Almost four years ago, in my first post, I announced that I would only be playing PC (DOS and Windows) games as part of this project--a rule that, for some dumb reason, you all let me get away with.
Despite some feeble protests on your part, my plan remained unshaken until nearly two years later, in the fall of 2011, when I blogged about the earliest RPGs, got a Cyber1 account, and offered posts on The Dungeon (aka "pedit5") and The Game of Dungeons (aka "dnd"). But even those were just a lark. I didn't get serious about exploring non-DOS games of the 1980s until about one year ago, when I finally got an Apple II emulator working and used it to play some of the earliest commercial RPGs (Beneath Apple Manor, Space, Dungeon Campaign). These efforts, though long overdue, did not result in a permanent change in my master plan despite my announcement in "Past, Present, and Future" that the original PC-only rule had been a mistake.
I could keep moving forward with PC-only titles and make an occasional attempt to reach back into the 1980s and grab a worthy Apple II, Commodore 64, or Amiga game, or I could do what I'm going to do--what I should have done years ago--and change the plan.
From now on, my "play list" consists of all single-player RPGs released in a Latin-alphabet language for any personal computing platform.
Remaining off the play list are a) games released only for consoles or handheld devices; b) multiplayer games; or c) games released only in languages that do not use a Latin alphabet. Most of the games excluded in the latter category will be Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. It's regrettable, but while I'm willing to make some effort to translate foreign games, I have to be able to type the characters into the translator.
Does this mean I'm going to make a u-turn back to 1978 and start from the beginning again? No. I don't want to go quite that far and lose all my momentum. But what it does mean is that for every game I play in the 1990s, I'll play (in chronological order) one that I missed from the 1980s, until I'm caught up. It also means that I will not be skipping non-PC games as I move forward into the 1990s.
For those of you looking for me to make good on the poll and play games like Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star, this new plan does not necessarily mean that I will never play a game that is not on my "play list." But it will be very rare, and a surprise when it happens.
In accordance with this new plan, I have reconstructed my Master Game List with an exhaustive search of Wikipedia, MobyGames, and GameFAQs, among other sources. (Including the comments people have left me over the years.) This new version of the list does not separate games I am playing from those I'm not. Instead, it includes a column called "PlayList" in which I have placed a "Y" if the game meets the criteria for me to play it in my normal chronology. You can easily filter by this or any other column.
The list will only have games through 10 years ago. Rather than try to keep it current right up to the modern era, I'll let the weight of history shake things out before adding them. I'll update the list to include 2003 at the end of 2013.
Some notes on the columns:
Title. Many games go by multiple titles, especially when accounting for translations and remakes. My policy is that the game's "official" title is whatever appears on the title screen of the version I play; hence, the game that everyone calls Wizardry II is actually Wizardry Scenario #2 - The Knight of Diamonds.
Year and Date As before, this is the date of the release of the first version, whatever the release I ultimately ended up playing. I didn't bother to include release dates for games not on my play list, as the only reason I care about the dates is to help order them within a particular year.
Platforms. I did my best, but it's likely that there are a lot of mistakes in here. I don't think Google Docs allows you to use a "contains" filter; you'll probably have to export to Excel if you want to find all games for a particular platform. When you look at the list, my decision to play PC-only games doesn't seem so dumb. It's by far the most popular platform, with 419 released for DOS and 417 released for Windows. But a close third is the popular Japanese PC-98, with 319 games, hardly any of which appear on my play list for translation reasons. The SNES is the most popular console (at least through 2002), with 223.
Country. This took more effort than it was worth, and I still ended up with a bunch of "unknowns." I generally defaulted to the country in which the developer was located; if I couldn't figure that out, I used the country of the first release. Even when I visited the developer's web site directly, though, I often couldn't tell what country they were in. Every "contact us" link defaulted to an e-mail or web form instead of just giving me their damned addresses.
The column produced some interesting results. Japan leads the way by far, with 1,293 titles--but only 26 on the play list, since so few are translated. The U.S. comes next, with 524, followed by the U.K. with 68. There are some surprises (to me, at least), including 45 German games, 11 Russian games, 7 each from Finland and the Czech Republic. All together, developers from 23 nations make up the list.
Developer and Publisher. You don't need to tell me; this is a mess. The same company might appear under multiple variations, and it only includes one of each even though some games have many. The only purpose of these columns are to help distinguish games from each other. Don't try to search or aggregate by it.
Source. This is basically "who says" that it's an RPG. If more than one source lists the game as an RPG, this column has the source that provided the most complete data.
Status. This is my playing status. "Unplayed" means I haven't gotten to it yet (and for games not on the play list, I will almost certainly never get to it). "NP" means it's not playable, usually because it no longer exists. I'll put "Rejected" in here if I decide it's not an RPG under my rules. Played games are distinguished by "Finished" (won, or if the game can't be won, played long enough) and "Unfinished."
For remakes, I read the descriptions and considered whether the remake had fundamentally changed the nature of the game; if so, I created a new entry for it. For expansions, I considered how much content the expansion added and listed it as a separate game if it was a lot. In both areas, I wasn't fastidious if the game wasn't going to appear on my play list anyway.
Reconstituting the list with the additional columns took a ridiculous amount of time, which is largely where I've been for the last few days. A few notes on the process:
- MobyGames contributors are apparently quite upset about the site's recent overhaul, and they've protested by changing their user names. Some of those I encountered frequently are "Gamefly is Literally Hitler," "Thomas P. Went into Exile," "Indra is watching it all burn" and "YID YANG has left in protest." [Ed. The site was later re-sold and the names went back to normal.]
- Speaking of Yid Yang--that bastard. I admire the dedication with which he ensured that every bloody obscure Japanese, Chinese, and Korean RPG ever produced was cataloged in the database, but his fastidiousness added hours to my process of creating the master list.
- Wikipedia's list is a tragic joke. I know how Wikipedia content gets made, so I shouldn't complain unless I'm willing to edit the page myself, but the list should just be taken down until it's more complete. It's missing well over half of western RPGs and yet still--just like our friend Yid--has meticulously cataloged almost every eastern RPG.
- Both the MobyGames and Wikipedia contributors of the long Japanese RPG lists are a little liberal in their definitions of "RPG." Among the entries (which I faithfully copied over), we get every Pokemon and Digimon title, a dozen entries containing the words "super" and "robot," and Mario Tennis. The collection of Hentai games alone is staggering.
- GameFAQs added about 30 games to my list, which I appreciate, but that site has the worst searching options ever.
- The Amiga remained a popular development platform in Europe all the way into the late 1990s, long after most U.S. developers had stopped writing for it. Does anyone know why?
- A lot of games that used to be flagged as RPGs on MobyGames were unflagged as such since the last time I made a master list. In such cases, I generally read the description and added them back if they sounded close. I erred on the side of including them, since some of the ones removed include Times of Lore, The Third Courier, and Sword of Aragon.
The recreation of the list has caused a reordering of the 1990 titles and thus a change in the next few games to be played. Sorry about that if you were looking forward to something on the "upcoming" list.
As always, I welcome your comments and corrections on the Master Game List, specifically:
- Games that aren't on the list but should be [Ed. I no longer welcome comments on this]
- Games that aren't flagged as part of my "play list" but do meet the requirements
- Games that are flagged as part of my play list but do not meet the requirements
- Incorrect data (particularly dates)
- Duplicate entries
With these changes in mind, I'm going to take a look at one PLATO game before continuing on in 1990 with Legend of Faerghail.
You have had the opposite development than me. I find myself striking more and more prospective games from my play list over they years, and I've reached that era when emulating ZX Spectrum and Amiga games is no longer an issue, while you keep adding more and more obscure games made for obscure pieces of hardware.
ReplyDeleteHow will you deal with user made content when that time comes? Personally I find myself playing FRUA modules and Doom WADs instead of many rather tedious sounding professional games.
I don't really have a plan for that yet. I think I have a few years before it's an issue.
DeleteYou have a typo in your first sentence, I'll let you figure it out!
ReplyDeleteOn a more serious note, if a game has, for example, an original Amiga release and then a DOS port, but the DOS version is worse/better which version will you play? In the past you have always gone with DOS regardless.
Wow. Second word. That's a record for me, I think.
DeleteI'd like to say that if a game exists on multiple platforms, I'll research which has the best graphics and sound and go with that, but the more likely probability is that I'll default to the emulators I'm most comfortable with. We're in an era in which the DOS version might not be the "best," but it usually doesn't suck in comparison to the others like it did in the mid-1980s.
Notably, aren't the Amiga versions of Gold Box slightly better? You should probably try one on Amiga for the sake of completeness anyway.
DeleteI don't even know what that means. For "sake of completeness," shouldn't I therefore try the Gold Box games on every platform that they were released?
Delete"You should probably try one on Amiga for the sake of completeness..."
DeleteMaybe the graphic is better, maybe the sound, maybe that beholder squad can/can't be bitten doing something or not doing something. The game is hardly very different from one platform to another, except rare cases like drakkhen on snes (which is not a crpg so who cares).
