many did so. More importantly, players were invited to indulge their creativity when selecting and developing their characters; the fun of these games is in customization. You build your character, not play someone else’s.

Some critics argue that this degree of freedom puts these games closer to the original D&D tabletop game, in which good dungeon masters encourage players to take a more creative role in the unfolding of the adventure. Why not let a player dash past the monster, grab the treasure, and make a run for it? Why not let her swipe that armor when the merchant’s back is turned? Most games would require players to do the “right” thing, but Elder Scrolls let the player decide.

Other Real-Time 3-D CRPGs

Naturally, other developers weren’t content to let Bethesda dominate the real-time sector of the CRPG market. As soon as games like Arena and Daggerfall demonstrated the technical and commercial feasibility of real-time 3D graphics and the immersive potential of first-person perspective, several other companies jumped on the bandwagon.

Some of these games we’ve already mentioned, such as Shadows Over Riva and the last two Lands of Lore games. Shadows Over Riva hedged a bit; although exploration takes place in first-person perspective, combat is offered only in a somewhat cramped third-person isometric.

A more ambitious (though perhaps more misguided) effort was Westwood’s Guardians of Destiny, the second game in their Lands of Lore series. Released in 1997, the game tried to take ride the wave of full motion video games and is loaded with live action scenes (think The 7th Guest or Gabriel Knight II). It also incorporates many arcade elements, including some timed sequences and lots of running and jumping.

The last game in the series, Lands of Lore III, ditched the live action actors for motion-captured animation and voice acting, but most critics consider it the weakest of the three. You are not allowed to create your own character, and critics complained about the repetitive gameplay, unbalanced graphics, and constant need to find food for the main character. It was also plagued with bugs, which certainly didn’t improve the game’s reputation.

Might and Magic: The Pinnacle and the Precipice

By far the best known company to follow in Arena’s wake is New World Computing, which adopted Bethesda’s model starting with Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven (1998).

No doubt, Might and Magic fans were glad to see a new installment after some five years of waiting, and the game’s coherent storyline and slightly more structured gameplay offered a viable alternative to Daggerfall. The box and manual sport beautiful artwork by the famed fantasy artist Larry Elmore, whose work graces many an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons product. Unlike the Elder Scrolls series, however, the player controls four characters instead of one (with the option to add two non-player characters later), and combat can be played in either turn-based or real-time modes.

Mandate of Heaven also gave players considerable leeway in how they developed their characters; after an initial choice of class, players decide how to expend “skill points.” Skills are divided into four basic areas: Weapon, Armor, Magic, and Miscellaneous. This last category includes some über-skills like learning, which affects all the other skills by boosting the experiences points awarded after a battle. All in all, it’s an intuitive and highly customizable way to handle the “leveling” issue.

I should add that the Might and Magic series also adopted the age-old convention of requiring players to first win enough battles to qualify for training, and then come up with enough cash to hire a trainer (many games simply “give” characters a level when they gain enough experience). Since cash is relatively hard for new parties to come by, players have to make strategic decisions about how to spend it–does it make more sense to buy a new weapon, magic scroll, or level up a character?

Although the combat system isn’t perfect–all four characters are always on the front line and susceptible to frontal assaults–the game nevertheless won high praise from critics, and for good reason. Who can forget the first time their wizard cast a “fly” spell, sending the party soaring high above Enroth?

“It doesn’t matter what you call these instruments: crystal ball, computer, the Scry of Silicon; the Ordered Runes of Binaria, a keyboard, the Abacus of Turing. A rat, a mouse, the Rodent of Parc. They are Artifacts of Trans-Dimensional Manipulation and, with knowledge, you can command them to do your bidding.”

– From the Mandate of Heaven manual.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Might and Magic VI was blissfully free of bugs. At a time when almost every other major CRPG was so riddled with errors that manuals advised players to routinely save the game every thirty minutes, such stability is nothing short of remarkable. Unfortunately, New World’s quality assurance team soon lowered their standards to match the competition.

New World’s next entry in the series, For Blood and Honor, is often hailed as the last good Might and Magic CRPG, even though it offers few innovations over its predecessor. Only a year had passed since the previous game, but the graphics engine was already looking dated. Moreover, the voice acting is more ingratiating than enduring, particularly after hearing the same few digitized samples for the ten-thousandth time. However, the sound is redeemed by an excellent operatic score by Paul Romero, produced by Robert King. The game also offers more races to choose from and a few other nice features, such as two possible endings.

After For Blood and Honor, the series entered a steep downward spiral. The next game, Day of the Destroyer, was released in 2000, and New World again decided to rehash the Might and Magic VI engine. The result of that decision was a game hopelessly behind the times graphically, but that wasn’t the only problem. At least for old fans of the series, there was little thrill in starting over once again with a new set of characters and taking them through the motions once again.

Although the earlier games had certainly had their share of dull moments, Day of the Destroyer is almost painfully repetitive. Even the surprising decision to allow the player to create only one character (the rest of the party must be recruited later) does little to affect the monotony, since the additional characters are almost entirely devoid of personality and impact on the story.

The ability to add a dragon to the party might have been a nice feature, but doing so ruins the game’s balance, reducing it to an unbearably dull walk through. As if these problems weren’t enough to doom the game, other features like a three-tiered teacher system (expert, master, and grand-master) made long-suffering virtues out of note-taking and tedious back-tracking. Needless to say, very few fans were pleased with the game. Sadder still is the unforgivably buggy code, of which random crashes are some of the least irksome.

“It’s a safe bet that nobody will ever wax nostalgic about Might and Magic IX.”

- Brett Todd in GameSpot, April 12, 2002.

Day of the Destroyer may have destroyed most fans’ faith in New World, but the company must have figured the horse was still worth one more beating. Perhaps it’s a testament to the 9th game’s overall lack of ambition that it lacks a proper name; it’s simply Might and Magic IX.

The box promised “stunning” 3D graphics, and they were–indeed, who could believe that the company would release a game in 2002 with graphics that looked little better than Mandate of Heaven’s, published four years previously. The game world also feels cramped compared to its predecessors. Applying the term “artificial intelligence” to the game’s non-player characters results in an oxymoron.

Finally, there are more show-stopping bugs in the code than there are blocky polygons in the game. Suffice it to say, Might and Magic IX is just as tragic a way for a grand old CRPG series to end as Ultima IX: Ascension.

Day of the Destroyer was a disappointment, but the next game was downright embarrassing.

One fascinating aspect of the Platinum Age is how many companies managed to reach both their apex and their nadir within such a short span of years, but for different reasons.

From my vantage point, Origin’s Ultima series ultimately faltered because Garriott and his development team kept attempting radical revisions to the game engine. During each transformation, more and more fans felt betrayed, until at last they could no longer acknowledge a game like Ascension as part of their beloved series.

New World Computing, on the other hand, were a bit too comfortable with their engine and gameplay mechanics and kept recycling them, much like Sir-Tech had done nearly a decade previously with its first three Wizardry titles. Eventually, even dedicated fans of Might and Magic grew bored with the repetition, and new gamers weren’t likely to be won over with graphics that looked over five years old at release.

Thus, we might sum up this part of the story as a “Tale of Two Developers,” noting how the first was defeated by ambition, the second by its lack. Only Bethesda seems to have found the right balance of innovation and repetition required to keep a series going strong over a period of many years, though only time will tale if The Elder Scrolls survives as long as Ultima and Might and Magic.

Blizzard Blows In

So far, the best Platinum Age innovations in the CRPG genre have been in two realms: The rise of real-time, 3D graphics in first-person perspective, and the development of huge, highly interactive game worlds.

CRPG developers had climbed aboard the bandwagon begun by first-person shooter games like Doom and Quake. The usual refrain heard from fans of this type of game are that they are inherently more “immersive.” You don’t just play a character; you enact a role.

If this were true, you might expect that all successful CRPGs released after Ultima Underworld and Arena would follow their example. However, three of the most celebrated CRPGs of all time that emerged from this period offered only an isometric, third-person perspective: Diablo, Fallout, and Baldur’s Gate.

Blizzard is probably better known today for World of Warcraft MMORPG, which is loosely based on the company’s best-selling real-time strategy series, Warcraft, which launched in 1994 with Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Blizzard also made gaming history with the release of StarCraft in 1998, which was immensely successful and is widely regarded as the finest real-time strategy game ever developed.

Nevertheless, the publication of Diablo in 1996 remains one of the most divisive moments in CRPG history. Even today, nearly a decade later, no other game has polarized CRPG fans more than Diablo. Are Diablo and its sequel the best CRPGs ever made or the worst? At least among experienced fans of the genre, the jury is still out. Let’s take a closer look and see if we can understand the source of this contention.

Blizzard boiled down the CRPG to its bare essentials–and brought thousands of new gamers to the genre.

Diablo is usually described as an “action” CPRG, set in real-time. It’s also features a vastly simplified character development system compared to most CRPGs. The player only controls a single character, who can be one of three basic types (Warrior, Rogue, and Sorcerer). The differences among these types are somewhat superficial; warriors can cast spells and sorcerers can wear armor. However, the choice of class does determine the best strategies for surviving battles, and, as usual, it’s the magic-using class that starts off weakest and ends up strongest.

Each time the character gains a new level, the player receives five points to distribute among the four attributes: strength, magic, dexterity, and vitality. Although seemingly quite simple on the surface, Blizzard’s genius was doing more with less. Instead of baffling players with a complicated skill system like those in the Elder Scrolls or latter Might & Magic games, Diablo offers fewer choices but made them more significant.

