Really, Really old RPG Games
So, tonight, I was talking Old School CRPG games with my roommates, and as two of us are Macintosh folk, we got into discussing really old RPGs. And I was wondering if anyone else remembered these or had any others to share and/or reminisce about.
The First one was Theldrow. Theldrow came out (originally) in 1988, and was based on an old D&D game, according to the writer and developer, Glenn Andreas. It was released as Shareware for the Mac, and I can't even tell you how many hours I spent playing this game when I first got my Mac LC (back in 1991). It was in all black and white, and originally made in Hypercard. But it had a really deep and interesting story, and there were plenty places to explore. You were a 17 year old boy, searching for your father, Eleas, who had disappeared in the area ten years ago. You had to find four items, called the "Quadparts", including a bell, book and candle, to open a gateway to another world to bring your Dad home (or possibly find his remains). Unfortunately, I could never get the gate to open, so I was denied the ending of the game.
The second is "Realmz". It came out in 1984 and was published by a company named Fantasoft. The game was able to play different adventures, called "Modules". The one that came with the downloaded game was "City of Bywater", which was the Titular City and area around, including monster camps. The module ended with your adventurers finding and exploring an underground city, buried by some past disaster. Other scenarios for the game included "Prelude to Pestilence", "Assault on Giant Mountain", "Castle in the Clouds", "Destroy the Necronomicon", "White Dragon", "Griloch's Revenge" and others. There was also a scenario maker/editor called "Divinity". This was quite a huge game, with a wide number of races, including the Bog-Standard Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Shadow Elves (Drow), Halflings (called Furfoots), Gnomes, Half-Elves, Half Orcs, and Orcs, along with others like Demons and Vampires. Originally, the game required a $20 fee to unlock the game fully, with each scenario costing extra. But it was certainly unique. It had a lot of similarities to the SSI gold Box games but with pictures for party members. (You can see the manual archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20041010052823/http://www.fantasoft.com/HTML/Realmz_Files/Realmz_HTML/Realmz Manual/Realmz Manual.htm
Taskmaker- Released in 1989, I actually purchased this Black and White Game for my first Macintosh. It was published by XOR Corporation and developed by StormImpact Studios. The player is a young warrior who has sailed to meet a man called Taskmaker, an advisor to the Old King, who has since died and the land is now in chaos. Your job is to go around doing Tasks for Taskmaker and slowly uncovering what exactly happened to the old king. This game differs from standard RPGs as instead of ability scores, your abilities are represented as bars, which can be increased by in-game actions and various scrolls. The castle is quite extensive, with plenty of hidden areas and interesting monsters to fight as well. At the end of the game, you uncover who and what killed the old King and are sent to deal with the problem, when you do, you become the new king. Also, you unlock a new in-game menu allowing you to walk through walls, stop time and change walls. With plenty of hidden areas in each place, there is still more to explore even after the game proper ends. Also, dying is not the end of the game. you drop everything you are carrying if you die, and are sent to Hell, where you must defeat or trick a demon and get to the open exit to leave.
in 1997, the sequel to Taskmaker, Tomb of Taskmaker, was released. Once again, monsters are infesting the land and you, as Protector, are required to go deal with them. Also, it is rumored that Taskmaker has returned and you must seek out the rumors and determine the truth of whether it is true or not. While in the former game, you could do it all, here, you can choose to be a warrior, spell caster or thief. Thieves can snatch items through clear walls, spell casters can access more and more powerful spells, and warriors are better with weapons. Hell was redesigned to involve doing a deplorable task such as bestowing gifts to demons, killing bunnies, throwing random switches or binning a large number of gold bars. After doing one of these tasks, the exit will be open. Once again, you have 10 big tasks, and must do them in order. Both were very interesting games and had interesting monsters to fight, like a Jerboa. If you bestow gifts on your enemies, they will become non-hostile and sometimes tell you interesting stuff (The Jerboa tells you what a Jerboa actually is, for example). You can read more about them here: http://www.robotroom.com/StormImpact.html
Exile by SpiderwebSoftware- Exile was a large open-world adventure game set in a world where the surface is ruled by a single nation. It has been around so long, it has no name, people just call it "The Empire". Ruled by an Emperor named Hawthorne, its draconian way of keeping power is to Exile people the Empire doesn't want to bleak, inhospitable caves beneath the surface. But the Empire didn't count on the Exiles surviving. They have built new lives under the surface, but are beset by many problems. As newcomers to Exile, you are caught up in helping the people of Exile with their problems, and then, in seeking revenge on the Empire and Hawthorne. There are three games in the original Exile Series. In the second one, Exile: Crystal Souls, the Empire is very upset (to say the least) with the death of the Emperor. They stop sending people and supplies to Exile, determined to starve them out. But they come across a race called the Vahantai and take one of their revered Elders, whose souls are kept in huge crystals. The Vahantai at first blame the people of Exile, but you must reach them and let them know they have the wrong targets. Then, help the Vahantai take their own revenge on the Empire. The Third Game: Ruined World, has the people of Exile getting closer to the surface and ready to take back their surface homes. As people of Exile, they send you out to scout the land and see what is going on. But the Empire is in chaos, and the new ruler, Hawthorne's daughter, agrees to let the Exiles come home if they find out what is imperiling the Empire. Surprise, it's the Vahnatai, and you must defeat them to finally bring peace. These games are absolutely huge, with much to do, unique races (Slithkzerai are Lizard-like people who specialize in pole weapons and Nephilim are cat-people who are very good archers), and can take up hours and hours of gameplay. They were remade as "Avernum" games and three additional sequels came out and are now being remade yet again.