It's funny how often we readers are more concerned than you, Chet, about the historical weight of your quest :)
For most 80's RPGs - hell, 80's computer games of any sort - the Amiga or ST versions (when available) are usually superior to the PC versions. It was only at early 90's when VGA cards and Soundblaster started to become commonly supported that PC games managed to beat the 16-bit machines at their own game.
Delete"shouldn't I therefore try the Gold Box games on every platform that they were released?"
DeleteI'll rephrase: "As you've played 3 Gold Box games in DOS, it might be interesting to play some of the others in other formats, contingent on effort"
I think it's best to play the Amiga versions of the Gold Box games. Secret of the Silver is bugged (Cloaks of Displacement make you immune to physical attacks), and there is only one Buck Rogers game. By the time of the Savage Frontier games the DOS versions probably look much the same. The Krynn games look better on the Amiga, but unless you're able to emulate a hard disk install they are slower to play with an Amiga emulator than with DosBox.
DeleteOne problem with the older Amiga games is that they lack support for hard disk insall or several disk drives, so having to swap virtual floppy disks is annoying.
So to conclude: Amige versions of older games look and sound better, but disk access is much slower. And installing to har disk is not always an option.
Pretty sure that type of bug would deter more than encourage Chet to play that version (unless you mean it's bugged in the DOS version).
DeleteOnly bugged in the Amiga version.
DeleteAnd I'm sure it would encourage _some_ (but not Chet).
The PC port of Captive has several major bugs, so I'd recommend playing that on Amiga instead.
DeleteIf I recall correctly, Pool of Radiance on the amiga wouldn't let you save, or you could save, but then if you tried to load it, it wouldn't load. I remember taking it back. Curse worked a treat though :)
Delete-Oth-
As a long-time participant in MobyGames (not so much on the contribution side, but in the forums), the state of the website is sad indeed. Most contributors and approvers have jumped ship, with the exception of the infamous administrator Corn Popper and a few people here and there. This is not only a backslash against the new design, but the lack of communication and flat-out incompetence on the part of the administration for a few years now. It is sad and we all thought something could be done, but at this point the majority of the community have been alienated to the point where not even a salary would tempt people back.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, great blog. I've been a long-time lurker.
I'm sorry to hear about all that. MobyGames has been an excellent source for me over the last four years, and of course that's only because dedicated contributors have been submitting things to it. If they all disappear, it will be a lot harder to find information about games--or even to create a comprehensive list--in the future.
DeleteWhich "ship" did they jump to, Don?
DeleteI don't know anything much about MobyGames, but my main gaming hangout is Gamers With Jobs, a very pleasant community of mostly older gamers... older in the sense of being thirty- and forty-ish, not truly greybeards, at least not yet.
DeleteIt's really just a forum, and there aren't many collaborative library lists or anything, but it's a good place to hang out.
Kenny, there's hardly consensus, but most of the talk has been about oregami.org
DeleteSadly, I don't understand a word they're saying there!
DeleteI do recognize the word "achtung", though. XD
You may want to go to the English part of the site: http://oregami.org/en/homeblog.html
DeleteToday we switched www.oregami.org to have the English site as default.
DeleteNice work! XD
DeleteI have to admit that I'm as much a fan of your methodical approach and structured thinking as of the CRPG playing you do. :)
ReplyDeleteYou should put Persona 3 and 4 on the list: They may not be on the P.C, but they are very hard and complex games, worthy of any American games. You are playing the first two games anyway, Persona 3 willdefinitely be playable on the Playstation 3--Persona 4 depends whether the system is backwards compatible, but it is worth getting a Playstation 2.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Square games like Tom Sawyer and Final Fantasy: Those are the early days of the company, before it really differentiates itself and becomes much less racist. Final Fantasy 4, 6 and 7 are great, and Chrono Trigger is a timeless classic, as fun to play today as in its time.
Xenoblade Chronicles and Little King's Story are unique games, and I think worth bending the rules a bit despite not being on P.C.
You should play Castlevania 1 and 3: They are action games, but you are playing Castlevania 2 anyway, and those are much better than it. I think you should at least try them to give the series a fair shake. There was a compilation of the N.E.S. Contra and Castlevania games released for P.C: Play that as a complement to the main Castlevania 2 review; it might let you develop your skills.
I don't agree he should play Castlevania 1 and 3 (or even 2, for that matter). We know about his hand-eye-coordination and those are hard and frustrating games even for experienced platform gamers.
DeleteIf he decides to plays any of the series, it should be SOTN for the PSX, which was groundbreaking for the time for its inclusion of RPG elements and establishing the "Metroidvania" style. But it will be a long time until we come to 1997, so let's not get ahead of ourselves. :)
Jesus Christ. Give people an inch...
DeleteI just expanded my list considerably. I'm not going to add to it with non-PC RPGs and non-RPGs, too.
Also: wouldn't Metroid have established the "Metroidvania" style? Just sayin'.
DeleteYou're intending to include every game released in Spanish, French and German that doesn't have an English translation? I can't even fathom the patience required to translate the manuals and in-game text required to play them. I'm imagining you are conversant in French, and suitably poly-lingual to get the idea of things in Spanish and German without translating everything. Nonetheless, this will still substantially increase the time required to play a game that is, for example, completely in German. What about Italian? Portugese? They use only Latin alphabets with diacritics, just as French does.
ReplyDeleteChet has a wide audience and I am sure he has Spanish, French and German speaking readers, so I am sure we will be able to help somehow if the need arises.
DeleteThere's also not that many European CRPGs that didn't receive an English release.
Delete1) Yes, as trudodyr points out, there are only a few.
Delete2) I speak good Spanish, passable French, a little German. In all cases, enough to recognize language patterns and to be able to read a few paragraphs with a little help from Google Translate. Not all RPGs are even very text-heavy.
3) My six-hour rule always applies, so if I spend most of that translating the manual, that's what happens.
As a German reader it'd be nice to see some German RPGs here. If I can help, give word!
DeleteGreat! You're right that the six hour rule does make this more manageable, but I know you hesitate to invoke it. I applaud your willingness to take on the Herculean tasks!
DeleteFantástico! De todos modos no recuerdo ningún RPG que se haya publicado en español. :-/
DeleteUnfortunately, that might be the case. There are a few from Spanish developers, but they were all published in English. It's too bad. Spanish is my best language.
DeleteSome inconsistencies in your list for the Genesis:
ReplyDeletePhantasy Star II, III, and IV, Shining Force I and II, and Shining in the Darkness were released for Windows last year as part of the Sega Classics Collection (available on Steam and Amazon at least) and so should be on the play list.
Sure, this was 20 years after the original release and they are running on a built-in emulator, but so are the iOS and Xbox 360 versions of these games and those are listed as platforms. You should either put them on the play list or change your criteria a bit more to avoid them again.
Langrisser II is on the list even though the Windows release was for Japanese Windows 98 only and that is not the version that was fan-translated. You'd still need a console emulator to play it in English.
Right, my understanding was that these games were "released for Windows" only in the sense that Steam packages them with an emulator. That's very little different from my downloading, say, an SNES emulator and playing all SNES games with it, which I'm not going to do. Thus, if the game wasn't specifically ported to Windows, I don't really think that counts.
DeleteThose were the only ones that I knew for sure about, so I removed "Windows" from the platforms. I didn't have time to research the specific mechanism for which the other platforms were listed for every game.
Thanks for the note on Langrisser II. I've removed it.
Boy, it would be a major tragedy if you missed Chrono Trigger, though. That's one of the best RPGs ever done, period, on any platform, and it was only on the SNES. (well, it was ported to the Playstation and the Nintendo DS, but they're still running the original game with the original graphics, plus some weird cut scenes that weren't in the original.)
DeleteThat one game is worth bending any rule you have to, in order to get to it. Seriously. It is AMAZING, and you are not truly an RPG expert if you haven't finished it at least once.
I played through Chrono Trigger on PSX around 9 years ago, and I didn't get what all the fuss was about. It was probably one of the better JRPGs I've played, but still didn't strike me as anything amazingly special.
DeleteThe plot and characters were fairly cliche (although I did like the frog and to some extent the robot), and there were a few annoying minigames (although not nearly as bad as FF7, which I wanted to like but ended up abhorring). I was also annoyed that the antagonist felt barely present until you fight him/it all of a sudden at the end.
The most interesting thing about it was probably that it followed the Bioware model of having you assemble a team of friendly characters that swap in and out of the party (eventually at your discretion, if I remember correctly). I think the time traveling also worked in its favor by being an excuse for the rambling plot that seems to be a hallmark of the JRPG genre for some reason.
Take what I say with a grain of salt, though, as I'm pretty jaded about JRPGs. I tried a bunch of them in college (especially PSX ones) and ended up finding that I couldn't stand 90% of them because they tended to have some unbearable mix of overabundant inane dialog, incoherent plots, and/or severely cliche characters. On some level, I suppose it is high praise that I actually managed to play through the entire game without putting it down.
Ooh, Buck Rogers is now on the radar. I believe it uses the Gold Box engine but is a sci-fi game. There is also a sequel.