The result was a game that met the grand old qualification, “Easy to learn, hard to master.” To put it bluntly, if you can click a mouse button, you can play Diablo. Even gamers who had never played a CRPG before found it intuitive and addicting. Furthermore, the production values were high, with great graphics, impressive cut-scenes, and a magnificent musical score. The game quickly became a best-seller, and is still being sold as part of the Diablo Battle Chest!

“Diablo is the best game to come out in the past year, and you should own a copy. Period. If you like PC games, you should go out right now and experience what is likely to be the clone maker for the next two years.”

-Trent C. Ward on GameSpot, Jan 23, 1997.

Diablo is also noted for its high degree of randomization. Everything from the dungeons, monster locations, and item capabilities are randomized, ensuring not only surprises but also upping the game’s replay value. Of course, readers of this series will be thinking back to my earlier discussion of Rogue and games like The Sword of Fargoal, which also offer relatively simple “hack’n slash” fun in randomized environments. Indeed, one of the most common epithets given to the game is “a Rogue-like for the 90s,” though there are plenty of Rogue fans who would object to this comparison.

SSI had tried something similar with its Dungeon Hack game and editor back in 1993, which tried to marry the venerable old mainframe classic with its Eye of the Beholder engine. Again, one has to wonder why so many developers seem to miss the point that it’s precisely the lack of distracting graphics and complex interfaces that make the classic Rogue games so novel and playable.

Another aspect of Diablo that set it apart was its support for multi-player, which ranged from the by-then common LAN party setup to a new internet server named Battle.net. Although not without its flaws (cheating was rampant), Diablo’s multi-player capability remained a significant factor in the game’s long-lasting popularity.

Yet despite strong sales and praise from many prominent reviewers, Diablo was not without its naysayers. Not surprisingly, the game’s popularity with “virgin” CRPG gamers drew sneers from long-term fans of the genre, particularly those who’d cut their teeth on venerable old titles like SSI’s Pool of Radiance or Interplay’s The Bard’s Tale. Blizzard had seemed to reduce the often intimidating CRPG genre to its bare essentials, then poured on the eye-candy.

Oldsters scoffed, dismissing the game as a “clickfest.” Meanwhile, fans of games like Sierra’s Quest for Glory were turned off by the lack of characters and interesting scenarios; for them, the constant clicking and killing brought little more than tedium. Other players complained about the “dark” graphics, which were occasionally hard to make out. The on-screen automapping tool helped with navigation, but frequently obscured the battle sequences.

Finally, some players complained about the game’s relatively short duration; gamers accustomed to the hundreds of hours required to slough through an Ultima weren’t happy about a game that could be completed in a mere two days.

What happens next in the Diablo story is quite perplexing. Rather than release a sequel or their own expansion, Blizzard let Sierra On-Line publish an expansion named Hellfire, which had been developed by Synergistic Software (the same team responsible for Birthright: The Gorgon’s Alliance). This expansion appeared in 1997, and added two new dungeons, new creatures, spells, items, and a Monk character class.

Reviewers weren’t nearly as enthused about Hellfire as they had been about Diablo, and the lack of multi-player support vexed many players. Many fans of the series don’t consider it an “official” expansion.

It wasn’t until 2000 that Blizzard finally released the true sequel, Diablo II. This game was more complex and larger than its predecessor, and the updated graphics were as impressive as Diablo’s had been in 1996. Now, players could explore outdoor areas as well as dungeons. More importantly, the randomized quests were replaced with more linear ones, which allowed for a more tightly integrated storyline and cut-scenes.

The class system had also been reworked, with five (Paladin, Barbarian, Amazon, Necromancer, Sorceress) classes, each with their own unique skills. Leveling up is also a bit more interesting with a graphical “skill tree” system that helps sustain a player’s long-term interest in developing a character–there’s always some new amazing new ability just a few levels away.

Multi-player mode was better supported this time, and cheating was rarer. Nevertheless, their Battle.net server was prone to lag, though that didn’t seem to slow the onslaught of rabid Diablo II fans desperate for online play–a fact that rankled many gamers who had just plunked down $60 or even $70 for the game. Finally, some of the Carpal Tunnel-inducing mouse clicking was alleviated. Players could simply hold down the mouse button to have their character repeatedly attack or move around.

The second game gave rabid fans exactly what they wanted, and then some. And then some more.

Blizzard decided to make their own expansion this time, releasing Lord of Destruction in 2001. Besides many new items and quests, this expansion offered heightened screen resolution (800 x 600), and two new character classes (Assassins and Druids).

Reviewers were pleased with the improved graphics, as well as many improvements to the Battle.net server that improved the online multi-player experience.

Diablo II greatly expanded the leveling up process with an ingenious skill tree system.

If the only criteria we needed to evaluate a CRPG were its sales figures and enduring popularity, Blizzard’s Diablo would represent one of the best (if not the best) CRPG ever designed. The game brought new blood to the genre, introducing it to thousands of gamers who had never played any of the classic CRPGs, much less a tabletop D&D game. It sent hordes of badly behaved teenagers (and middle-aged men, no doubt) scampering to Battle.net, “pwning” each other and seeking out the latest cheats and hacks to gain an unfair advantage.

Diablo and Diablo II are truly CRPGs for the masses. At the risk of sounding like a jaded old curmudgeon, I can’t help but feel a pang of regret about the overwhelming triumph of this series, since it seems to have come at the expense of the older, more sophisticated CRPGs of past eras.

Diablo and the Rise of “Action Role-Playing Games”

Given the unmitigated success of Blizzard’s Diablo, even the dimmest market analyst could predict the inevitable rush of clones that would follow in its wake.

Many of these games were just flashes in the pan. These include Silver Lightning’s Ancient Evil series (1998, 2001), Iridon’s Dink Smallwood (1998), Strategy First’s Clans (1999), and Sierra’s Throne of Darkness (2001). Though each game has qualities that set it apart from Diablo, none have matched its success.

Dink Smallwood was programmed by Seth Robinson, whose Legend of the Red Dragon game we discussed in the last installment. Like that game, Robinson loaded up the game with humor and satire, but it failed to make much impression on the market. Clans introduced more adventure-style puzzles into the mix, whereas Throne of Darkness is set in Japan’s Middle Ages, just as Pixel Studio’s later Blade & Sword (2003) took players to ancient China. Rebel Act Studios’ Blade of Darkness (2001) is known only for its outrageous gore.

Better known Diablo clones include Gathering’s Darkstone (1999), Electronic Art’s Nox (2001), Irrational Games’ Freedom Force (2002), Larian’s Divine Divinity (2002), and Encore’s Sacred series (2004). Darkstone introduced 3D graphics and the ability to control two characters, though only one at the time (the other is controlled by the computer). The ability to zoom and spin the camera around eliminated many of the problems introduced by Diablo’s isometric view (such as objects getting lost behind structures.

Nox, developed by the famed Westwood Studios, met with good reviews and enjoyed modest success. Westwood even offered an expansion for the game, Nox Quest, and in a surprising move made it available for free download. Freedom Force introduced comic book style superheroes and is probably the best of the bunch. It offered a viable alternative to the “dark” fantasy of Diablo and more tactical combat. Vivendi published the sequel in 2005, Freedom Force vs The 3rd Reich. Divine Divinity and its sequel, Beyond Divinity (2004), are essentially Diablo on steroids, with huge worlds and a massive number of skills (500!). These games also improve on Diablo’s sometimes confusing navigation interface. Reviewers tended to scoff at their derivative nature, but praised them for their addictive gameplay and attention to detail.

Sacred goes a step further, offering full 3D views and a world that take hours to cross. This game met with plenty of praise from critics as well, who applauded its more open-ended structure, but its bugs haven’t gone unnoticed. In any case, Sacred seems to be the best action CRPG going, even if its depth and complexity go far beyond the model established by Blizzard’s Diablo.

No doubt it will be interesting to see how far developers can continue to push the boundaries of the action CRPG, since each layer of complexity alienates the type of gamer who was so strongly drawn to Diablo, where the only thing you needed was a fast button finger.

Taylor has, in essence, reinvented the fantasy adventure by creating a world that isn’t attached to stereotypical races and archetypes that are often more, than merely, inspired from the works of Tolkien or Dungeons & Dragons.

– Peter Suciu on GameSpy, Apr. 12, 2002.

Perhaps the best known of the more recent action-CRPG is Gas Powered Games’ Dungeon Siege series, which debuted in 2002. Conceived by Chris Taylor and published my Microsoft Game Studios, Dungeon Siege features a large, diverse gameworld rendered in real-time 3D. Furthermore, the game’s custom engine allows the gameworld to “stream” rather than pre-load, which helps make it feel more like a coherent whole rather than a collection of discrete areas.

Dungeon Siege’s leveling system is determined by the character’s actions rather than a pre-selected class, an innovation also seen in the Elder Scrolls series. Although the player can only create one character, he or she can add up to eight other pre-rendered adventurers or loot-carrying mules to the party.

Although critics appreciated the lack of loading times and open-ended leveling system, they chided the simplistic “hands off” gameplay and straightjacket plot. An expansion called Legends of Aranna followed the next year, introduced a new campaign and several improvements, such as a global map tool, but was greeted with lukewarm reviews.

Dungeon Siege looks great, but many critics panned the “click and watch” gameplay.