Angband- The oldest of old school games, this game is a text-based RPG. There are no graphics, per se. Instead, the graphics are text and ASCII characters. Your character is a "@ sign, and different letters are different monsters. a" are ants. "A" are angels. Different colors are different types of creatures a white "w" is a white worm mass, but it could be black, green, yellow, etc.. It is based around the Tolkien mythos and to defeat the game, you must take out Morgoth at the bottom of 100 levels of dungeon (and Sauron as well). You can find all sorts of Legendary Weapons (including "Sting", "Ringil", "Anduril" and "Glamdring". There are other objects, such as armors, rings, and special like "The Phial of Galadriel". I really enjoy the game, but it's incredibly hard. Like harder than "Old School Nintendo" hard. The dungeon levels are re-generated every time you go into them, so every level is a new map.
So what old school CRPGs do you remember?
The First one was Theldrow. Theldrow came out (originally) in 1988, and was based on an old D&D game, according to the writer and developer, Glenn Andreas. It was released as Shareware for the Mac, and I can't even tell you how many hours I spent playing this game when I first got my Mac LC (back in 1991). It was in all black and white, and originally made in Hypercard. But it had a really deep and interesting story, and there were plenty places to explore. You were a 17 year old boy, searching for your father, Eleas, who had disappeared in the area ten years ago. You had to find four items, called the "Quadparts", including a bell, book and candle, to open a gateway to another world to bring your Dad home (or possibly find his remains). Unfortunately, I could never get the gate to open, so I was denied the ending of the game.
The second is "Realmz". It came out in 1984 and was published by a company named Fantasoft. The game was able to play different adventures, called "Modules". The one that came with the downloaded game was "City of Bywater", which was the Titular City and area around, including monster camps. The module ended with your adventurers finding and exploring an underground city, buried by some past disaster. Other scenarios for the game included "Prelude to Pestilence", "Assault on Giant Mountain", "Castle in the Clouds", "Destroy the Necronomicon", "White Dragon", "Griloch's Revenge" and others. There was also a scenario maker/editor called "Divinity". This was quite a huge game, with a wide number of races, including the Bog-Standard Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Shadow Elves (Drow), Halflings (called Furfoots), Gnomes, Half-Elves, Half Orcs, and Orcs, along with others like Demons and Vampires. Originally, the game required a $20 fee to unlock the game fully, with each scenario costing extra. But it was certainly unique. It had a lot of similarities to the SSI gold Box games but with pictures for party members. (You can see the manual archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20041010052823/http://www.fantasoft.com/HTML/Realmz_Files/Realmz_HTML/Realmz Manual/Realmz Manual.htm
Taskmaker- Released in 1989, I actually purchased this Black and White Game for my first Macintosh. It was published by XOR Corporation and developed by StormImpact Studios. The player is a young warrior who has sailed to meet a man called Taskmaker, an advisor to the Old King, who has since died and the land is now in chaos. Your job is to go around doing Tasks for Taskmaker and slowly uncovering what exactly happened to the old king. This game differs from standard RPGs as instead of ability scores, your abilities are represented as bars, which can be increased by in-game actions and various scrolls. The castle is quite extensive, with plenty of hidden areas and interesting monsters to fight as well. At the end of the game, you uncover who and what killed the old King and are sent to deal with the problem, when you do, you become the new king. Also, you unlock a new in-game menu allowing you to walk through walls, stop time and change walls. With plenty of hidden areas in each place, there is still more to explore even after the game proper ends. Also, dying is not the end of the game. you drop everything you are carrying if you die, and are sent to Hell, where you must defeat or trick a demon and get to the open exit to leave.