ReplyDeleteI tried playing a console port of this (Genesis?) sometime in the last year or two, but ended up getting stuck on some random enemy ship in such a way that there was no escape. I decided to give up rather than lose hours of progress.
Concerning the Amiga question, I had an Amiga from 1988 until 1996 and it was such a fantastic machine that came really before it's time. If only Commodore had been better managed and didn't rest on their laurels, Commodore computers might occupy the same space that Apple has now. I think the step up from 8 bit computers to the Amiga was the biggest ever in computer And videogame history in general. Those colours, those animations (playing another world when it was released was probably my biggest WOW moment ) and the sound, oh my god the sound !!! It took many years for the pc to catch up with the Amiga. There are lots of rpgs that were better on the Amiga, and you're gimping your experience by playing them on dos
ReplyDeleteFrom my perspective at least, Amiga wasn't a popular development platform in Europe in late 1990s, but a significant difference compared to the US is that Amiga still existed in Europe in late 1990s.
DeleteAmiga was indeed a great platform and its fans were very passionate. There were several different models, but Commodore never managed to get anything beyond Amiga 500 get adopted by the masses and Amiga remained a gaming platform. In 1992 Amiga 500, while containing lots of hardware geared towards games, was unable to keep up with 386-based PCs performance. After a couple of disasterous years, in 1994 Commodore went bankrupt. There's an interesting History of Amiga series on Ars Techinca that's worth a read if you're interested in home computing history.
http://arstechnica.com/series/history-of-the-amiga/
1994 or 1995 were the last years when Amiga was still the number one platform for developers. But there were a lot of Amigas in Europe, and some people did keep on making games or porting games for Amiga for a few years. But I wouldn't say it was popular. Lemonamiga lists 328 games for 1994, 187 games for 1995 and 93 games for 1996.
Why Amiga became popular in Europe but not in US is a more difficult question with no terribly clear answer. Household income, PC adoptation in US workplaces, game console vs microcomputer vs PC argument, etc.
Also, lemonamiga.com lists at least some Amiga RPG that are not on your master list. A quick check against the master list produced Citadel of Vras and The Crusade. RPGs are an adventure subgenre in their advanced search. I'll try and have the fortitude to go over their list in more detail and report the findings.
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/list.php?list_genre=Adventure&list_sub_genre=RPG+2D
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/list.php?list_genre=Adventure&list_sub_genre=RPG+3D
Quite an undertaking! I envy you the amount of free time you have (or feel you have) to expand the blog's scope in such a way.
ReplyDeleteI don't have very much free time. But I came to regard the "DOS/Windows-only" rule as completely arbitrary. It seems far less arbitrary to play fewer games chronologically (i.e., never make it to 2000) than to continue excluding other PC platforms.
DeleteI think this is a good decision. The coverage of more recent games is actually less interesting than expanded coverage of old games. Once you get into the 90s there are far more Internet sites, reviews, and walkthroughs already available. Furthermore, the old games are (mostly) likely to average fewer hours per game overall, producing more blog material.
DeleteI actually like to write about the more obscure games, too. Whenever I play a well-known and well-loved games, I get commenters tripping over themselves with hints that are really quasi-spoilers, criticisms of my in-game decisions, and nitpicking over everything I say that they don't agree with. The most ardent fans are always disappointed that I didn't like it as much as they did. It gets a little exhausting. You're not going to see any of that with Moria.
DeleteIf Moria isn't your 1975 GOTY, I'm going to hunt you down and stab you with a Balrog.
DeleteGood luck reviewing Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star.
DeleteI'm really glad you made this deciscion. Otherwhise you would've missed Ambermoon. I'm really looking forward to this.
ReplyDeleteAmbermoon is a quite nice game, even though I prefer the prequel Amberstar. Either way, I agree it's worth a try and I would even go as far as saying it's one of the best Amiga RPGs ever created.
DeleteI have a harddisc-version of Ambermoon which you can start with an Amiga Emulator and don't have to swap discs during playing. Just saying. ;-)
I played both games just for a few hours, but Ambermoon really made me curious. I just stopped playing because I felt I might miss something if I haven't played Amberstar before.
DeleteWhy do you like Amberstar better?
I didn't like the "real" 3D of the dungeons too much, since the graphic couldn't keep up the freedom of view and also the dungeons were still step based and didn't make use of it at all.
DeleteAlso I played Amberstar more than 10 years earlier (on my Atari when it was new) and had completed it a few times already. When I finally got my hands on Ambermoon, it was already a classic.
There's also Albion, which is not a sequel, but uses the same engine (with nice tweaks like the option to speed up fights) and has a creative and interesting backstory.
Also Dragonflight, which was their first RPG. There's a few easter eggs and references to it in Amberstar/Ambermoon and Albion, but they don't have much in common beyond that.
DeleteJust to put a voice to the other side.
ReplyDeleteI'm a DOS/Windows gamer and I didn't mind at all your DOS-only rule. I tried playing games on other platforms and found Amiga to be too finicky, even with a nice GUI emulator, 8-bit platforms too old/limited and consoles... well, consoles. Only Mac stuff was enjoyable, but there is very little of it and quality is poor (baring a few exceptions).
On the other hand, I acknowledge that my preference is just that - preference. As you move your blog away from a casual hobby and more towards a semi-serious historical project, I see how the scope must expand. Too bad this means we'll probably never see you take a swipe at the golden age of CRPG-s, between the late 90-ies and early 2000-s.
"Both the MobyGames and Wikipedia contributors of the long Japanese RPG lists are a little liberal in their definitions of "RPG." Among the entries (which I faithfully copied over), we get every Pokemon and Digimon title, a dozen entries containing the words "super" and "robot," and Mario Tennis. The collection of Hentai games alone is staggering."
ReplyDeleteI haven't played any Digimon games so I can't speak for them, but it takes no liberal interpretation of the word RPG at all to include Pokemon among them.
Don't take this as a fan whining or anything, just strictly trying to be informative. :) It is as much an RPG as any JRPG. I believe you would be very satisfied with the amount of complexity in the battle system. The stories are very cursory, but the worlds are decently large with plenty of nooks and crannies to explore for treasures, lots of towns full of (stereotypically boring) NPCs, leveling, a wide variety of combat abilities to choose from, money management as shops offer better purchases later on, even some non-combat pursuits in recent games such as farming and animal husbandry.
Not to say I want to see you play it here or anything. Just that it's easy to misinterpret what the series must be like if you haven't played it. I would wager that Pokemon has led thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of kids to play other RPGs afterward. Kids get into it because it's an appealing fad and don't realize they're getting themselves into classic turn-based RPG gameplay.
Also, you should note that handheld version of both Mario Tennis and Mario Golf contain really meaty jRPG single player campaigns, with random fights replaced by golf/tennis matches, so it's not that surprising to see them there.
DeleteYeah, the Pokemon games are clearly JRPGs, and I'm generally of the opinion that JRPGs are clearly RPGs, even if they emphasize different things.
DeleteYeah, that comment is a bit puzzling. I assume the "Super Robot" games are mostly including Banpresto's "Wars" series, and those play similarly to titles such as Shining Force, and qualify at least in the same sense Sword of Aragon did on the blog.
DeleteOh, I was writing mostly from ignorance, of course, but whatever their technical merits as RPGs, these games are worlds apart from, oh, Baldur's Gate or Might and Magic in style and tone.
DeleteThis makes me remember a turbo-grafix game about racing go-karts, I wish I remembered the name.
DeleteThe single player game had you walking around solving quests and leveling up your ride and equipment while the "battles" consisted of racing with the extra bonus of your leveled up ride.
One of the early examples of RPG elements seriously crossing over into territory you wouldn't have expected at the time. Now that game play is basically in all the newer gran turismos, but they have less of an rpg feel than this had.
Final Lap Twin, so says Google.
DeleteLooks like I should add this to my list of games to check out. Sadly, I don't think it's going to make the cut.
DeleteThe pokemon games are actually pretty solid RPGs under the trappings and merchandise. At least the main series; they have a mix of pretty good (Pokemon Snap) to pretty terrible (Pokmeon CCG for Gameboy) side games, but I don't think those are rpgs.
DeleteHowever, they are all for gameboy, so you don't have to play them.
Our host needs to become an expert in emulators of all colors, shapes, and sizes. The tools of his trade, if you will. All the hours spent now learning tedious non-game information will pay off handsome dividends in the future.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, emulators are generally easy to set up.
DeleteWinUAE, for instance, seems daunting at first. There's tons of obscure settings, but most users will never have to touch those: vast majority of the games are playable with the default quickstart..
You're a brave man... I think the question of which version to play will be hard, and I guess some games might have received a different rating through a different version. And all those foreign languages... I hope you'll find some hidden gems. Didn't I suggest a couple of weeks ago that there may be some obscure games in different languages? Though I didn't think of Japan and Korea, but rather Spain, Germany, Italy and so on...