Gas Powered Games released the first full sequel, Dungeon Siege II, in 2005. Although the bulk of the gameplay is similar to the first game, a new Diablo II-like skill tree system gives players more refined options for leveling their character.

The first expansion to this game, Broken World, was published by 2K Games in 2006. Although it’s a bit early to tell what impact these games will have on the genre, along with Sacred they are at least keeping the “action CRPG” alive and well on the PC.

Interplay Goes Platinum

After Daggerfall and Diablo, the typical CRPG fan probably assumed that real-time gameplay, whether 3D or isometric, was the way of the future. However, as we saw in the last article after the publication of FTL’s Dungeon Master, the evolution of CRPGs is anything but linear.

Ultimately, craft trumps innovation, and even though Dungeon Master demonstrated as early as 1987 the feasibility of first-person perspective in real-time, SSI’s turn-based Gold Box games sold well into the 1990s. Therefore, there’s really nothing surprising about Interplay’s breakthrough success with Fallout, a turn-based isometr

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.

Bard’s Tale (Apple II): A sensible,
uncluttered
layout and an eye-catching
game world
helped propel this series to
the top of the charts.

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?

Nevertheless, there was some exciting stuff going on before 1985. More of the old mainframe games were being ported (ever more faithfully) to home computers. Jim Schwaiger’s company Bear Systems released Oubliette for the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS platform in 1983. Oubliette, like so many other mainframe CRPGs, had been 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.

"There was a time when any computer fantasy game became an immediate bestseller due to the genre’s popularity and the scarcity of such products. That is no longer the case—computer fantasy games now compete in a buyer’s market where they must meet certain standards if they hope to sell." –James V. Trunzo, Compute!, August 1987

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 players. The difficulty is particularly felt during the crucial initial stage of the game, when the player’s characters (up to six) are weak, poorly equipped, and inexperienced. I can’t remember how many times I created an entire party of adventurers, only to have them all perish in a random encounter before I could make it to Garth’s weapons shop! The game is also rather lacking in terms of narrative or story elements–it’s a "dungeon crawler" with an emphasis on fighting random encounters with monsters, building up character stats and inventories, and mapping out dungeons. In many ways, the game is merely an updated Wizardry with better graphics and sound (indeed, some versions of the game even let players import their Wizardry or Ultima characters!). The story–find and depose an evil wizard named Mangar the Dark, who is threatening the town of Skara Brae–is hardly novel. Perhaps the only true innovation is the addition of the bard character, a sort of jack-of-all-trades character who could perform party-boosting songs during combat and dungeon exploration. The classes available to magic users were also sophisticated; players started off as simple conjurers or magicians, but could eventually 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.



While Electronic Arts’ initial foray into CRPGs played a pivotal role in the development of 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.

While 50 Mission Crush is a highly innovative and even unique game, Questron is an unimaginative Ultima clone. Indeed, SSI even secured a license from Richard Garriott for the game’s "structure and style." At the time, Questron was noted for being much easier and simpler to play than Ultima, and one contemporary reviewer even remarked that it was a "perfect warm-up" for Ultima III (Michael Ciraolo in Antic Vol. 3, No. 7). Nevertheless, Questron had some promising features. For instance, towns and cities contained "mini-games" that let skilled players boost their character’s stats. There were also casinos where players could gamble for gold. Finally, Questron was one of the first 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.

SSI followed up the first game with Phantasie II in 1986. The plot this time was even less imaginative than the first–Nikademus is back, and this time he’s used a magical orb to enslave an island and its population. Naturally, the party must find and destroy the orb. Other than a revamped story, there is little difference between this game and its prequel, save the ability of characters to hurl rocks at an enemies during combat. Players of the first game could also import their old characters. The final Phantasie [sic] was released in 1987 for the Apple II, and given the subtitle The Wrath of Nikademus (Westwood Associates ported it to other platforms). Nikademus has returned, and after two defeats his ambition has only grown–this time he’s out to control the world. The third game offered better graphics and more sophisticated combat, such as the ability to target specific body regions, a wound system, and better tactics. All in all, the third part is 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.

Wizard’s Crown (Apple II). This combat
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.

"Another common problem in CRPGs may be an emphasis in glitz and glamour rather than substance. If it is pretty, the assumption is that people will buy it. The question is, however, do these beautiful graphics really add anything substantial to the game? " –David L. Arneson in Computer Gaming World, May 1988.

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

As we’ve seen, SSI had developed and published several significant CRPGs before it won the exclusive license from TSR to market official AD&D computer games. Questron, Phantasie, Wizard’s Crown, and even Shard of Spring all have elements that show up in one form or another in SSI’s later productions. The Gold Box combat system, for instance, is essentially a streamlined version of the one found in Wizard’s Crown. 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.



However, I’ll dry my eyes now, take a deep breath, and try to break this game down into its constituent parts. As I see it, the game’s key strengths lie in its game world, story, combat system, and overall game structure. Since the game world and story are so closely related, let’s discuss those first. In a nutshell, the characters’ task is to help rebuild Phlan, a once-proud city that has long lain in ruins. The characters arrive at New Phlan, the part of the city that has already been cleared, and begin accepting commissions from the City Council to perform various quests, such as clearing the slums of monsters and recovering legendary artifacts. The quests vary widely and all make 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.

Much of what makes Pool of Radiance different is its adherence to official AD&D rules.  For instance, instead of "magic points," magic-users are given a set number of spells to memorize. How many spells they get per slot depends on their level of experience and intelligence (or wisdom in the case of clerics). Although mages receive one new spell per level, they will learn most of them by scribing them from scrolls found in the unsettled areas. Once a spell is cast, it erases itself from the magic-user’s memory and must be re-learned. Memorizing spells (and restoring hit points) takes several hours of inactivity, which means setting up camp. Although there are many safe spots where the characters can rest unmolested, many of the more dangerous areas all but prevent it. Thus, a player can’t just focus on one battle at the time; she must always plan ahead. For instance, "wasting" all of a mage’s fireball spells on a group of wimpy kobolds might leave the 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).

SSI finally retired the Gold Box engine in 1992, though it would continue to release various compilations for years afterwards. Even if SSI was finished with the engine, players could still create their own "Gold Box" games using MicroMagic’s Unlimited Adventures, published by SSI in 1993. The Gold Box games defined the Golden Age, and set the bar against which all later games would be judged. However, SSI knew it was time to move on. Its next big series debuted with Eye of the Beholder (1991). However, since that game has much in common with an earlier game called Dungeon Master, it’s only fair to pause our coverage of SSI here and talk about other CRPGs of the Golden Age.

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.



Another unfinished series is Star Saga, a highly innovative game developed by Masterplay and published by Electronic Arts. Star Saga was intended to be a trilogy, but only two games were made. Star Saga is interesting because of its determined effort to more closely emulate tabletop role-playing games (it’s allegedly based on a tabletop game called Rekon). The approach was to heavily integrate extra-game materials, such as a hefty collection of printed texts ("textlets") and even a game board and pieces. The idea was that players could enrich their computer game experience by referring to these materials during game sessions; for instance, by moving the tokens around on the map. All that appears on the screen is text describing the current situation and the effects of the players’ actions. Star Saga is intended to be played by more than one player (up to six), and each player has a unique role and set of tasks. In so many ways, the game functions as a robotic "dungeon master," and the real action takes place on the tabletop. Obviously, the game just can’t be properly played via an emulator, so anyone interested in learning more about this game should find an original copy with all the included printed material (nearly three pounds worth!)–a collector’s dream. By all accounts, the writing is quite excellent and the story simply fascinating.

"[Star Saga] is probably the most unique and well-written role-playing experience yet to appear in a computer game. It will also stand up to any human game-mastered role-playing game on the market."—William "Biff" Kritzen in Computer Gaming World, Aug. 1988.

On a side note, one of my favorite science fiction-themed CRPGs of the mid 1980s is Jagware’s Alien Fires: 2199 AD, a very obscure first-person, single-character game that originated on the Commodore Amiga (1986) but was later ported to the Atari ST and MS-DOS. Almost no one talks about this game today, and I was unable to find any version but the graphically inept DOS version online. Nevertheless, I find its premise interesting (you play as a Time Lord who must stop a Dr. Kurtz from traveling back in time to see the Big Bang.) The game is fast and difficult, and involves quite a bit of interaction with a rather odd and colorful cast of characters (mostly aliens). Furthermore, the Amiga version’s digitized soundtrack is absolutely hypnotic, and the design decision to use the Amiga’s built-in speech synthesizer adds a distinctly "alien," psychedelic feel to the game. Alien Fires is a quirky and extremely difficult game, and the lack of a good save option compounds the problem exponentially. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but I’ve never played another game that had the same otherworldly ambiance. Try to find the Amiga version if you’re determined to try this game yourself.

Alien Fires 2199 A.D. (DOS). The Amiga version has the best graphics, but the DOS port
has a
more user-friendly interface.

After fantasy and science fiction, the most popular genre for CRPGs is post-apocalyptic fiction. Generally speaking, this genre is occupied with the future of civilization after a nuclear holocaust (or some other type of worldwide catastrophe). The genre has been popular in books and movies, such as Mad Max (1979), Damnation Alley (1977), and Death Race 2000 (1975). The reason I mention these particular movies is that they seem to have had such a strong influence on the developers of early post-apocalyptic CRPGs, such as Autoduel (1985), which was itself based on a Steve Jackson game called Car Wars (c. 1980). In Autoduel, the point is not to slay dragons, but rather to build the most deadly vehicle on the road. Accomplishing that goal requires forethought, luck, and quick reflexes–think of it as a cross between Bally Midway’s arcade hit Spy Hunter and Ultima.  Instead of strength, dexterity, and constitution, characters are assigned points for driving skill, marksmanship, and mechanics.

