Hello, readers! Welcome to my blog, in which I play all computer role-playing games in roughly chronological order from the beginning of time to the modern age. I find that many people who stumble upon my blog start with this entry, since it was the first, so I wanted to give you a bit of an introduction before letting you go ahead and read it, as it was originally published, after the line break below.
When I first posted this, I was new to blogging and new to this particular project, and so it took a while for me to find my voice, figure out what I wanted to do, and mature as both a player and blogger. In my opinion, the blog doesn't get good for a while. My early entries are too short, they're poorly-formatted, and in all-too-many cases, I don't know what I'm talking about. As I started, I hadn't discovered excellent online sources like MobyGames yet, I didn't spend enough time talking about developers and companies, I didn't cover the games in enough detail, and I didn't have the same large base of excellent commenters who were helping me find my voice. My point is, if you like the concept of this blog, stick with it and I promise that it improves.
Although I intended at the outset to play only DOS or PC games in chronological order, by the end of 2013, I had eliminated this rule, and I started to go back and pick up the games I'd skipped during the first few years. I eventually got through them, but by then new games had surfaced, so I've had to take a third pass through those years. On my "upcoming" list, you'll always see a combination of the maximum year I've reached and old games that only recently came to light. It might be a good idea to read my
FAQ before you start reading my entries, if you want to better understand my approach and process.
As you read the postings on my blog, do be sure to read the comments as well. I get fantastic commenters on this blog. Hardly anyone posts anything trite or juvenile or insulting. We have great discussions that elaborate on the postings, and many of my commenters offer context, clarification, and corroboration of the things I post. Also feel free to comment yourself on old postings. I get a notification on every comment, and I'll usually respond.
Thanks for reading this update. Below you'll find the posting I originally offered in February 2010.
Best,
Chester ("Chet") Bolingbroke
Last updated 13 June 2021
************************************
I don't have time for this.
Honestly, in real life, I'm a busy guy. The average visitor to this blog will assume I'm a fat, 20s-something guy who lives with his mom in a dark basement apartment and, if he has a job at all, probably works at a 7-11, making just enough money to buy his geeky computer stuff.
It's an unfortunate stereotype that victimizes plenty of young men who are no more absurd in their interests than lummoxes who spend all weekend watching football or bobos who outfit themselves with $1,500 in "sportswear" to "get in touch with nature." In my case, in any event, it simply isn't true. I'm in my late 30s. I'm at the top of my field. I make a good living, work about 14 hours per day at several different jobs, and live in a nice house with my wife and pets. I exercise 8-10 hours per week and, for both work and fun, I travel a lot.
But I have, always have had, always will have a weakness for computer RPGs. I don't know why. This weakness does not extend to regular RPGs nor to other computer games (I've played my share of first-person shooters and whatnot, and they are occasionally enjoyable, but they don't occupy my attention the way CRPGs do). There is something about the immersiveness of the CRPG story coupled with the active participation and imagination it requires. And I must emphasize "imagination." When I play a CRPG, I visualize the setting. I narrate the scene to myself. I create conversations among my characters. I write parts of the story that don't exist, send my characters off on quests that the game doesn't provide, and otherwise act like a five-year-old playing with his "Star Wars" figures.
When I said, "weakness," though, I meant it literally, with all of the baggage that comes with it. Ever since I was a kid and got hold of my first RPG--
Questron for my
Commodore 64--I have indulged my addiction to my detriment. This was quite clear in my junior high and high school report cards, not to mention my social life. I knew every corridor of
VARN but was weak in world geography; while other people my age took philosophy courses, I was learning how
Ultima IV's Three Principles of Virtue combined to form the
Eight Virtues, and while my schoolmates struggled through teen love, first dates, and losing their virginity, I was "dating" the clerk of
New Phlan.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK77GGlsmyzq6fmpnxMth4AZ_tDEJIt4p8Ytw3M2VM38WwGqMdOBMwS8sx_3T3VN4Q1ObIBHmA8m65Sb_qW19opDq58Dtr7ROdiWJvlaYNpVZjGbfRDalcQhShYtgavLSyY-67KscJ0y4/s280/UIV.png) |
The RPG that hooked me on the genre. |
Probably all that saved me was how much computers sucked back then. The C64 disk drive alone, which always seemed to be failing, cost more than I made in a month. One day, my computer died, and I simply couldn't afford a new one. Instead, I got some hobbies, got a girlfriend, and went to college, got my first job, and forgot about CRPGs for a while.