ReplyDeleteYeah, about the Amiga... I've played computer games since I was about 3 or 4 (my dad bought computers because he said that they were the future...). Most of the time I played on Commodore systems. In Germany those were far more popular for playing than DOS or Apple. I seem to recall that the PC was for working, the C64/Amiga was for playing. I started buying gaming magazines around 1992... I already had the Amiga back then. Before that, you could buy "electronic magazines" for the C64, i.e. game reviews, articles, free games, shareware etc.... on a floppy disk. And I can't recall when I started to do that. Anyway....the C64 had an active life as a gaming machine until ca. 1991/92. When I switched to Amiga I did so, because it was necessary. And in 1992, the Amiga was still slightly ahead of the PC. With the Amiga you had everything in one machine. The PC constantly required upgrading. The Amiga also had far better sound. But the disadvantage of the PC slowly turned into an advantage because the steady upgrading beat the all-in-one concept of the Amiga. I think by 1996, the Amiga in all its version was hopelessly outclassed. A couple of A titles were still released because the audience was still there, but it was a dying machine. And by 1998 or so it was more or less dead.
This is all written from memory, but I just checked and Ambermoon was released in 1993 so I think my recollection is largely correct. Amberstar and Ambermoon were absolute A titles. If I recall correctly however, Lands of Lore for example, already didn't get an Amiga release. I realized that the Amiga had no future when LucasArts stopped releasing their games on that platform.
Commodore should have included an hard drive in all its models since 92 or something. I played monkey island 2 until the end and the game came in 11 disks!!Also, two buttons joysticks should also mandatory. Very few developers have the option to play with 2 button joysticks and that's a shame. It's a slight detail that made many Amiga conversions inferior to the 16 bits consoles.
DeleteHeh, I almost wrote that exact same thing yesterday - an Amiga 1200 with a HDD (it already had an IDE controller for chrissakes!) would have been huge.
DeleteYou could squash a standard HD into the 1200, although the casing would bulge a bit. In theory you were supposed to use a thin-profile HD, but they were more expensive.
DeleteHi Chet, I checked those Czech games on your list. I never heard of Necromania and U.S. Special Forces. Fifth Disciple is more an adventure game than RPG, which is why I never played it. However, there are another two titles that are missing from your master list: Prokletà Eridenu(DOS), RytÃÅ™i Grálu(DOS) - both are dungeon crawlers similar to games like DM, EOB. None of them is really good though.
ReplyDeleteAFAIK the only czech game available in english is Brány Skeldalu (it has unofficial english patch).
Hi, i'm another addict from Czech Republic.
DeleteU.S. Special Forces is actually a first-person shooter and a very bad one so you can delete it from your list. The Fifth Disciple is a sequel to Brány Skeldalu and it's adventure game with very little RPG elements. Necromania is action-RPG, watch trailer here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdqqByKemPE and homepage http://www.necromania.cz/
Good source of old czech games
http://www.oldgames.sk/group/ceskehry/
Brány Skeldalu is by far the best old czech RPG, only Inquisitor from 2009 is better.
Sounds like the second is about King Arthur, which I have a weakness for. No promises on these, though. I have no experience with Slavic languages.
DeleteI appreciate your insight, and I'll find this comment as the games come up on my "upcoming" list, but I'm not going to delete them until I have a chance to evaluate them for myself.
Honestly, I wish you would've sticked to your original plan. My personal CRPG-"career" started in the early 90's so you were just reaching a time where I started playing myself and where (re-)playing the games is more interesting to me, e.g. Ultima VI was just 2 games ahead and I was really looking forward to it.
ReplyDeleteBut of course those are purely egoistical reasons and I respect your decision to include all the games that are interesting to you, especially if there are more hidden gems to be discovered.
Lucius
PS: Since this is my first post on this blog I wanted to say thank you for such a great and entertaining blog that takes me back to the games of my childhood. Since I found your blog through that Spiegel-article, I replayed Ultima VII Parts 1 and 2, and am now halfway through VIII (loved it as a child, I still love the atmosphere but HATE the action and random-death-sequences), Underworld I and - playing it for the first time - IV.
Wow. Thank you for your new focus - really exciting from an "archeological" POV! :)
ReplyDeleteRegarding your question about the US<->Europe discrepancy in Amiga development.
IIRC there were several reasons (off the top of my head, so everyone feel free to correct me! :) ):
* The Amiga was much more successful as a whole in Europe than in the US, so install base and developer momentum simply was higher
* Console gaming wasn't as strong in Europe than the US during that time (especially during the Genesis era, it only somewhat took off with the SNES, but still weaker than US), so the Amiga was more of a C64/NES successor than in the US.
* Especially the latter point meant it took longer for PCs to be looked at as gaming machines than in the US (significantly, the first wave of successful "post-Amiga" games came almost exclusively from the US)
Oh, and having said that - a few additions to your list:
Die Dunkle Dimension (C64)
http://www.thelegacy.de/Museum/10675/
one of the first german CRPGs ever, IIRC
Dungeons of Avalon
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=2655
You have part 2 on your list, but you're missing that one.
thelegacy.de is generally a good source for obscure german crpgs :)
The bit on the Amiga is just what I was looking for, thanks.
DeleteI'll investigate those other games.
You linked to the wrong game for the first one, but I found it here:
Deletehttp://www.thelegacy.de/Museum/10675/
WOW is it a ripoff of Ultima IV.
Ha. I linked to the wrong one, too. It looks like the page uses a frame and the main URL doesn't change from where you started. This one should work:
Deletehttp://www.thelegacy.de/Museum/4137/4101/
Yeah, their use of frames is a bit iffy...
DeleteHaha, true. DDD was quite infamous for the *ahem* similarity to U4...but the game itself was surprisingly fun - at least in the heavily nostalgia-tinted memory of a 13-year-old me. :)
Frames? The 90s called, they want their HTML back.
DeleteOooh! This means Deathlord and Centauri Alliance will get covered!
ReplyDeleteI am pumped!
Yup, count me in for being a fan of Centarui Alliance. Though I suspect it will not be to the addicts liking, it was made by the guy responsible for Bard's Tale and it plays a lot like it.
DeleteI can't wait to see what Chet says about Deathlord hehe.
DeleteChet, please note that Farland Story games for PC-98 have received a pretty good fan-translation, available here: http://www.romhacking.net/?page=translations&platform=3
ReplyDeleteThe games themselves are squad based tactical games (Fire Emblem, Langrisser, Ufo: Enemy Unknown), so I'm not sure whether you'd want to play them, but they sure are available in English.
Okay, I'll add the first one to the list and see how it goes.
DeleteI absolutely loved my Amiga. Everything about it was so much easier than PC: the sound, the graphics, ease of use, and it could run games more complex than PC could and look and sound better doing it. I heard it didn't succeed here in the US due to lack of marketing, which is a shame. given how it outstripped PCs at the time, who knows how outstanding games would look and play on it today?
ReplyDeleteThere's an emulator for it, but you have to pay for it. I'm not sure why, but I think it's something to do with the licensing in Europe, or that it's still semi-viable there. I'm likely wrong on that.
"Easier" should read as "better".
DeleteThe emulator (winUAE) is free. What isn't free are the kickstart roms that come included in the Amiga forever package.
DeleteI recommend forking out the 10 Euros (I think it was) for Amiga Forever. In addition to getting all the Kickstart Roms it also has a more user friendly UI than WinUAE (at least it was when I checked both out).
DeleteFor me the best way to play amiga games is with Gamebase and Whdload together. It's basically like playing with console roms. Everything is instant.
DeleteWell, the emulator itself, WInUAE, is free, but the Amiga Forever package from Cloanto includes actual licensed copies of the Amiga ROMs, so you're being completely legal by purchasing it.
DeleteYou can also extract the ROMs yourself legally, and of course illegal versions are easy enough to get.
If you don't remember how Amiga hard drives work, though, Amiga Forever will make setting one up enormously easier. In many ways, the Amiga was the first recognizably modern operating system, and with that kind of power came a fair bit of complexity, and it's hard to find Amiga documentation anymore.
If you're interested in Amiga emulation, it's probably worth the purchase.
Thanks. I'll look into it when I hit my first Amiga game.
DeleteIf you run into trouble, drop me an email at crpgblahaddict at malor dot com, but remove the blah from the middle of the first word, there. I was once a mighty Amiga master, and while a lot of my knowledge has escaped into the ether, I should be able to give you a nicely setup environment for most games.
DeleteIf it's hard-drive installable, I can give you an image and a config file to make it almost point-and-shoot. If it's a floppy-only game and has multiple disks, it's usually possible to set up several emulated floppy drives, and have them all online at once, so you don't have to swap. (this isn't true of all games, because each floppy took some RAM to run, so a game right at the edge of the envelope might not work with more than two drives. But I think the games you'd want to play would never have that problem.)
The Amiga was really, really powerful and flexible, and many games worked perfectly on tricked-out, nonstandard boxes. You can often set up really sweet environments for those games, letting them run better than they would have on all but appallingly expensive Amigas of the era.
Wow! Doubling your list must seem daunting. As an additional source, I recently used RPGamer.com. It probably doesn't have anything you missed, but it might be a good place to track new releases.
ReplyDeleteI see now it's not quite double, and you'll catch up on the backlog shortly before the end of game year 1992.