in 1997, the sequel to Taskmaker, Tomb of Taskmaker, was released. Once again, monsters are infesting the land and you, as Protector, are required to go deal with them. Also, it is rumored that Taskmaker has returned and you must seek out the rumors and determine the truth of whether it is true or not. While in the former game, you could do it all, here, you can choose to be a warrior, spell caster or thief. Thieves can snatch items through clear walls, spell casters can access more and more powerful spells, and warriors are better with weapons. Hell was redesigned to involve doing a deplorable task such as bestowing gifts to demons, killing bunnies, throwing random switches or binning a large number of gold bars. After doing one of these tasks, the exit will be open. Once again, you have 10 big tasks, and must do them in order. Both were very interesting games and had interesting monsters to fight, like a Jerboa. If you bestow gifts on your enemies, they will become non-hostile and sometimes tell you interesting stuff (The Jerboa tells you what a Jerboa actually is, for example). You can read more about them here: http://www.robotroom.com/StormImpact.html
Exile by SpiderwebSoftware- Exile was a large open-world adventure game set in a world where the surface is ruled by a single nation. It has been around so long, it has no name, people just call it "The Empire". Ruled by an Emperor named Hawthorne, its draconian way of keeping power is to Exile people the Empire doesn't want to bleak, inhospitable caves beneath the surface. But the Empire didn't count on the Exiles surviving. They have built new lives under the surface, but are beset by many problems. As newcomers to Exile, you are caught up in helping the people of Exile with their problems, and then, in seeking revenge on the Empire and Hawthorne. There are three games in the original Exile Series. In the second one, Exile: Crystal Souls, the Empire is very upset (to say the least) with the death of the Emperor. They stop sending people and supplies to Exile, determined to starve them out. But they come across a race called the Vahantai and take one of their revered Elders, whose souls are kept in huge crystals. The Vahantai at first blame the people of Exile, but you must reach them and let them know they have the wrong targets. Then, help the Vahantai take their own revenge on the Empire. The Third Game: Ruined World, has the people of Exile getting closer to the surface and ready to take back their surface homes. As people of Exile, they send you out to scout the land and see what is going on. But the Empire is in chaos, and the new ruler, Hawthorne's daughter, agrees to let the Exiles come home if they find out what is imperiling the Empire. Surprise, it's the Vahnatai, and you must defeat them to finally bring peace. These games are absolutely huge, with much to do, unique races (Slithkzerai are Lizard-like people who specialize in pole weapons and Nephilim are cat-people who are very good archers), and can take up hours and hours of gameplay. They were remade as "Avernum" games and three additional sequels came out and are now being remade yet again.
Angband- The oldest of old school games, this game is a text-based RPG. There are no graphics, per se. Instead, the graphics are text and ASCII characters. Your character is a "@ sign, and different letters are different monsters. a" are ants. "A" are angels. Different colors are different types of creatures a white "w" is a white worm mass, but it could be black, green, yellow, etc.. It is based around the Tolkien mythos and to defeat the game, you must take out Morgoth at the bottom of 100 levels of dungeon (and Sauron as well). You can find all sorts of Legendary Weapons (including "Sting", "Ringil", "Anduril" and "Glamdring". There are other objects, such as armors, rings, and special like "The Phial of Galadriel". I really enjoy the game, but it's incredibly hard. Like harder than "Old School Nintendo" hard. The dungeon levels are re-generated every time you go into them, so every level is a new map.
So what old school CRPGs do you remember?
Post edited by LadyRhian on
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Comments
Does anybody know of a simple way to run such 16 bit games on Windows 10 (without resorting to the complexity of a Virtual Machine)?