Then, in the late 1990s, I began to investigate how the field had progressed since I stopped playing a decade earlier. Oh, wow. Why hadn't anyone told me? I updated myself on the
Might and Magic series and couldn't believe how good the
sixth installment was. Then I discovered
Baldur's Gate and its sequel--have two better CRPGs ever been developed? I spent hours exploring the dungeons and towns of
Morrowind and was blown away, like everyone else, by
Oblivion.
But with these new discoveries came the same old problems: tasks undone or done poorly, bleary-eyed confusion two out of three mornings a week at work, disapproving tuts from my wife. Fortunately, by the time I rediscovered CRPGs, I was far enough along in my career, with its attendant obligations, that a sense of professionalism keeps me from sliding completely into chaos and insolvency. At the same time, however, the truth is stark and undeniable: every hour I spend playing a CRPG is an hour that would have been better spent on any one of a hundred other tasks.
This came to a head in the fall of 2009. My wife went out of town for a three-day business meeting, and I had planned to use the time to finish editing a book that I'd promised to the publisher a couple of weeks prior. The first morning, I worked maybe an hour on it before deciding to take a break for a "little" bit of Oblivion. 72 hours later, when my wife returned, I had done essentially nothing else. I was disgusted with myself. I took the opportunity this feeling provided, grabbed a large trash bag, and before I could stop myself, I stuffed all of my games into it--including almost a dozen that were unopened inside their plastic wrappers. I promised myself I wouldn't waste any more time on such absurdities.
This lasted about three weeks, but like all addictions, it proved impossible to fully shake. So I announced to myself a new plan--the epic opposite of what, by throwing away all of my games, I had intended. Instead of dedicating myself to a life of CRPG abstinence, I would instead go the full distance. Assisted by DOSBox, abandonware web sites, and Wikipedia, I would play every CRPG that has ever existed for the PC. If my problem was that CRPGs were competing with my to do list, they would become part of my to do list. Stupid, I know, but that's why I'm here and that's why you're reading.
I hadn't intended to make a blog out of this, but it actually makes the project seem more legitimate somehow, more respectable, like the difference between being a movie watcher and a "film historian." Maybe people will read this and re-discover old gems from the past. And, frankly, I think it will be a lot of fun.
THE RULES
There must be rules. Otherwise we have chaos. These are my rules as I work my way through every PC CRPG ever published.
1. Wikipedia's list is my Bible. The titles on this list are heavily biased towards CRPGs commercially released through established publishers. I understand there are some really good freeware, browser-based, and otherwise noncommercial RPGs out there, but honestly this project is taking enough time as it is. I'm also going to work through the list based on initial publication date, even if the version I'm playing is a re-release or newer port. [Much later edit: This seemed like a good idea when I was just starting, but it soon turned out that Wikipedia's list was not remotely comprehensive. My list ended up being a combination of Wikipedia, MobyGames, and a few other sources.]
2. Only PC RPGs. To appear on my play list, the game has to have been released for DOS or the PC, if only as a port. I'm not going to frig around with C64 or Apple II emulators. [Much later edit: This is no longer one of my rules. It was a stupid rule to begin with.]
3. No hints, no cheats, no walkthroughs. We didn't have these in the 1980s, and I don't need them now. If I make mistakes, or it takes me a little longer, well that's part of the fun of the game. I will only use the Internet to solve technical problems. I will allow myself one exception: if anyone reading this blog wants to post non-spoiler gameplay hints to problems I've posed, I'll use them.
4.
I don't have to win every game, but I must at least make a sincere effort to play it. I'm writing this initial posting after already starting on my project. The second game I played (as you'll soon read) was an early version of
Rogue. It took me four months of playing to beat it. It became almost an obsession. Four months is an acceptable time to beat some games if the world is big enough (think
Morrowind), but the reason it took so long to beat
Rogue is that the game is punishingly difficult. After even a few days of playing it, there was really nothing new left to discover. I won't do this for every game. I will devote a minimum of six hours to each one, but if after that I'm having no fun or the play is repetitive, it's on to the next game.