DeleteYes, it wasn't quite double. I went from having about 600 games before 2003 to a little over 800. In the process of regenerating the list, I dumped a bunch of Asian titles for Windows that never had English translations.
DeleteLegend of Faerghail is also supposed to contain some seriousbugs. In fact, I think this is mentioned in the review (or some other reporting) by CGW.
ReplyDeleteAnd I just wondered how "Batman the Movie" managed to end up on the list. Another Gamefaqs screwup it seems - it's mostly categorized as an action game, but not for the ST. Their data for old computers is quite unreliable in my opinion.
Damn. I got all excited to play a Batman RPG.
Delete"Batman: Arkham *every damn thing*" are all RPGs, Chet. XD
DeleteI checked out the early 80's, I'm just shaking my head at some of these classifications. But anyway, as you stated, you'll find out soon enough if something is a RPG or not.
DeleteA small correction for the platforms column: You have "MSX2" instead of "MSX" everywhere that I can see, you should probably reverse that, so it's clear you mean "MSX" as a standard. Unless you want to be precise and make a distinction between the two generations ("Miracle Warriors" on the list was released for both, but I assume you want to save some effort for games you're not going to play anyway).
Thanks. I thought I had found-and-replaced that.
DeleteWow, this is major change. I do love the "master list." It could serve as a indispensable guide for many people. I look forward to seeing you play some of those Amiga classics!
ReplyDeleteYou do have Magic Candle and Starflight 2 listed as "unplayed," though.
Also mismarked as Unplayed: Wizardry - Bane of the Cosmic Forge. Dragons of Flame is marked as Unplayed, but probably should be "NP" as it was attempted but not workable. I thought Legend of the Red Dragon was also attempted.
DeleteThanks for noting those things.
DeleteI don't know about LORD. Some people told me it was playable but I kind of ignored them and moved on. I feel like I should at least check it out when it comes round again.
Some info: the only Hungarian game in your list is Newcomer, which recently received an updated "ultimate" version:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.protovision-online.com/games/newcomer.php?language=en
The page details who were the developers/publishers of both the original and updated versions. Additionally, there is an article/interview here:
http://iddqd.blog.hu/2010/11/17/szerdai_retro_newcomer/
Let me know if you need a translation when you reach Newcomer :-)
Newcomer looks interesting, but the Ultimate version's development has been so slow that it is almost vaporware at this point. I think I first heard about it a couple of years ago, and it's supposedly been almost done ever since.
DeleteNot the only Hungarian game - Perihelion is there as well (published by Psygnosis though, hence UK in the list)
DeleteOn the other hand, I'm glad to see many of those games on the list. But on the other hand, there's a lot of additions that I wouldn't consider to be CRPGs.
ReplyDeleteSuch as Shadowfire, Heavy on the Magick, and Lords of Midnight. Although they have some minor RPG elements, they're solidly in other genres. Adventure and Strategy. Out of that trio, I'd definitely cull Shadowfire. The other two are slightly more borderline.
And now that I think about it, there are a lot of Spectrum games that have the same amount of RPG elements as Heavy on the Magick. Such as the Magic Knight series (Spellbound, Knight Tyme, Stormbringer). They do have some character attributes (strength, stamina..) and inventory, but if there's any combat...it's based on solving item puzzles, etc. I'd pigeonhole those as graphic adventures.
DeletePeople say that all the time, but I don't know if you're applying MY criteria or your own.
DeleteIn any event, don't worry about it. If the game doesn't qualify, I'll find out soon enough as it enters my "upcoming" list, and I'll reject it.
YAAAAY!! No, really, this GREAT news :-) So that might add a lot to your list, but hey, as many said before, the most interesting posts were those of the more unknown games. And there are a lot of these to be discovered on the c64, amiga, atari st, etc.
ReplyDeleteJust curious, does this mean you'll reconsider a game of the year winner, if you come across a possible contender on the revised list?
ReplyDeleteYes, I imagine I would do that.
DeleteOut of curiosity, would you like us to go through the list and give you opinions on the RPG-ness of various titles according to your criteria again?
ReplyDeleteShould we also do it for games not on your official playlist?
For instance, Faxanadu for the NES would probably not qualify. It's a platform game with very limited stat-advancement (XP doesn't affect stats, equipment barely affects the playstyle and is more of a "you must earn this much money before proceeding" test, there's only a framing story (and a barely comprehensible one at that, due to horrible translation)...
But you might want the information anyway, if only for archival purposes.
I could have sworn that XP causes you to gain levels, which in turn at least increases your life and/or mana maximums? Otherwise I have to agree that it's basically just a Metroidvania game (which reminds me, is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the list? Should it be?).
DeleteIt's potentially worth playing for a short amount of time for purposes of comparing to other Dragon Slayer games like Sorcerian and Legacy of the Wizard. It's also a good game, but only if you like Metroid-style games (exploration platformers with generally only very light RPG elements)
Nope. Levels just gives you more starting gold on reloading (and reduces the duration of the Wing Boots.)
DeleteIt definitely should be on the playing list for the Metroidvania Addict, however.
Yeah, I had reservations while playing it. I thought levels (ranks) also limited the equipment you could use. In retrospect, I can't recommend it as an RPG, but it was also a childhood favorite, which is why I finished it. I'd already played other questionable titles, such as Zelda II and Dungeon Explorer (although no nostalgia for that one, so I cut it early).
DeleteOn Castlevania games, they're not on the list. As far as I'm aware, they were not released on PC. Symphony of the Night at least has character stats that contribute a good deal to combat. There are many other titles that suggest they're action-RPGs, but levels do little more than increase health (possibly magic points).
Wait, why are we discussing console games not even on the main list? He already said he wasn't going to consider them outright (although might enjoy a detour for seminal titles). I guess SotN fits that, but Faxanadu is mostly forgettable.
Ah, I see now that they are in the list, but hidden. Every time I searched for one of those titles it just wouldn't find it. Seems since I opened it from Drive it automatically opens in spreadsheet view. Once I switched to List view they're there plain as day.
DeleteIt's probably a waste of time to tell me that a game isn't an RPG now. The list isn't necessarily a list of all the games I'll play; just all the games that anyone THINKS are RPGs that meet my platform criteria. I'll apply my own standards when I get to them and reject them if necessary. If you have strong opinions about the RPG-ness of a game, it makes the most sense to bring it up when it's close on my "upcoming" list.
DeleteDid you want to fill in any gaps for the console games on your list? Even though you are going to skip them anyway, I've noticed a couple missing while browsing.
DeleteOnce again, strike that. I see now that the filters aren't as complex to show all games on a particular console. Instead it only shows what matches exactly. So looking at say, NES, I don't get things that were also released on DOS. On a similar note, looking at "DOS, C64" isn't the same as "C64, DOS" and so on.
DeleteYes, there's no "contains" filter in the Google spreadsheet. You have to download that to Excel if you want to do that.
DeleteI'm a long time lurker, but a big fan. I grew up in the 80's playing CRGPs on an AppleII+, and I love reading about your experience of playing these classic games of my youth.
ReplyDeleteCount me in as someone who's excited that you've decided to officially include games released exclusively on Apple. The CRPG selection on the Apple in the early 80s was far superior to DOS, and way more experimental. Can't wait to see play-throughs for Sundog and Deathlord, and even Apventure to Atlantis.
BTW, I noticed your list is missing "The Standing Stones" which was published by EA in 1984. It's a simplified Wizardry clone, but it has it's own charms.
Thanks again for this awesome blog
Never heard of it. I've added it. Thanks!
DeleteNow that the rejoice is out, I'll try give you as much information I have on the titles:
ReplyDelete- 112 Forest of Doom : This is a conversion of the Fighting Fantasy CYOA book of the same name. While I think it plays exactly like this and I personally would count this as an rpg, you may still want to look if it really meets your criteria.
- 118 Lords of Midnight, also Doomdark's Revenge: A very special mix of genres, a really unique game. Very hard to tell if it's an rpg or not. I think it's more of a strategy game than everything. Since you rejected Rings of Medusa I'd say you can reject this, too, there are similarities. Though I already fear the reaction of it's huge fanbase to my suggestion ;-)
- 126 SunDog: Frozen Legacy: Definitley play the ST version for better graphics
- 147 Fairlight: I wouldn't count this as an RPG, it's one of those isometric action-adventures for the spectrum which were popular on that machine. If you want to try out play the speccy version, other versions tend to have far worse scrolling (SLOW!) since they were only poorly converted from the ZX. The Amstrad CPC version might be an exception to this.
- 167 Runestone: IMO not an RPG. More like a "Lords of Midnight - The Adventure Game".
- 168 Shadowfire, AKA Enigma Force in europe: Well, I never thought of this as an RPG back then on the C64, but I think you have to see for yourself since it's another one of those unique genre mixes of the 80s. I'd say strategy, not RPG.
More to come if I find more time.
These are old Macintosh shareware games and it's probably impossible to find the full versions, but in case that you want to list them anyway...
ReplyDelete- Theldrow (1989, by Glenn Andreas)
- The Odyssey (1994, by David Larkin)
Few more to add to the list:
Delete- Citadel of Vras (1989)
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=2789
(By Megamek, from Australia.)