Autoduel (Apple II). Whatever you do,
don’t say "cute."

Autoduel is also known for being one of the first "open-ended" computer games (though of course the mainframe "roguelikes" were much earlier in this regard, and Firebird’s Elite (1984) was a year earlier). At any rate, it’s up to the player to decide what goals are worth pursuing and how he should go about pursuing them. Players are encouraged to experiment. For instance, the player could stick to "courier" missions, risking life and limb on the deadly highways. Other players might prefer winning money in the arena, or engaging in a bit of vigilante justice–or even become an outlaw. Likewise, players can build fast and highly maneuverable cars, or virtual tanks on wheels. In so many ways, what’s enjoyable about Autoduel is not so much being part of a story or completing a quest, but rather just gaining expertise of the game’s logic and creative possibilities. Oh, and if any of this sounds familiar to you Grand Theft Auto fans out there, don’t get too excited–there’s no "Hot Coffee Mod" in Autoduel. Or is there?



Autoduel was a very popular and successful game despite its simple graphics, and other games would follow in its trajectory. Interstel’s Scavengers of the Mutant World, released in 1988 for MS-DOS, echoes the nuclear wasteland setting and build-a-vehicle concept. However, this time the only purpose in doing so is to escape to a radiation-free zone, killing anything or anyone that gets in the way. While the game had some good ideas (using old highway signs for shields, for instance), terrible graphics and repetitive gameplay prevented it from achieving much success. Furthermore, the monsters grew tougher as the party gained experience–and eventually became so strong that the player had no choice but to create a whole new party and resume. In short, there’s more disaster here than the one serving as the game’s premise.



In 1987, Origin published another post-apocalyptic game set in the far future called 2400 A.D. The story here is that alien robots called the Tzorg have overrun the world of Metropolis and must be stopped. The player assumes the role of a rebel, and must find a way to take down the robots’ central control (perhaps the developer, Chuck Bueche, was inspired by the 1984 film The Terminator?) Instead of long swords and chainmail, players get to play with a whole host of curious gadgets, such as a holoprojector which casts a hologram of the character to confuse the robots, and a jetpack to make travel a breeze. All and all, it’s a very creative game that should have been a great deal more successful. Unfortunately, some legal issues prevented the game from ever being released for the C-64, and apparently the game flopped on the Apple II. On a side note, John Romero of Doom fame is often credited with the C-64 port, though some controversy exists about his involvement.

Wasteland (DOS). But Mom, I am playing
outside—see?

Probably the most famous of all the post-apocalyptic CRPGs, Fallout, can trace its roots back to Interplay’s Wasteland, released in 1988 for the C-64, MS-DOS, and Apple II, and published by Electronic Arts. Wasteland is set in the devastating aftermath of World War III. Players start out with a party of four "Desert Rangers," though up to three more characters can be recruited later on. However, these additional members cannot be controlled directly, and have their own goals that play a strong role in how the game unfolds. Two of the developers, Ken St. Andre and Michael Stackpole, had designed their own tabletop role-playing games (Tunnels and Trolls and Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes, respectively), and many of their ideas ended up in Wasteland. As in SSI’s Wizard’s Crown (1985), character development was based not only on "stats" but also skills–27 of them, to be precise. These abilities range from combat skills to sleight-of-hand and metallurgy. Obviously, sensible players will want to ensure their party has a wide spread of talents, since there’s no telling what they’ll be up against–though the game is flexible enough to let players overcome obstacles in a variety of ways, such as picking a lock versus climbing a gate. Likewise, the game has several situations in which an individual character must "go it alone," thus further helping players form coherent identities for their party.

Interface-wise, Wasteland can be described as a mix between The Bard’s Tale (for combat and character info screens) and top-down games like Ultima (for travel and exploration). It’s a nice setup that works well, even if it doesn’t allow players quite the tactical combat possibilities of Pool of Radiance or The Wizard’s Crown. At any rate, the appeal of Wasteland stems more from its fascinating game world and intricate character development than combat stratagems.

Like Pool of Radiance and several other games of the era, much of the context for the action takes place in a printed manual with numbered paragraphs. The manual warns against reading ahead, but notes that once the game is finished "you can kick back in your best lounge chair under a shady cactus and read the rest of the fictional vignettes." Indeed, players who did either found some funny paragraphs designed to catch cheaters, including the first one. After several torrid descriptions of an impending sex scene, a would-be seductress proclaims, "Stop reading paragraphs you’re not supposed to read, creeps. Next time I’m going to demand they put me in a Bard’s Tale game, this Wasteland duty is dangerous."

Wasteland remains the favorite CRPG of many a gamer who played in back in the late 1980s, and for good reason–it’s a captivating and highly innovative game that deserves its place beside (if not above!) Interplay’s other CRPG classic, The Bard’s Tale. It’s more than a testament to the game’s enduring legacy that the best-selling Fallout, released in 1997, is in many ways little more than a graphical revamp of the older engine. Wasteland is a classic game that remains highly playable and rewarding even today. I might note that Electronic Arts released an alleged sequel to the game called Fountain of Dreams in 1990, but none of Wasteland’s developers were involved. The publisher made an uncharacteristic decision to downplay the "sequel" aspect as much as possible, and the game (which, by all accounts, is something of a lemon) made very little impression on the market.



The last non-fantasy CRPGs I’ll mention for now are Battletech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception and Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic. The Crescent Hawk’s Inception, developed by Westwood Associates and published by Infocom in 1988. This top-down CRPG put players in the role of Jason Youngblood, whose mission was to locate his lost father and win back the land of Pacifica. In some ways, this game is similar to Origin’s much earlier release Autoduel, in that players spend most of their time trying to build the best mobile death machines. Here, however, combat is turn-based and much closer to games like Pool of Radiance. Although the game was generally well received, other games based on the Battletech franchise were either strategy or arcade/simulation games (Mechwarrior, for instance). Westwood Associates also developed a game called Mars Saga in 1988 that was published by Electronic Arts. Mars Saga is seldom mentioned game today, though it was Westwood’s first game that wasn’t based on a license.

Sentinel Worlds, developed by Karl Buiter and published by Electronic Arts in 1989, is something of a cross between The Bard’s Tale and Firebird’s Elite. Players begin by assembling a five-person crew, who are then assigned "skill points" in areas as diverse as gunnery, bribery, and ATV repair. Combat can take place either on the ground or in space, but there was more to this game than who had the bigger gun. Players also had to choose the right options from conversation menus, where a few bad choices could force restoring to an older saved game. Like many other Golden Age CRPGs, Sentinel Worlds included a book of numbered passages which the players were asked to consult at certain points in the game. These passages added literary texture to the game, but were obviously much more of an interruption than the "cut scenes" we so often see in modern games. Like SSI’s The Wizard’s Crown, Sentinel Worlds is complicated game with a steep learning curve–factors that might explain why the game has not received the appreciation it deserves. Buiter followed up with Hard Nova, released in 1990 and also published by Electronic Arts. This game has more of a "cyberpunk" theme, and isn’t an official sequel to Sentinel Worlds despite sharing most of its gameplay concepts.



Suffice it to say, the Golden Age of CRPGs wasn’t just about orcs, prismatic sprays, and vorpal blades. There was a smorgasbord of sci-fi and post-apocalyptic games to choose from, including triumphs like Wasteland. Games like Star Saga and Autoduel really pushed the boundaries of the genre and demonstrated new concepts–some of which are now cliches and others mere curiosities. However, we’re still not done with the Golden Age yet. Rounding out the Age are a collection of pioneering efforts into a more intense CRPG featuring real-time, 3D gameplay.

The Late Golden Age: The Rise of Real-Time 3D

In 2007, we might find it difficult to imagine a time when real-time, 3D games were a novelty. Although these games had existed for home computers for some time–3D Monster Maze (1981), Dungeons of Daggorath (1982), the great majority of CRPGs were either top-down, turn-based 3D, or some mixture of the two. However, by the late 1980s, computer gamers were steadily replacing their 8-bit machines with Atari ST and Commodore Amiga computers. These new machines offered better graphics, sound, memory, and storage options–facts that were not lost on aspiring game developers. Nevertheless, it took awhile for real-time, first-person 3-D to really catch-on, and even now the question of whether it really leads to better CRPGs is open for discussion. Gamers were just as divided in 1988 over games like Pool of Radiance and Dungeon Master as they are about Neverwinter Nights 2 and The Elder Scrolls IV. There has (and probably never will be) a single, shared vision for a CRPG engine and interface. Some players seem to privilege the "immersion" experience of first-person perspective, whereas others prefer to see their characters moving about on the screen. Likewise, there are CRPG fans who enjoy contemplative turn-based combat (as seen recently in The Temple of Elemental Evil), though most modern gamers seem to prefer real-time action.

Dungeon Master (Atari ST). Can you overcome your carpal tunnel syndrome long enough to beat this game?

"Few games have generated as much affection as Dungeon Master, even to the point of third-party products (hint books and maps). It’s hard not to like DM."–Ian Chadwick in ST-Log, February 1989.