4. If the game is still available commercially, I will buy it. I believe in rewarding game developers and publishers for their hard work. But if it is not available commercially, I will have no compunction downloading it from abandonware sites or otherwise obtaining it illegally.
With these rules in mind, I embark on adventure!
dammit man!
ReplyDeletei'll keep an eye on this one.
hoho, want to see you performing in Chaos Strikes Back ;)
best of luck!
Thanks! CSB is like #80 on my list, but I'll get there eventually.
ReplyDeleteWhy only PC rpgs? You say you don't want to "frig" around with emulators but dosbox is an emulator too. Plus, you're missing out on playing the best version in some cases. The PC sucked compared to some other computers until VGA came out and it still sucked in the sound department for a while after that.
ReplyDeleteG., you make a good point and I don't have a great answer. Best I can do: I was already familiar with DOSBox and thus didn't have to learn how to use other emulators; most popular CRPGs got a DOS port and eventually, of course, it became the dominant platform; and there seem to be more abandonware sites with DOS versions of games. I nearly broke when I saw there was no DOS port of "Questron," though. Maybe after "The Bard's Tale," I'll reconsider.
ReplyDeleteHi there.
ReplyDeleteThis is really thorough and entertaining. Good work, and I'll continue to follow your progress.
Quite coincidentally (honest!) I seem to have had a very similar idea, although my experience of RPGs is a lot more limited. Why not come and take a look at http://anothermrlizard.wordpress.com?
Hey! I've read through your blog. Loved it! I'm fascinated by old school games; primarily adventure games and RPGs, so this is great stuff.
ReplyDeleteKeep it coming! :-)
I've only played a handful of CRPGs, and I think the only one I solved was "Pool of Radiance".
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part of CRPGs is actually rolling and creating characters, to be honest.
Have you gotten to the Wizardry series yet? Talk about some tough game play.
ReplyDeleteThe only CRPG I ever played was 'The Magic Candle II' which I found in the bargain bin of an outlet store in the mid 1990s. I never finished it, but I enjoyed it for a while, I'll look forward to when you get around to it.
ReplyDeleteWelcome, Pai. You should really try some of the other great CRPGs I'm reviewing! The original "Magic Candle" is 34th on my current list, and "The Magic Candle II" is 59th. I'll get to them, but don't hold your breath!
ReplyDelete"Note: I realize a downloaded Excel spreadsheet is not the best way to do this"
ReplyDeleteCorrect, at least online Excel spreadsheet is better than downloaded ;)
Ever wondered how far are you gonna get with the list? I used to create my own list of cRPGs which I was going to review for my website, but I gave it up. For me it's impossible to end them all - even just playing each cRPG for 1-2 days is a big challenge.
I don't know, folmi. I'm having fun and not looking to stop, but I agree there are an awful lot of them. In all probability, they're releasing them faster than I'm playing them. But I'm determined to get through the 90s, anyway, because I really want to play the Gold Box games, Might & Magic, and Baldur's Gate again.
ReplyDeleteHi there
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoing your entertaining and thorough posts!
Don't worry about the number of games, take your time, this should be a pleasure, not a work (btw, you are playing them much faster than they're released at the moment, so... you are closing the gap :-) ).
Just a note on rule 1: Wikipedia list is quite incomplete, you missed a few games already (The Wizard's Castle, StarQuest: Rescue at Rigel, Oubliette, Moebius: The Orb of Celestial Harmony), nothing major at the moment but there are interesting games that are not in there (Amberstar, the Ishar Trilogy, Legend, and several others). I suggest you use MobyGames list instead (filtering by genre and platform). Sure, you will get many more games and some of them will be a blend of different genres rather than pure RPGs (most rpgs are actually a mix nowadays) but you can always look up their description on wikipedia or other sites to decide if they are worth playing.
Keep up the good work!