- Zerg (1989)
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=3518
(Whoa. Seems familiar, I think I've played that.)
- Dungeons of Avalon (1991)
http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=2655
(You've listed the second one, but not this.)
- Projekt Ikarus (1991)
http://hol.abime.net/3638
(In German, dunno if there's an English version...)
- Legend of Lothian (1991)
http://hol.abime.net/3851
By the way? Noticed the Lords of Chaos on the upcoming games list. Strategy, not RPG. Two duelling wizards, casting spells at each other on a tile map.
You never know what will happen when I get there. Thanks.
DeleteHow did the 1990 list get reshuffled?
ReplyDeleteI realized the "release dates" I had used to determine the original order were all based on unfounded speculations. Also, I replaced the list before I noted what order the original had been in. So I shuffled them randomly and created a new order. There wasn't anything I particularly loved about the old one, so I let it stand.
DeleteHi, a hints for "realms of arkania"-(northlands)Trilogy: Only the first part ist released for the amiga. So if you play it on amiga it will be hard to import the party to next parts (only released for DOS). The best versions are the CD-Versions.
ReplyDeleteIn germany it is very famous and based on the p&p "The Dark Eye"
I bought the first 3 Arkania games on GOG a while back. I wanted to like them, but got lost trying to figure out what seemed to be arbitrary character and equipment choices. I think it may be hard to get into unless you are familiar with the Das Schwarze Auge p&p system, or maybe I'm just bad at grasping various RPG systems.
DeleteIt also seemed like the combats weren't very random, so I got stuck in the first dungeon because the only fight I could find at one point was too difficult to beat.
I plan to revisit the series at some point.
I had pretty much the same experience as HunterZ, except that I got scared completely off that series. And I really wanted to like it, having played in a brief D&D game online with a mostly German group, with the game being based in the DSA setting.
DeleteIt was my first CRPG and i liked it very much. I play it today and i still like it. :)
DeleteA good choice of a party is:
A Thorwaler (Tank (swords))
A Dwarf (Tank(axe) and for door open(with lock pick))
A Magician (battle spells, bargaining, serach for herbage)
Two or three different elves (all archer, all Healer(with the right herbages in inventory) and one good in wildness skills (search for food, routing)
It is absolut necessary to read the Manual, because the complex skill system. Many Infomations about weapons, herbage, desease and so on are there.
Make your own Charakters, (for the tanks with a minimum of strength=13)
In the first part (blade of destiny) it will be good to raise "Strength" very fast (max is 18) it influence your handling with weapons/live points/carry equipment).
The best start is to go in taverns.
Write down every clue given by the game, there is no questlog or so.
I specifically liked the part where there is no quest logs but gave you the ability to jot down stuff on little post-it notes and pin them on the automap.
DeleteI had a lot of fun travelling around and annotating my notes in the map. I also made it a habit to save after taking each note as the game seems to be very huge (at that time) that caused it to crash quite frequently because of RAM shortage.
You forgot several games on Amstrad CPC. Maybe you should add boardgamegeek to your sources.
ReplyDeleteFer & Flamme
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/videogame/85904/fer-flamme
L'Anneau de Zengara
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/videogame/86015/lanneau-de-zengara
Les Templiers d'Orven
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/videogame/88621/les-templiers-dorven
Saga
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/videogame/122070/saga
Faial (more an interactive book)
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/videogame/112314/faial
By the way they're all french.
Congratulations for your great blog.
I didn't "forget" them; I...sigh. Never mind. Thank you for the additions. The search seems needlessly difficult on that site, but I'll see what I can do.
DeleteOne more item I don't understand. Roadwar Europa is on the list, but its predecessor Roadwar 2000 (1986) is not. They are virtually the same in many ways. I am not sure either qualifies as an RPG. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadwar_2000
ReplyDeleteThere are lots of inconsistencies like that. The easy answer is that someone classified Roadwar Europa as an RPG on one of the lists I consulted, but no one classified Roadwar 2000 as such. Having no experience with the former and only the slightest remembrance of the latter, when I'm compiling my list I have no choice but to assume that someone knew what he or she was talking about, and the series introduced RPG elements between the two versions. I realize that isn't always the case, but it's what I have to assume until I play.
DeleteIn any event, as below, I'll add Roadwar 2000 even though I don't think it's a CRPG because I remember having a good time with it when I was a kid.
I think this is a great decision, albeit a demanding one for the CRPG Addict! But I'm very pleased to see games like TaskMaker now get into the queue, if only for purely selfish reasons.
ReplyDeleteBTW I'd be careful to differentiate between the TRS-80 Model I (plus the compatible Model III) and the TRS-80 (or Tandy) Color Computer, aka the CoCo. Two totally different platforms. In my experience people are marginally more likely to call the Model I/III the "TRS-80" and the Color Computer the "CoCo", but plenty of people called the CoCo the "Trash-80". There was also a CoCo 3 which was backwards-compatible. You can see a partial (but very incomplete) list of CoCo games here:
http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/coco_game_list.html
Speaking of the TRS-80, does Galactic Empire deserve a spot on the list, or is it too much of a simulation?
Never played it, so you'll have to tell me.
DeleteI'd like to, but it's been over two decades since I played it on the Model III! Perhaps I'll try to dig up a copy and see for myself.
DeleteBTW to be more specific about my post above, Dungeons of Daggorath (for one) should get filed as TRS-80 Color Computer, Tandy Color Computer, or just "CoCo" on your list. There was also a notoriously poor sequel, Castle of Tharoggad, for CoCo 3 only. Otherwise I think there are a few CoCo 1/2 and CoCo 3 games that qualify as CRPGs (and aren't just ports of existing games like Rogue) but I'll have to do some research to find out which ones.
Just spotted one entry to cut: Mission: Asteroid is a graphical text adventure (i.e. parser-driven interactive fiction with graphics), and definitely not a CRPG.
DeleteBluerazor just beat me to it, but you should definitely add Roadwar 2000 to the list. The Amiga version was quite good: that's probably the flavor I'd play. (interestingly, it was so small, by Amiga standards, that they included the binary *twice* on the disk -- once as Roadwar 2000, with an icon you could click, and once as Raodwar 2000, without an icon. You could only see it if you looked from the command line.)
ReplyDeleteIt's really a very good game, and probably wouldn't take more than a few hours to finish. It has a great deal of randomly-generated content, so it's vaguely of the Rogue ilk, but you're managing an abstracted group of survivors, rather than a character. If anything, your character in the game is the car you're driving, which can be heavily customized.
There are strong elements of strategy games to it, but I think it qualifies as much as that title you went through recently, where you were battling to re-unite a kingdom.
You know what? I'm going to add it. Only because I played it once when I was a kid and I remember liking it.
DeleteThen you've probably have to add also the sequel, Roadwar Europe.
DeleteAnd now I read the comments few posts above. Please disregard.
DeleteDon't forget River City Ransom in 1989!
ReplyDeleteIt fulfills all your RPG category conditions! XD
Except it's on console...
DeleteIn all seriousness though, I'd like to see how Chet evaluates a game like this.
1) Inventory -- Special moves and boots that are bought. Although I think there is a distinct lack of healing items stored in the inventory. It's definitely not a puzzle based inventory.
2) Player-driven leveling and development -- Well, you could grind to get money, which is what you use to purchase stats. There's no direct experience = levels = increases though.
3) Statics based combat -- Yeah, I suppose. Although it's really hard to tell when most enemies fall over after a couple of hits.
I couldn't bring myself to call it an RPG. I think Chet needs to re-evaluate his criteria if it lets this game through.
I've tended to err on the side of inclusion, as we saw in Dragon Lord, though I'll be more likely to apply a stricter definition of terms if it looks like the game is going to take a long time.
DeleteIn any event, the point is moot if it's not available on a personal computer.
Not on PC eh... Think again! XD
Deletehttp://www.kickstarter.com/projects/combitstudios/river-city-ransom-underground
Oops! Sorry. Big fan of this series. Here's the correct link.
Deletehttp://www.gamefabrique.com/download/river-city-ransom/
Also, don't forget to add "Harvest Moon: Back to Nature"! Also on PC! =P
That looks like a hack that bundles the NES rom with an emulator.
DeleteHmm... yeah, it does... Anyway, the Kickstarter sequel would only come up in Chet's list a few decades later. XD
DeleteIn the meantime, Harvest Moon (for PC) will have to be on that list!
This post won't make me well liked. Honestly, I'm going to be the opposite of most people here and suggest that you stick with your original plan. It wasn't that long ago that you quit this blog; because, you didn't have time for it or you felt the need to kick your addiction. Adding more games from different systems might seem like a good idea right now, but once you're buried under the weight of them, you might start to feel differently.
ReplyDeletePlaying the occasional "must play" title from another system might be okay, but trying to tackle every RPG ever made EVER is just...madness. Not to mention it will slow down the forward momentum you've got going. I worry about your ability to get through these games as it is, adding even more games only increases your chance of bailing out before you're done.