Since these issues remain so central to CRPG development, FTL Games’ classic Dungeon Master (1987) is one of the most historically significant  CRPGs, and there are many CRPG critics who consider it the greatest CRPG ever made. It was first released for the new Atari ST, where it became the best-selling game ever for the platform.  It was promptly ported to the rival Commodore Amiga, and somewhat later to the MS-DOS and even the SNES platforms. Though it is hailed for its innovative use of sound and a back story by a professional novelist (Nancy Holder), for our purposes the most important feature is the game’s 3-D interface. The bulk of the screen is composed of a first-person view of the party’s current perspective. This screen is updated in real-time as the player explores the dungeon, much like the setup of a first-person shooter. On the top of this window are four boxes showing the current status of the four characters, the items they are holding, and their relative position (i.e., who is in front and back). The rest of the screen is dedicated to the magic system, attack mode, and directional buttons. Although the directional keys are a bit cumbersome on the ST version (players must click them with the mouse), later versions allow all movement (including rotating) to be executed from the keyboard. Unlike most games of the era, Dungeon Master offers combat in real-time. When the party is attacked, the player must work frantically to issue orders (e.g., attack, cast a spell, quaff a potion), always taking into consideration how long it will take each character to perform and recover. Since very few of these actions can be automated or prepared beforehand, players need rapid reflexes and considerable endurance to complete the game. Without a doubt, many gamers suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome today have Dungeon Master to blame!



However, Dungeon Master is far from a simple "clickfest." Most noticeably, the game’s magic system is complex and arguably more logical than simple point-based (The Bard’s Tale) or slot systems (Pool of Radiance, Wizardry). In Dungeon Master, players cast spells by stringing together runes. Although only certain predetermined sequences produce effects, players can determine the potency of any spell (or potion) and subsequently how much magical energy to expend in the process. Furthermore, although any character can try to cast a spell, only practiced mages and priests can pull off really effective feats of magic. However, the manual doesn’t include a magical recipe book, so players must either find them sprinkled throughout the vast dungeon, experiment in a trial-and-error fashion, or consult a hint book. In any case, it’s an versatile if somewhat daunting spell system for novices. A similar (probably derived) system shows up in Dynamix’s Betrayal at Krondor (1993).



Adding to the "real-time" aspect is the necessity to acquire food and water for the characters–a gameplay element seen in many earlier games, including Rogue and Ultima. Thankfully, the need to eat drink are infrequent enough to keep this aspect from becoming a nuisance. Hungry characters can even gobble down the carcasses of many of the slain monsters, though it’s best to collect the turkey legs and other foods left lying about the dungeon (sanitation not required!).

Dungeon Master was an unqualified success, and FTL followed up with Chaos Strikes Back in 1989. However, other developers were quick to follow their example. In 1990, SSI published the first of what would become a trilogy of "Black Box" Eye of the Beholder games, developed by Westwood Studios (formerly Westwood Associates) and based on the 2nd edition of the AD&D official rules. First available for MS-DOS but later for the Amiga, Sega CD (featuring a famous soundtrack by Yuzo Koshiro), and SNES, Eye of the Beholder was unquestionably influenced by FTL’s breakthrough title. The games are set in TSR’s Forgotten Realms, the same universe used in Pool of Radiance and its sequels. Like Dungeon Master, the player controls a party of four characters–however, in Eye of the Beholder, two non-player characters can also join the group. Another important difference is that players get to create their own characters rather than select them from a "Hall of Heroes," as in DM. Further differences are a built-in compass (players must find the compass in DM) and a slot-style spell system. Players select which spells they wish their mages to memorize or clerics to pray for, then "camp" until they’ve done so.

Eye of the Beholder (DOS). Any resemblance to Dungeon Master is purely coincidental.

The story in the first game is quite simple–a mysterious evil presence has been detected underneath the city of Waterdeep. Little is known about the nature of this evil, but the name "Xanathar" seems relevant. Naturally, the characters are instructed to investigate, but a sudden cave-in leaves them stranded in the sewers beneath the city. The second game, The Legend of Darkmoon (1991), added outdoor areas and focused more on narrative and interaction with non-player characters. Perhaps most importantly, the second game has a much more user-friendly saved game setup; instead of replacing a single saved game with each save, players choose among six different slots. Though the story starts off as vaguely as the first (you’re to explore a mysterious evil in the Tower of Darkmoon), most fans of the series consider The Legend of Darkmoon the best of the lot. The final game, released in 1993, was not developed by Westwood Studios, but rather internally by SSI. It has some nice innovations, such as an "ALL ATTACK" button allowing all available characters to attack with one click, and the ability of characters standing in the rear to attack with pole-arms. However, it is by all accounts a disappointment and a terrible way to end the glorious trilogy. The culprits are a lackluster story, repetitive gameplay, and inconsistent difficulty.

Hired Guns (Amiga). I’ll take four, thank
you very much.

Another company to mimic the successful Dungeon Master formula was DMA Design, a premier Amiga developer. In 1993, Psygnosis published their Hired Guns for MS-DOS and Amiga. Set in a grim, futuristic world called Graveyard, Hired Guns quickly became many gamers’ favorite CRPG, and can be found on countless "Best Of" charts of Amiga games. The story is simple if a bit twisted–four mercenaries are hired to allegedly rescue some hostages, but soon discover they have been selected to test the prowess of deadly, genetically engineered creatures. One of the most popular features of the game is its multiplayer mode, which allows up to four players to play at once, and a "deathmatch" mode provides enjoyment long after players complete the campaign. Although many CRPGs claim to have "multiplayer" options, what this usually amounts to is one player sitting at the keyboard taking orders from the assembled group. Only a few games prior to the rise of LAN and internet gaming allowed more direct controls. Though Hired Guns is one of the most famous of these, a very early example is Quality Software’s Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1981!), an Atari 8-bit game (later ported to Apple II) which allowed simultaneous play for up to four people. A later but only slightly less obscure example is Swords of Twilight, developed by Free Fall Associates and published by Electronic Arts in 1989. An Amiga-only title, Swords of Twilight is a real-time isometric RPG that allows up to three simultaneous players. Also appearing in 1989 was Mirrosoft’s Bloodwych, published by Konami. Bloodwych, a first-person game in the vein of Dungeon Master, was available for a variety of platforms, and features a split-screen option for two players to enjoy the game simultaneously. The game is also known for its emphasis on dialog with non-player characters and enormous maps. The developers (Philip M. and Anthony Taglione) went on to create a follow-up called Hexx: Heresy of the Wizard, which was published by Psygnosis in 1994.

Now that we’ve covered some of the most groundbreaking new games and developments, let’s wrap up with a glance at what was happening with the two foundational CRPG series, Wizardry and Ultima, as well as an important newcomer: Might and Magic.

Ultima, Wizardry, and Might and Magic in the Golden Age

Naturally, Sir-Tech and Origin were not content to let the premier CRPG series fall by the wayside. From 1985-1994, Origin published five new Ultima titles, and Sir-Tech gave us four additions to the Wizardry canon. Meanwhile, a new developer of CRPGs, New World Computing, introduced its well-known Might and Magic series in 1986, which had expanded to five games by the end of 1993. Let’s start with Ultima and see how the series evolved during the Golden Age.

Golden Age Ultima: The Great Enlightenment

Ultima IV (DOS): But, you mean my
personality
isn’t just a series of dice rolls?

Although some Ultima fans consider Ultima III to be the best game in the series, Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, released in 1985, is probably better known and admired today. Indeed, as late as 1996, Computer Gaming World was naming it the #2 Best Game of All Time for PC, and Richard Garriott (creator of Ultima) cites it as one of his top two favorites games of the series. It certainly marked a turning point in the series, and was recognized as such–it was the first game set in the "Age of Enlightenment" trilogy. From here on out, Ultima would be best known for its strong emphasis on morality and important cultural and social issues. What does it mean to lead a good life? If you don’t see how that question could pertain to a CRPG, you have some homework to do!



Perhaps the key aspect that makes Quest of the Avatar unique is the unusual goal it sets for the player. Almost every CRPG we care to list is ultimately concerned with building up enough strength, experience, and resources to overcome some uber-powerful foe. "Character development," if we can call it that, amounts to gaining levels and tweaking stats. Quest of the Avatar departs radically from this convention, instead having the player focus on the character’s morality, boiled down to eight essential virtues: Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Spirituality, Humility, Sacrifice, Justice, and Honor. The game actually "punished" players who acted in typical "hack’n slash" fashion, mindlessly looting and killing. On the other hand, all CRPGs can be seen as "quests for self-improvement," and Quest of the Avatar merely demonstrates a new method of achieving the ultimate such improvement–enlightenment. The character’s quest is to become a "shining example" to the people of Sosoria.



Just how different Quest of the Avatar is from other CRPGs is evident as soon as the player tries to create a character. Instead of "rolling die" and generating stats, players answer a series of questions about moral dilemmas. Answering the questions one way results in the character’s becoming a bard, druid, shepherd, and so on. Although it’s perhaps dangerous to speculate about how much Richard Garriott thought his game might have a real-life impact on players, the afterword he penned for the manual seems clear: "The Quest for the Avatar is the search for a new standard, a new vision of life for which our people may strive. We seek the person who can becoming a shining example for our nation and guide us from the Age of Darkness into the Age of Light." Some critics claim that Garriott was reacting against the stereotypes that RPGs were necessarily satanic or immoral, and my guess is that they’re at least partially correct. Much was made of the new moral and philosophical element of the game, and contemporary reviewers praised Origin for bringing new vitality to the genre. Another interesting innovation is the magic system, which requires that mages find reagents (ingredients like ginseng and garlic) to cast spells. This reagent business is an integral part of many tabletop AD&D campaigns, but is omitted from most CRPGs, including SSI’s "Gold Box" games.