Another game I fondly remember is Castle of the Winds. It's based on Norse mythology and came as a first part freeware and a paid second part. It's one of the first RPGs I ever played as well.
and the graphics, holy jumpins, hold on to your hat because the graphics are AMAZING, as in your character is an X , the walls of the dungeons are capitals "I" treasure is a $ bad guys are a # and dragons in their lair are a DGN
but even with these short comings, its actually still quite fun to play, the simplicity of it gives it a nice charm, and the mercilessness of the game makes it halarious, as in its very VERY difficult to hit level 3, but once you hit around level 5, your survivability really starts to increase, i've had a couple of instances where i made my character entered the dungeon ( the game is only dungeons and if you go outside of the dungeon you can go to a "store" sort of speak ) and died right away, ah good times
one of my favourite play throughs was when i had a character that had all 18s and then i entered the dungeon and died from the 2nd or 3rd enemy i fought against haha, those 1s and 0s can be pretty brutal
@Rik_Kirtaniya SpiderWeb Software is still around. You can buy the updated version (or the old ones) on their website at Spidweb.com. My favorite was Exile 3: Ruined World. I remember the Black Unicorn Cave pretty fondly, and the fight against the Slimes. And the Crazy Monks. "Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball!" Though I also like the GIFTS (Giant Intelligent Friendly Talking Spiders), all named Spider. "Hi! I'm Spider!"
@ThacoBell I had a friend who was into those. Being a Mac user, I don't remember them being for Macs. I may be wrong. I do remember the original Neverwinter Nights on AOL. Back in those days, AOL was a paid service and NWN was an additional fee on top of that. So I never did end up playing it. I did get very heavily into the Gold Box games, though. Pool of Radiance was my good, but the ending fight was damned hard. I think Secret of the Silver Blades was my favorite. I played it so much, the town storage ran out of room! And somewhere, I still have the list of all the stuff that was in there. With the rest of my D&D characters.
Some days, I want to remake Theldrow with some sort of game maker software. Ah, well.
I've already got the Exile series, which I last ran on my old Windows 7 PC (which I don't run these days). Unfortunately, it doesn't run on my Windows 10 laptop, cause it doesn't support 16 bit games.
NetHack is the reason why I ask for more randomness in BG games.
I tried, but I'm not into it any more. I went from NetHack to Diablo 1 + 2, and, for the last 10 years, BG.
@StefanO Understood, I still play that because I am just stubborn like that.
I remember spending many hours playing Wizardry on my computer. The graphics were primitive by today's standards, of course, but the gameplay was amazing.
Wizardry could be brutal for new players. You could not save in the dungeon, and a TPK meant you had to start with a new party (although you could find and loot the bodies of the fallen party).
You'd probably be interested in listening to this:
https://retronauts.com/article/915/the-mad-overlord-speaks-on-retronauts-episode-162
This episode basically covers the genesis of how ALL video game RPGs came into existence. Ultima gets more of the spotlight but is a far inferior game, and was a series that wasn't even really that good until the 4th game. The first Wizardry is one of the most important games ever made, and this conversation reveals that it's creation was almost an accident of history. If one thing the co-creator interviewed here doesn't happen in his life, Baldur's Gate and this forum probably don't even exist. Certainly there is never any Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy coming out of Japan. Wizardry is the one game that is decidedly Western in it's aesthetics as far as fantasy goes, yet influenced JRPGs more than any other. I mean, it's right up there with Doom and Mario Brothers as far as I'm concerned. And this really all started with people coding the game in their house and selling it in plastic bags.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Underworld:_The_Stygian_Abyss
Still remember Lord British opening voice: “Treachery and Doom. Brittania is in peril”
Played in a Dosbox 10 years ago, and found it didnt age well. But the in game skill- and ruleset still beats most rulesets. The rune magic and praying by shrines with special words for profficiency points made so much sense.
The sequel was also quite good. But it got a bit weird... no lets be fair: really weird.
But I hear a reboot is coming up. Watch out for that - it will epic
Like I said, I did get to play "Dungeons of Daggorath". I always remember the sound of the ooze, and you didn't have hit points, but if your heart beat too fast, you'd die.
Level 2
Level 3
You still can play... LGOP2_Gas Pump Girls and the Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet X from MyAbandonware. If using a Windows platform, just use DOSBox to set it up. Not sure what it would be for a MAC.
Gus
So I guess I was a little late to the PC gaming party, getting into it during my 30s. I started with a Sega Genesis CD game called Dark Wizard, and then immediately went to PC after that. My first titles were circa 1997 and included Heroes of Might and Magic 1 and Might and Magic 6. After that came Baldur's Gate.
The games I started with are at least a whole generation beyond the ones being discussed here.