A better plan might be to continue playing through the DOS/Windows CRPGs and once you reach a point where you feel caught up enough, you could go back and start covering some of those other games.
I'm sure you'll ignore this advice, but I'm both looking out for your sanity and trying to keep you on your original mission. There are a million blogs with guys playing console games...but this blog is unique because it plays the games I care about.
I, on the other hand, admire his dedication (and addiction) to the cause.
DeleteShould he ever fall (unless he achieved some kind of immortality through means incomprehensible by us) one day, maybe he could pass on his mantle to the next CRPG addict to continue on this endeavor.
Anyway, he will still continue playing games that you care about. On top of that, he will also be playing games many others also care about. You're not being excluded- more like many others are being included.
Yeah, my initial thought: "This is sheer masochism". But I guess if you're going to develop some kind of comprehensive CRPG resource, it's necessary.
DeletePlease make more liberal use of your 6 hour rule though! We fear for your sanity.
You didn't read my post very carefully because I'm still not playing console games. In any event, you are correct: while I appreciate the advice, I'm going to ignore it.
DeleteI don't see the problem. The list of all games up to and including 2002 is huge regardless. And practically speaking Chets list is infinite since he doesn't play one year worth of games during one year. What this means is just that he prefers going through a bunch more of the older titles first.
DeleteRemember: The goal isn't to catch up to the current day as quickly as possible.
Regarding the "Country" column, Chet, I noticed that the games that came from Taiwanese developers are all marked as China. XD
ReplyDeleteI think ROC (Republic Of China) would be a better choice since PRC (People's Republic of China) have their own share of developers (that sucked so bad, they collapse entire megaverses into a massive black hole with their suckiness) as well.
I'm not so interested in making political distinctions with that column so much as cultural and linguistic ones.
DeleteOh, I should probably change it. It's just a pain in the neck to figure out which is which.
DeleteYes, you should do that. There's a huge gap in creativity between the two that cannot be ignored.
DeleteMeh. I tried listing quite a few additions yesterday, but looks like it didn't get through. Dunno why I have so much trouble commenting on blogspot...
ReplyDeleteI can't remember all the games that I suggested adding to the list, but one of them was Zerg (1989, Amiga). It's a simple Ultima-type RPG, but I remember liking it for some reason.
Oh, and I mentioned that Lords of Chaos (on your upcoming games list) is not an RPG. It's turn-based strategy: zero dialogue, just a bunch of wizards on a tile map. Casting spells to defeat each other.
I added Zerg. You're right about its similarity to Ultima.
DeleteAll THREE of my sources list Lords of Chaos as an RPG, so I need to check it out.
Lords of Chaos was one of my favourite ever games for a long time so I feel qualified to add my two cents here. I would call it a strategy game too, but it certainly has elements of rpg, like an inventory and being able to control your character. There is character development but only at the end of levels and there is only 3/6 of them (depending on if you can get your hands on the rather rare expansion (I have a copy of it for the amiga I think)). It's in a similar vein to laser squad if you ever played that, it excels in multiplayer hotseat mode. Good memories of burning down pretty much the entire first map in revenge for the mischevious elephants and the fear of starting a turn to find one psychopathic dwarf had slaughtered several demons and was still out there -somewhere-. The independant creatures were actually normally more dangerous than the enemy wizard. There is a quick where on some platforms you could not move your wizard during the first turn (mostly just confusing if you are not used to it and load it up on the emulator and wonder why you can't move). There are no proper npcs and I think the story for the levels is only a paragraph or two in the manual, I'd still say if you can play pirates you can play this however ;)
DeleteHey Chet - with regards to the Japanese only games, and in particular the PC-98 ones, are you aware of AGTH and ITH? These programmes (anime game text hooker and interactive text hooker) were designed to automatically machine translate foreign games, especially Japanese ones. AGTH, for instance, works well with the PC-98 emulator Anex86, allowing you to very easily machine translate the text in PC-98 games. (Well, I say very easily - some game refuse to be hooked, and some need special hook codes, though there are websites out there that have compiled lists of these h codes for various games).
ReplyDeleteThe general way these programmes work is to run in the background as you play the game, automatically pick up any text that's shown on screen, and output the text to the clipboard. You can then either manually paste it into something like Google Translate, or use another programme like Atlas or Translation Aggregator which will automatically take any text from the clipboard and machine translate it into English. The net result is that as you play on the PC-98 emulator, all the text of the game is automatically machine translated to English and thrown up in a seperate window for you.
It's a bit of a hassle to set up for the first time, so I understand if you'd still rather give these games a miss, but just making you aware the possiblity is out there. I'm fairly sure the same programmes can be used for other languages than Japanese, so you could also use it to speed up translation of French, Spanish, German, etc. games.
AGTH site: https://sites.google.com/site/agthook/
ITH site: https://code.google.com/p/interactive-text-hooker/
Guide to using ITH with Atlas/Translation Aggregator (mostly applies for AGTH as well): http://amaenboda.wordpress.com/tag/how-to-use-translation-aggregator/
WARNING, some of those sites could well be NSFW as the main focus is on using them to translate Adult games, but the same principles apply for RPGs and for the PC-98 emulator.
These translator barely conveys the actual meaning of the text; especially when some cultural-specific jargon/slang comes up.
Deletee.g.
Middle Schoolgirl 1: Eeeeyaa~~~! This what? Slimy... cold...
Alien: Wahahahaha~~~~! Very like screams girl ne! Tentacle like?
Middle Schoolgirl 2: Unhand that beautiful girl's ass, you nefarious outworlder with squiggly and prehensile genitalia!
Thanks. I'll keep them in mind for any Asian games that I REALLY want to check out, but I'm afraid I'm not going to add hundreds of more games to my list just because this is available, especially when (as Kenny points out), the translations aren't very good. Literal translations hardly ever are.
DeleteThe translation seems to convey the meaning of the text well enough IMO. Perhaps the dialogue is not as idiomatic as it might be, though.
DeleteHey Addict, regarding Amiga CPRGs, you might like this list:
ReplyDeletehttp://eager.back2roots.org/RPG.html
Actually, I checked the list and you not only have most of the games on the list, but the ones you don't have are mostly hybrids with questionable RPG credits. Maybe only add
Delete- Warriors of Releyne
- Legends (which might already be one of the "Legends of XYZ" titles on your list)
- Corporation (or is it an adventure?)
- Darkmere (maybe the biggest omission)
Also, you have the game Kargon on your list, but apparently it's a Doom clone that looks like Dungeon Master.
Okay, I'll check out all but Darkmere.
DeleteHere an other resource of amiga games. The link is filtered of RPGs:
Deletehttp://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php?N_ref_genre_category=16
While I really liked the game, Darkmere is no RPG, but an action-adventure. Except for energy it has no stats whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteYou're right... I watched an Amiga Longplay video, and apparently isometric perspective plus medieval setting does not equal RPG. Corporation is also more a Doom style shooter, there's equipment but no stats as far as I could see. Legends is a Zelda-style RPG, if you want to call it RPG. Warriors of Releyne is really more of a strategy game.
DeleteActually.... maybe it's a more fruitful effort to reduce the number of games on the list than to expand it....
Speaking if Finnish RPG's there is a shareware Amiga game called "evil" which might or might not be cRPG by your standards.
ReplyDeleteEssentially game is a "laser squad" with wizards, shodans (6-handed monsters from mortal combat), beholders, poltergeists and other creatures peppered with an exhausting amount of quirky Finnish army humour.
It even has a back story (well sort of), magical weapons, magic spells, inventory, stats.
Single player id possible but computer plays very badly so best with humans.
I used to play it a lot when I was a kid (-94 or so).
http://aminet.net/package/game/think/Evil125 found on a first google hit.
DeleteThat means I'm off to memorylane. :-)
Also, please add Chronicles of Mystara.
ReplyDeletehttp://store.steampowered.com/app/229480/
Once again, fulfills all of Chet's requirements. XD
Is it a straight port of the arcade games?
DeleteUnfortunately, games that were designed for consoles, only available for Windows because they're bundled with console emulators, don't qualify.
DeleteAww, come on! It's on Steam! A direct Arcade-To-PC conversion! Absolutely no emulators included!
DeleteC'mon, Kenny, now you're stretching it. If CoM were an RPG, then Call of Duty would fit as well.
DeleteSure, you could shoehorn it in the (simplified) rules in the sidebar.
But read this post - it just doesn't fit:
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.co.at/2010/03/what-is-crpg.html
Well, dahauns, I am pretty sure you've either forgotten how the game works or have never played it yourself and just basing what you know about the game through some trailer or a very short Let's Play session. CoM offers everything what Chet listed in that blog post as well. Side quests, level progression through experience, loot, stores, potions, spell scrolls, weapons and more.
DeleteBasically, I take offence that it can even be categorised with Rainbow-Nukem: Battlefield of Duty. Other than being linear, the only fault it may have as an RPG is that CoM is an action-RPG that relies too much on the action part.
Well, it does appear that I misunderstood what the game was. All right, I'll add it to the list for 1993. If it was based on an arcade game, it can't possibly take that long to play.