"To me, Ultima has become more than just a collection of puzzles to solve, but an environment, an entire world if you will, a gateway to a life among the peoples and cultures of a different time and place." –Richard Garriott in an interview published in Computer Gaming World, July 1988.

Quest of the Avatar also depends heavily on conversations with non-player characters, some of whom can even join the Avatar on his quest (up to eight, or one of each character class). In some ways, it started the (infamous) tradition of CRPGs that literally required players to try talking to everyone. Accordingly, players must take copious notes if they hope to progress very far in the game–and it’s a huge game, at that, estimated at some 150 to 200 hours to finish. Thankfully, players have many ways to get about in the world–horses, ships, and "moon gates" just to name a few. I should also add that game included a cloth map and a small metal ankh in addition to two manuals. By the way, the manuals for each of the Enlightenment games are quite lengthy and loaded with information that is either directly useful or helpful in establishing context for the games. For instance, besides lengthy discussions of virtues, ethics, combat, and magic, Ultima V’s manual includes lyrics to a song called "Stones," penned by Gwenllian Gwalch’gaeaf, wife of the famous folk musician Iolo Fitzowen. In short, if you don’t have the printed materials that were included with these games, you’re missing out on a large chunk of the Ultima experience. On a positive note, though, this is the only game of the series that’s legally available for free download on the net, and several teams have created versions that are much easier to run on modern operating systems. If you’re interested, be sure to check out the remake xu4, where you can also download the original.



The next entry in the series, Warriors of Destiny (1988) is even more deeply steeped in morality play than its prequel. This time, the theme is fundamentalism. An evil tyrant named Blackthorn has taken over the land of Britannia, and is terrorizing the people by enforcing too strict of a moral code (i.e., "Thou shalt donate half of they income to charity, or thou shalt have no income.") Although most of the core elements are identical to the earlier game, the writing here is more polished and professional, and interaction with non-player characters is more meaningful. Players will need to be very careful to write down any potential "keywords" that might trigger a crucial response from a non-player character. Making matters even more difficult is a running clock that determines whether it’s night or day on Brittannia. Many events can only take place if the Avatar is in the right place at the right time; a fact that makes a hint book nearly indispensable.



There are some other important differences between the two games. The number of classes has been cut from 8 to 3 (fighter, bard, and mage). This limitation is particularly felt when important characters from the previous game; the specialized classes can their magical abilities. The magic system has also been revamped a bit; now reagents can be purchased in stores, and the spell system is now structured around eight "circles" and strings of syllables. Like Dungeon Master, players can now fine-tune their spells by combining different sequences of magical incantations. The combat system is also more realistic and complex, and characters can even accidentally strike their comrades! Warriors of Destiny also marks a few important turning points–it’s the last of the series to originate on the Apple II and the last time Garriott took a hand in coding.



Ultima VI: The False Prophet, was released in 1990 for MS-DOS, and marked the end of the "Age of Enlightenment" trilogy begun with Quest of the Avatar. By 1990, the Apple II was really showing its age, and Origin was convinced that Apple’s IIgs just didn’t have a large enough user-base to warrant their attention. The False Prophet took advantage of the PC’s new VGA cards, which Origin correctly determined would mark the beginning of the end for competing platforms. However, though the game features enhanced graphics compared to its predecessors, in some ways it’s actually more limited–the dungeons, for instance, are rendered entirely in 2D, in some ways a step back from the 2D/3D switching that occurs in earlier games. The interface was also cleaned up, and the old alphabetical list of commands was replaced by a new streamlined menu. Contemporary players were impressed with the immense size of the world, which was always displayed on screen along with the characters (i.e., there’s no "world map" mode). Interaction is enhanced with small portraits of the interlocutors, and keywords are marked in red for easy recognition. An abundance of  "cinematics" also adds to the ambiance. The towns and villages are also better populated and seem more realistic–in addition to the usual assortment of taverns and blacksmiths, there are also weavers and bakers plying their trades. Likewise, objects like chairs can be moved around, and walls and doors have "hit points" and can be destroyed. A player so inclined can even grind fwheat into flour and bake bread! Finally, "random monsters" are now extinct, and there are sensible limits concerning when and where the party can be attacked.

Ultima 6 (DOS). Gargoyles just killed a bunch of people. WWJD?

The moral imperative this time is based on racism and xenophobia–the player must learn about an alien culture and explore issues that of cultural relativism. However, some players felt the story was unfocused, and criticized the gameplay for being too heavily invested in menial side-quests. Though combat is not especially difficult, players can easily find themselves wandering aimlessly, without a clear sense of purpose or direction. Still, the game was a hit and still cherished by many fans, although the next Ultima game–the first in the "Age of Armageddon" games, featured a graphical overhaul and controls and tends to make the accomplishments of The False Prophet pale in comparison. I’ll discuss the Armageddon games in our next installment, so stay tuned! Now, let’s turn our attention to the Wizardry series.

Golden Age Wizardry: The Dark Savant

If Origin’s Ultima series was becoming increasingly moralistic and even dogmatic, Sir-Tech’s Wizardry was about to take the opposite approach. Four years had passed since Legacy of Llylgamyn (1983), and when Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna (1987) finally arrived, it no doubt took most fans of the series by surprise–this time, you get to be the evil wizard hellbent on getting his revenge. The plot is perhaps the only of its type in the history of CRPGs. To make a long story short, Werdna (the wizard defeated in the first Wizardry) has awakened, but he’s now without his powers and trapped in the bottom of his ten-level dungeon. Furthermore, all of the monsters and traps that existed to keep out wily adventurers now serve the opposite purpose–to keep Werdna imprisoned. Getting Werdna out of the dungeon will take time and patience, but the revenge will no doubt be sweet. Thankfully, Werdna is able to summon monsters to help him out, though you are unable to control them directly.



The Return of Werdna is widely considered to be the most difficult CRPG ever created, and it’s definitely a game suited only for veterans of the first three games. The dungeon is resistant to mapping, and there are several brain-stumping puzzles sprinkled throughout. To make matters worse, the ghost of one of your slain enemies, Trebor, haunts the dungeon and will instantly kill you if you encounter him. Finally, every save of the game resets all the monsters on the current level. Suffice it to say, rumors of this game’s difficulty have not been exaggerated! There’s also a nice bit of history here that’s not often discussed in modern reviews of this game—Sir-Tech used some of the characters from disks it had received from gamers, who either wanted them repaired or to show they had indeed solved the game. The company used some of these purloined characters as do-gooder enemies for Werdna.



Besides the unusual plot setup and insane difficulty, The Return of Werdna varied little from the previous three games. The next game, Heart of the Maelstrom (1988), featured a few enhancements, including new character abilities, spells, and bigger mazes. It was designed by David Bradley, who took over from Robert Woodhead and Andrew Greenberg. The plot involves descending into the titular maelstrom torn open by an evil woman named Sorn, whose purpose in life has become to put an end to the whole universe. The game was released for the SNES in 1992, where it seems to have fared a bit better than on other platforms.

Wizardry 6 (DOS). Cause if we let these rats
destroy us…

The Wizardry series really got a boost in 1990 with the publication of the sixth game, Bane of the Cosmic Forge, which set off a great new trilogy by David Bradley focused on an enigmatic character called the Dark Savant. The aged Wizardry engine finally got an overhaul, with better graphics and a sleek, mouse-driven interface designed for the EGA era. Furthermore, it was some four times larger than any previous Wizardry and was meant to represent somewhat of a break with the previous games. For instance, this is one of the few games in the series that doesn’t allow players to import characters from the prequel. It also features an innovative storyline, which concerns a magical pen whose scribbled words become reality—a similar conceit underlies the Myst series. The game emphasizes puzzle solving almost as much as combat, and offers multiple endings. Character creation also became more central to the game, since race and gender had direct effects on gameplay. It also offers on-screen dice rolls, a nice throw-back to traditional D&D.

"Role playing is just as it sounds. You play the role of something or someone other than yourself. Just like professional actors and actresses, you pretend to be a character, acting and reacting to situations as he or she would." –from the Bane of the Cosmic Forge instruction manual.

Bane of the Cosmic Forge also introduced a more nuanced combat and leveling-up system, two components critical to the success of any CRPG engine. One obvious addition is an intuitive skill-based system, divided into three large categories (Weaponry, Physical, Academia) and further subdivided into minutiae like Sword, Oratory, and Mythology. Combat is similarly complex; there are eight different "modes" like thrust, bash, lashing, and punching, each with their own pros and cons. The manual goes on for some 130 pages, and it’s well advised for anyone serious about the game to read it cover-to-cover.