DeleteYeah. Just a couple of hours, really. XD
Delete"The Amiga remained a popular development platform in Europe all the way into the late 1990s, long after most U.S. developers had stopped writing for it. Does anyone know why?"
ReplyDeleteI may write a long answer for this later, but as a little shorter answer I say there are a multitude of factors on this.
1) I believe U.S. Developers made more non-standard coding that resulted games to not work with Amigas with hardware expansions.
I once had more than 30 original Amiga games that worked with the most common Amiga 500 model, but most of them stopped when I changed kickstart ROM and also when I moved on to bigger models such as Amiga 4000.
Years later, which was too late to rescue fading Amiga game market and to satisfy hardware power hungry users who mostely migrated to PC or Apple, degrader utilities and WHDLoad were made and released to either degrade or upgrade the games to work on all models and hardware expansions. With WHDLoad normal trackdisk coded games can be installed to hard disk, CF-card or SSD and some times WHDLoad patch for some game corrects bugs or add little features even to the oldest Amiga games. Usually features are very minor like "Press ESC to shutdown the game".
There are still active hardware developers for classic Amiga's and next generation Amiga's in Europe. For example:
In England
http://www.a-eon.com/
In Italy
http://acube-systems.biz/
In Germany
http://www.jschoenfeld.com/home/indexe.htm
In Poland
http://www.elbox.com/
2) Most Amiga users say piracy killed Amiga game development. I assume piracy was more common in Europe for U.S. titles because they were the most expensive to export there. This could one reason why U.S. Amiga game development faded faster.
3) Commodore bankcrupt and later Amiga hardware production migrating to Europe may have scared the game developers and/or their investors and made U.S. Developers to seek other platforms sooner than Europe developers.
I think it may have been largely an issue of which platforms were more popular. In the US I think many gamers/developers started on Pets and moved onto PCs, whereas here they might have started on Spectrums and moved on to Amigas.
DeleteThe smart money in Europe moved out of the Amigas earlier, I suspect, but small development teams probably kept it going. When DOOM and Windows 95 hit, though, the writing on the wall was clear enough for almost everyone.
I recommend trying some Amiga RPG that has not been released for PC and maybe something that is said to be better in Amiga:
ReplyDeleteListings and search engines of Amiga games: hol.abime.net/ or www.lemonamiga.com
Listing of Amiga RPG: http://eager.back2roots.org/RPG.html
The most common emulator: http://www.winuae.net/ (Made in Finland BTW.)
Installers (eg. patches) for 2287 Amiga games http://whdload.de/
Preinstalled Amiga games: kg.whdownload.com/kgwhd/
Second try. My previous post seems to have vanished into the ether, so I had to look these up again...
ReplyDeleteHere's a few more for the list:
- Citadel of Vras; Amiga; 1989; by Megadisc/Sarva Engelhardt
Australian 2D dungeon crawler. Probably freeware, there's a Jedi Knight character class..
- Legend of Lothian; Amiga; 1991 (or 1993?); by David W. Meny
Never heard of this before, but seems like an another Ultima-type freeware game.
- Projekt Ikarus; Atari ST/Amiga; 1991; by Data Becker/Hannes and Herwig Seifert
Scifi 2D dungeon crawler. Dunno if there's an English version.
- Witchcraft; Amiga; 1987; by Snake Design
Well... This is listed as a commercial RPG in a few places, but it doesn't seem to be available anywhere. I can't even find any screenshots.
- Legion; Amiga; 1996; by Gobi/Marcin Puchta (Poland)
Most sites list this as an adventure instead of an RPG, but it does fit at least two of your criteria: there's character leveling and inventories.
Very glad to see "Alternate Reality: The Dungeon".
ReplyDeleteI've never played any Amiga games since I was a faithful IBM user since day 1.
Out of all the envy-inducing games, the Alternate Reality games invoke the most teeth-gnashing jealousy.
I doubt you´ll see the end of this. EVER.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, good luck to you.
Commodore USA was run by a corrupt CEO who did a lot of damage to the system while lining his own pockets, it's a long and kinda tragic story but it comes down to just one CEO (who ended up leaving Commodore high and dry well he ran away with bags of cash. Commodore Europe was run by different management and had it's own atonomy, and thus survived for almost another decade. But without the parent company, and North American market, innovation was slow and lacked direction. They could not decide between a console, or high end graphics machines, or the home computer market. For example, the Amiga CD32 console was meant to compete with the 16 bit Genesis and, although way ahead of it's time it never caught on.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes time to play an Amiga title I strongly recommend the "Amiga Forever" emulator, it's a simple setup (just a few clicks to get it up and running) and you have access to just about every Amiga system ever made, it also gets around those disk issues by using save states.. As a long time fanboy, when I first booted up that old workbench screen I almost wet my pants and cried tears of Joy. Yes Amiga users are a fanatical bunch, another reason it held on for so long despite it's problems.
I assume you're talking about Irving Gould. Based on your comment, I just did some reading on the tumultuous history of the company. Unless you have a more in-depth source, it sounds like "corrupt" is a little strong. In fact, Gould seems to have provided the venture capital money that got Commodore started in the first place.
DeleteI don't see any distinctions made between "Commodore USA' and "Commodore Europe"; the company was just "Commodore International." It appears to be Gould himself who made the decision to focus on Europe for its sales.
Whatever the case, the tips you provided seem to have led to the answer to my original question. The Amiga remained popular in Europe because Commodore itself prioritized selling it there right up to the company's demise in 1994. Whereas in the U.S., they largely ceded the market to competitors, so the Amiga stopped being the most popular platform a little sooner.
I should have done a bit more research before opening my mouth. My interpritation of the events that cause the downfall was from 20 years ago, in 1/2 remembered angry computer nerd conversations at the local Amiga dealer (It was almost a clubhouse atmosphere in that store, good times). Gould was non-too-popular with Amiga users, perhaps "corrupt" is a bit strong, but his decisions often had users and shareholders alike scratching their heads at times, to us it seemed like he was intentionally sinking the ship. The head-hunting, lawsuits and countersuits between Commodore and Atari (remindes me of Apple-Samsung) that took place after Tramiel quit certainly didn't help Commodore's situation, and future plans for the Amiga. Interestingly enough you can get a new Amiga PC now, or Amiga OS 4.0 to run on a PC if you so choose, The name Amiga lives on in various products, but aside from the name it has little to no continuity with the Amiga from the 80's-90's. If a true Amiga successor was to ever be created I would be one of the first to get one.
DeleteYour next game: Legend of Faerghail is title I played way back on the Amiga. The music and effects are much better, graphics about the same.
MSDOS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU4md7J9coQ
Amiga: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE7Hi9UKc6w
A little like bards tale, I never finished it. I still remember some of the sounds effects. When characters missed in combat, one would occasionally say "SH**" As a young man I found that amusing.
Cheers
I have to say I think this change in direction is a positive thing, too. While it can be interesting to read your take on games I've played, I really enjoy finding out about minor games I've never heard of, and games I'm not likely ever to play. I look forward to hearing more about old games for non-DOS systems.
ReplyDelete"Don't worry, Mr B.! I have a cunning plan to solve the problem."
ReplyDelete"Yes, let us not forget that you solved the problem of your mother's low ceiling by cutting off her head."
Okay... just thought I'd help to do some house-cleaning for the list.
ReplyDeleteChet, I know you're not gonna delete a game unless you have seen for yourself how way off it is from being an RPG. So, just some heads up on the following game:
1) Nobunaga's Ambition - You've played Romance of the 3 Kingdoms. Very similar but set in Japan and not in China.
2) Strider - Pure action platformer. No RPG aspects whatsoever.
3) Rambo (for MSX) - Essentially the same game as Super Rambo Special with older graphics. Have some RPG elements.
4) Saint Seiya: Ogon Densetsu - Actually... I don't know if there is a PC port for this game. If there is, I'm surprised Hiryu No Ken isn't ported as well.
5) Twilight Zone Series (for MSX) - It's... uh... I'm not sure if it's even considered legal to own this game anymore. Japan only implemented their child-porn laws a decade or so ago. I'd be surprised if you could still get it, let alone publicizing it on a blog and not get into trouble.
6) Final Lap Twin - It's more of a racing game... with some rather strange RPG like elements shoehorned into it.
7) Downtown Special: Kunio-kun no Jidaigeki da yo - Is actually "River City Ransom"! XD
8) Tenchi o Kurau II: Shokatsu Koumei Den - Its predecessor is, no doubt, an RPG but this is a side-scrolling beat-em-up.
As a fan of the Super Robot Wars series, I can verify that none of the games are RPGs beyond the fact that characters gain levels.
ReplyDeleteBy the standards of WRPGs, I guess they're not.
DeleteBy the standards of JRPGs? They're classified under Strategy/Tactical RPG in the same way as Fire Emblem, Shining Force, Tactics Ogre etc... it's not really debatable in that regards
(The actual Japanese people classify what Westerners call "Strategic RPGs" as "Simulation" games, which is kind of interesting)
Though really, one can argue that a bunch of "RPGs", especially the very early ones, are essentially scaled down wargames (such as the early Wizardries)