The next game, Crusaders of the Dark Savant, released in 1992 for MS-DOS and repacked in 1996 as Wizardry Gold for Windows 95, is another highpoint in the series, and marked the first expansion into 256-color VGA graphics. Perhaps taking a page from the Ultima series, this game contains a blend of fantasy and sci-fi elements. The powerful pen introduced in the last game has been captured by a cyborg named Aletheides. The disappearance of the pen has revealed a secret it was guarding—the lost planet of Guardia. Somewhere on Guardia is the secret to incredible power, and several groups (including the player’s party and the "Dark Savant") set out to find it. This aspect of competing with other groups for the same prize was quite novel, and opened up several new gameplay possibilities—should you join one of these groups or slaughter them? Another nice development was "multiple beginnings," a twist on the multiple endings of the prequel. Four different beginnings were available, but which one you experienced depended on how your imported party completed the previous game (or whether you started fresh).

Like its predecessors, Crusaders of the Dark Savant is a difficult, complicated game that it quite intimidating to beginners, even if it does feature auto-mapping and a mouse-driven interface. The combat engine even factors in the characters’ mental and physical fatigue, which steadily grows during the many protracted battles. Picking locks is likewise no easy task, but requires quick reflexes (you must hit the button at just the right moment as the tumblers roll). Nevertheless, Crusaders of the Dark Savant was praised by critics and was not really eclipsed until the release of Wizardry 8 in 2001, which I’ll discuss in the next installment.

Might and Magic: A Brave New World

Although there have been dozens and dozens of successful CRPG series over the decades, the most long-lived are Ultima, Wizardry, and New World Computing’s Might and Magic. Indeed, each of these series received installments into the 2000’s. Of the three, however, Might and Magic seems at times to lie too much in the shadow of its older brothers. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting series that made several key developments to the genre.

Might and Magic (DOS). I want that helmet,
and I want it now.

The first Might and Magic, subtitled Book I: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum, was clearly a labor of love by developer Jon Van Caneghem and his wife Michaela. Caneghem did the bulk of the coding and design himself, and then co-founded New World Computing with Michaela and Mark Caldwell. The game debuted on the Apple II in 1986, followed by ports for the C-64, MS-DOS, and Mac platforms a year later. Contemporary reviewers praised it highly, comparing it very favorably to the competition (this was when The Bard’s Tale was winning over huge audiences for the genre). The biggest draw seemed to be the immense size of the game world, Varn; there were over 4,000 locations and 55 areas to explore! Furthermore, the game was much more liberal than most in allowing players to explore the map however they wanted, rather than the fixed sequences of many games of the era. It offered first-person perspective and very nice graphics (though no animation).

Might and Magic pioneered several gameplay elements that would show up in later games like Bane of the Cosmic Forge, such as having the characters’ race and gender play a strong role in the gameplay. For instance, one of the kingdoms in Might and Magic is stringently anti-male, and an all-male party will not be welcomed. Likewise, character alignment (i.e., good, neutral, or evil) plays a role in which locations the party can visit. Finally, the game’s difficulty was considerably lower than most other games on the shelf, and was thus quite popular with gamers not yet ready to tackle Wizard’s Crown or The Bard’s Tale. (I should note that the early releases of the game started the characters off with no money and no weapons but clubs; new versions were quickly released that offered a much better prepared starting party). Combat is a simple text-driven affair, with the strengths of the monsters balanced so as not to overwhelm the player’s party. Even if the party died, players could easily restore the game at the most recently visited inn.

"Much of the fun of any fantasy game, however, lies in the creation of the characters with whom you go adventuring." –from the Might and Magic instruction manual.

The plot focuses on six adventurers in a quest to discover the secret of the "Inner Sanctum," though little information is offered upfront about this quest or its object. Indeed, the ultimate quest is kept intentionally vague, and left for players to gradually piece together as they explore Varn. Like the early Ultima games, Might and Magic contains a mixture of fantasy and sci-fi elements. It also featured one of the best manuals of any of the early CRPGs, a spiral-bound affair with a fold-out map of Varn. In short, the first Might and Magic game made a great impression on critics and gamers.

Might and Magic 2 (C-64). Cause dice rolling
is what D&D is all about!

New World Computing released the first sequel, Gates to Another World, in 1988. Although the engine was left mostly untouched, the graphics received a boost to EGA—and the already vast world was expanded. The biggest changes were auto-mapping, new character classes, more spells, and the ability to allow two non-player characters called "hirelings" into the party. Interestingly, the auto-mapping tool is a skill (Cartography) that must be learned by a character; it’s not active by default. Like its predecessor, Gates to Another World is a loosely-knit game that offers players considerable freedom to move about the game world (this time, "Cron"). Eventually, though, players learn that Sheltem, the villain from the first game, is set to destroy Cron by forcing it into the sun. Beating the game requires not only thoroughly traversing Cron, but also traveling through four elemental planes and even in time. There are plenty of surprises in store for the player, including devices that change the characters’ gender! Like SSI’s earlier Phantasie games, the characters aged and would died soon after reaching 75.

Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra was released in 1991, and was the first game in the series to utilize the PC’s new VGA graphic cards, as well as sound card for effects and digitized speech. It’s also the first Might and Magic to offer support for the mouse. There are several nice features worth mentioning, such as on-screen character portraits that change to reflect the status and mood of each character (i.e., content, asleep, turned to stone), story-boosting cinematics, and "life stones." These "life stones" simplified the traditional hit point system with a color code system—green for good, yellow for not so good, and red for nearly dead (monster labels used the same system). Other enhancements include ranged combat, a more liberal save-game scheme, and a checklist of incomplete quests. A last nod to novices is a button that, when pressed, instantly transports the party back to an inn. However, this panic button has a cost—each character loses a level of experience.

With the fourth game, Clouds of Xeen (1992), New World quietly dropped support for other platforms and focused on MS-DOS (though a special 1994 combo called World of Xeen was ported to Macintosh). Clouds of Xeen and Darkside of Xeen (1993) are really one large quest broken into two chunks—the ultimate goal is the destruction of Sheltem. Indeed, both games can be combined into a single game called World of Xeen, which grants access to areas unavailable in either stand-alone game (adding up to about ¼ the size of the game). Both games offer only slight enhancements to the core engine used in Isles of Terra, but New World made good use of the new CD-ROM storage medium by adding quality soundtracks.

In 1996, New World Computing was bought by 3D0, and continued to publish new Might and Magic CRPGs (of varying quality) as late as 2002. However, in 2003 the rights passed to Ubisoft. The latest Might and Magic game, Dark Messiah (2006), is a first-person shooter style game developed by the French company Arkane Studios, and seems to have little in common with its famed predecessors.

Sierra’s Genre-Bending CRPGs

Sierra On-Line is much better known for its graphical adventure games (GAGs) than its CRPGs, though it did publish at least two influential series: Quest for Glory and the Krondor games. Both of these games are noted for their blurring of the line between CRPG and GAGs, and are far more invested in story and puzzle elements than most CRPGs.

Hero’s Quest (DOS). Hey, uh, stay still,
will you?

The first Quest for Glory game was originally titled Hero’s Quest: So You Want to be a Hero, and released for MS-DOS in 1990 (ports for Amiga and Atari ST followed later that year). Sierra later got into a quandary over the name (Milton Bradley released a board game also named Hero’s Quest) and decided to enhance and re-release it in 1992 as Quest for Glory. The game looks very much like a typical Sierra GAG (i.e., King’s Quest, Space Quest), but offers CRPG elements like the ability to select a character class (fighter, mage, thief) and work gradually to improve his skills. There are several nice innovations worth mentioning—for instance, players solve puzzles differently depending on what type of character they are playing. For instance, fighters and thieves can climb a tree to fetch a ring in a bird’s nest, but magic-users must cast a spell. Of course, combat is approached much differently as well. Mages and thieves should avoid close combat (melee), whereas fighters are encouraged to jump right in. In any case, combat is a timed, almost arcade-like affair that involves choosing appropriate moves and counter-moves (i.e., strike when the monster isn’t blocking). Gameplay changes considerably depending on the character’s class, so the replay value of this game is much higher than in most GAGs or CRPGs. The tone of the game is decidedly satirical and often downright silly. For instance, the town is named Spielburg, ruled by Baron Stefan Von Spielburg, and thieves can attempt to practice their pick-lock skill by typing "pick nose." It’s definitely not a game that takes itself seriously or puts on literary airs.

Hero’s Quest originally implemented a simple text-parser to carry on dialogues or perform actions—for instance, "ask about the brigands" and "climb tree." The re-release replaced the text parser with an icon-based, mouse-controlled interface. Of course, some fans of the original version were outraged by this "enhancement," arguing that it severely limits their ability to interact with the world. Sierra responded by releasing both versions in its Quest for Glory Anthology released in 1996. In any case, the game is appropriately described as a true "cult classic," and regularly shows up on many critics’ top-ten lists of their favorite games.

Sierra released four other Quest for Glory games, beginning with Trial by Fire in 1990 and ending with Dragon Fire in 1998. Trial by Fire introduces the new paladin character class, and the third game, Wages of War (1992), is the first to make the transition into 256-color graphics, digitized sound effects, and the new, icon-based interface mentioned above. In addition, an "overworld" map was added that simulates travel across great distances, during which the character is subject to random encounters. Not surprisingly, all of these changes met with mixed reactions among fans, some calling it the best and others the worst of the series. The criticisms are many, but seem to mostly emphasize the rather banal puzzles and repetitious combat. The combat system was revamped in the fourth game, Shadows of Darkness, released in 1993. The perspective shifts to a side view during battles, making the experience even more arcade-like, though it’s important to note that there is an option to let the computer fight the battles instead. As the title implies, this is a much darker game than the rest, and featured voice actors (most notably John Rhys-Davies). I’ll discuss the final game, Dragon Fire, in the next installment.

"Dynamix didn’t just license a game, hang character names on generic icons and call it a Riftwar game! They spent hours talking to me about all manner of things in a heartfelt attempt to ‘get it right.’ The object of the exercise was to be the first computer game that felt like it was part of a good adventure novel." –Raymond E. Feist in the Betrayal at Krondor instruction manual.

Betrayal at Krondor (DOS). The polygonal scenery pretty much ruined this otherwise excellent CRPG’s shot at the big time.

Sierra also published the Krondor series, beginning with Dynamix’s Betrayal at Krondor in 1993. These games are perhaps most noteworthy for being based on Raymond E. Feist’s world of Midkemia, made famous by Feist’s celebrated Riftwar saga. Feist himself even wrote a novelization of the game. It features turn-based combat, a skill-based character system (no "levels"), clever riddles, and a good deal of Feist-inspired text and cut-scenes. Unfortunately, the graphics weren’t up to many gamers’ standards even in 1993, a sad fact that limited the game’s success. Trees and mountains look jagged and "polygonal." The second game, Betrayal in Antara (1997), is not actually based on Feist’s world at all—Sierra temporarily lost its license and had to create a new world called Ramar. This game is also plagued with substandard graphics for the time, and was roundly dismissed by critics, even though I found it quite enjoyable. Sierra released Betrayal at Krondor for free distribution in a valiant effort to promote the game, but it seemed almost doomed from the start. The third game, Return to Krondor, released in 1998, right most of the wrongs and is considered by many fans to be the best of the three. We’ll discuss it next time as well, though, since it’s clearly part of the Platinum rather than the Golden Age.

Other companies experimented with CRPG/adventure hybrids, including SSI. Realms of Darkness (1987) is an interesting mix of fantasy and sci-fi themes, with clever puzzles and a fairly sophisticated parser. Infocom also experimented with CRPG elements. Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor (1987) is loaded with hilarious satire and comedy, but many adventure fans were turned off by the CRPG elements even though they did ostensibly add more replay value. Furthermore, players got discouraged when they discovered they had gotten the game into an "un-winnable" state and had to start over. While this possibility is common enough in older adventure games, it was unacceptable in a game that required hours and hours of dedicated gameplay to build up a character’s experience.

Incidentally, there has never been a consensus among fans whether narratives and puzzles enhance or detract from the CRPG experience. Nevertheless, just about all CRPGs feature some kind of story, no matter how minimal and clichéd, and a great many involve challenges beyond the usual hack’n slash. It’s a dispute that will probably never be settled, but who cares? I certainly appreciate variety and find myself preferring one type of game one moment and another the next!

Golden Age Miscellanies

As you can clearly see, CRPG development during the Golden Age was at an all-time high. Though some of the best-known and celebrated titles wouldn’t show up for a few more years, by that time (the "Platinum Age,") things had wound down considerably. From here on out, stand-alone, one-player CRPGs would become rarer and thus more precious, replaced in large part by MMORPGs and other types of games with CRPG "elements."

However, before we close up our discussion of the Golden Age, I must at least mention a few more brilliant CRPGs, even if they aren’t as well known as the ones I’ve discussed above. Throughout this piece, I’ve tried to be as comprehensive as possible, but still couldn’t manage to mention every CRPG released between 1985-1993. Instead, I’ve tried to spend more time talking about really important (subjective, I know) CRPGs. No doubt many of my more, shall we say, temperamental readers will be foaming at the mouth because I neglected even to mention the obscure game that they consider the greatest CRPG ever made.

Faery Tale Adventure (Amiga). Real-time, third-person combat ain’t easy when you don’t know which button attacks.

There are games like MicroIllusion’s Faery Tale Adventure (1987), a real-time third-person CRPG that in many ways anticipates Diablo and Baldur’s Gate. And how could anyone be so crass as to mention Alien Fires and not Infogrames’ Drakkhen, Electronic Arts’ Keef the Thief, or Legacy of the Ancients? Hillsfar, hello? Where is Times of Lore? Dragon Wars? Age of Adventure? Even though this article is explicitly concerned with computer RPGs, isn’t it foolish not to at least cover console classics Dragon Warrior, The Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy? If I somehow failed to mention the CRPG you love more dearly than life itself, please accept my humble apology—I sincerely tried my best.

However, while I can almost see the hate piling up before in my email queue, there is one last game I simply must discuss if I’m to escape an angry lynch mob, and that’s Legend of the Red Dragon (there, you can unclench your stiletto now!). Legend of the Red Dragon (henceforth LoRD), a game that many of us will remember from our dial-up BBS days, was released in 1989 by Robinson Technologies, a company founded by Seth Able Robinson. LoRD was one of the best-known BBS "door games," which were compact online games played mostly by folks in the pre-WWW era (and who didn’t belong to big network like America Online, GEnie, Portal, or Prodigy, which featured a selection of wonderful MUDs and even some pioneering graphical MMORPGs). Door games were necessary small because of the slow speed of most dial-up connections (I remember thinking my 2400 BAUD modem was a gift from the God of Bandwidth), but also the strain a large game would put on the BBS server. Nevertheless, though the game lacks graphics and is simplistic compared even to "Roguelikes," its colorful text and humor resulted in a highly playable and memorable game. Who could flirting with Violet the Barmaid or Seth the Bard in the local inn? Furthermore, LoRD is an easy game to modify via third-party add-ons, and quite a few of these In-Game Modules were created and distributed widely. The software was available first for the Amiga platform, but quickly ported to MS-DOS. Robinson even released a sequel in 1992 called New World, which departed wildly from the first game. In fact, it’s a real-time, multiplayer game that’s much more "Roguelike." Folks wanting to get a taste for LoRD may want to check out Legend of the Green Dragon, a browser-based game that pays homage to the classic.

Concluding Thoughts

Some folks have wondered (rather loudly, I might add) why I chose to call this era the "Golden Age," arguing either that anything truly "golden" happened either before 1985 or after 1993. I can’t deny that, at some point, I had to make some tough calls. Clearly, not every or even most games released during this time period are worthy of reverence; many are mindless clones or absolute crap. Some of the masterpieces of the Golden Age are hardly what we’d call "original," but merely successful combinations of elements taken from older and contemporary games. Nevertheless, what I see happening between 1985 and 1993 is a huge outpouring of new games and new ideas, and, more importantly, innovation at every level. CRPG developers were forced to re-invent the wheel to keep up with new hardware and software developments, such as the widespread adoption of the modern GUI, hard drive, and CD-ROM. It’s amazing to think how challenging it was for developers even to learn how to implement a mouse effectively, much less deal with an exponentially growing color palette and new sound cards. Gamers were expecting more and more, and it really wasn’t until after the Golden Age that developers like BioWare were finally able to consolidate all the gains made by earlier developers and produce really modern CRPGs.

Nowadays, it’s all too easy to look at games like The Bard’s Tale, Quest of the Avatar, Bane of the Cosmic Forge, The Pool of Radiance, Wasteland, or even Dungeon Master and wonder what all the fuss was about. Nevertheless, these are the games that led directly to the modern CRPG, and no one who enjoys the latest Elder Scrolls, Diablo, or Dungeon Siege should fail to doff his cap to Wizard’s Crown and Alternate Reality.

In the third installment, I’ll be covering the "Platinum Age," which will cover all classics I promised above and many more like Baldur’s Gate and The Elder Scrolls, as well as Diablo and Planescape: Torment. See you there

Originally posted on Armchair Arcade

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 distinctive thing about it. After all, you “play a role” when you play PAC-MAN or SPACE 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 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 to resist.

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

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 accused of being immature or schizo. Indeed, the strength of D&D lies in its combination of 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)

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 which game was the “first” seems a bit foolhardy. What is clear is that there were several 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 control a single character or a whole party of them. Dungeon also featured a graphical map 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 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 tabletop game. At best, the computerized versions could simulate the mathematics of D&D 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, is taken from one of Tolkien’s more obscure works, The Silmarillion. The game was written in 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). However, the genre was still crude and left much to be desired in terms of interface and 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 one thing, the player controls a party of adventurers rather than just a single avatar. The 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. Furthermore, players had to visit every part of the game, collecting six pieces of magical 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 their character dead when they return!). One of the game’s key selling points was its huge dungeon (50 levels with 2 million rooms!), 20 different monster types, and 36 spells. The author claims that his game “predates” most of the early computer “adventure games, including Temple of Apshai and the Wizardry series.” Again, it’s very difficult to ascertain precise dates here, but it’s hard to see how a game published in 1982 could have influenced games published years earlier–assuming these dates are anywhere close to accurate. It’s more likely that Daniel’s mainframe conversions of the aforementioned dnd, which he called 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 Ultima III in the use of a separate screens for combat and dungeon exploration sequences. When the player is merely wandering the dungeon, the view is first-person, 3-D perspective. 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 Rogue had appeared on personal computers. One set was published by a company named Artificial Intelligence Design, who released it for platforms as diverse as the Tandy CoCo and Commodore Amiga platforms. Later, Epyx bought the rights to distribute these ASCII-based games. Of course, there were likely dozens (if not hundreds) of “Roguelikes” available in shareware or public domain form, though exact information on these is much harder to acquire. Suffice it to say, anyone who really wanted to play Rogue could do so on a personal computer after 1983.

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 our series on the history of the CRPG? I didn’t think so! So, stay on your guard, friend–the best is yet to come!