P.S. There is no DOS version of Phantasie II, which I see is in your list, so you can strike it out
Hi, Arcanum. I was prepared to argue with you about Phantasie II, but I did some research, and damned if you aren't right. WTF? They made DOS versions of I and III, but not II? Sounds like the gameplay was pretty identical to I anyway.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm aghast at your other revelation, that Wikipedia's list is so lacking in CRPG content. I'm going to check out MobyGames and decide what to do.
Yep for Phantasie II. You will not lose much, the three games were only loosely related story-wise (but for the nemesis).
ReplyDeleteWikipedia's list is really a mess, it's very difficult to extract information for a specific platform, many games are missing (but major ones are in there) and there are quite a bit of errors. However, it's a community effort, it will definitely improve in the future.
If you'are interested, I'm currently compiling a list of CRPGs using Wikipedia, MobyGames, and Matt Barton's History of Computer Role-Playing Games. It will take a few more days before it is complete but, if you have an e-mail address you don't care to publish here, I will be more than happy to send it to you.
Arcanum, I started making my own new list after getting your last posting, but I'd love to see yours when it's done. If you want to send it to crpgaddict@gmail.com, that would be great. Even though it's going to cause me a little bit of extra effort, I appreciate you calling Wikipedia's deficiencies to my attention.
ReplyDeleteDragon Wars! I'm playing through that in DOSBox now. It's by the folks who made Bard's Tale and Wasteland.
ReplyDeleteAmazing blog. Just started reading today after being tipped-off by my brother. I can't believe how closely your situation matches mine, if I were to start a blog, it would start off almost identically. Unfortunately, my situation is worse because I am addicted to more genres than just RPGs. Anyway, you will be an inspiration to me to play all of these games which I have just dreamed about. When do you find the time?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Todd. I'm glad you like the blog. Unfortunately, I DON'T find the time very often, as evidenced by the lack of any postings in the last week.
ReplyDelete...It suddenly occurs to me that, despite how much I enjoy this blog, I really have not played that many CRPGs. The only two I can currently think of that I've put a lot of time into are Oblivion and Fallout 3 (if Fallout 3 even counts). I briefly played Morrowind, but only long enough to steal a two-handed steel sword, run out into the wilderness, realize the combat system completely sucks, and then get killed by the first monster I encounter. The only CRPG I've really put a LOT of time into is Oblivion (mostly thanks to this huge 'Let's Play' I've been doing), and that's really dissimilar to most other CRPGs. If I were to play most of the CRPGs you're playing, I'd probably find myself frustrated with the dated gameplay, incredibly generic stories, unforgiving difficulty, and lots of other things.
ReplyDeleteI guess what I'm trying to say is, thanks for playing all these CRPGs so I don't have to! You've managed to make this blog interesting even to people that aren't even all that interested in the genre. Great job.
Thanks, Zink! I really think you ought to give Morrowind another try, though; I don't see how you can enjoy Oblivion and not its predecessor. And get your hands on Baldur's Gate I and II! If you don't like them, you just don't like CRPGs.
ReplyDeleteI think the main reason I had trouble getting started in Morrowind is because 1. The combat is awful and 2. The menus are pretty much the exact opposite of user friendly. A lot of other things baffled me as well. Do they seriously have to include a button to "raise arms" before you are able to cast a spell? Why not just a button that casts a spell?
ReplyDeleteOne thing I DID like about it, however, is how my Player Character ran like he had just gotten kicked in the balls REALLY HARD. That game probably has the most hilarious run animation in history.
I never really gave Morrowind a CHANCE, in all honesty. If I were to actually spend some time playing it, I'd admittedly probably end up enjoying it quite a bit.
I've never played any of the main Baldur's Gate games, but I did play that action RPG "Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance". From what I remember, the only particularly notable thing about it was that it had a surprising amount of gore for a "T" rated game.
IN OTHER NEWS, IT TURNS OUT THAT I AM ENTIRELY INCAPABLE OF WRITING BRIEF COMMENTS
The "Dark Alliance" games are utterly different from the original "Baldur's Gate" and "Baldur's Gate II." They have no similarities except the name. BG1 and BG2 are true CRPGs; you owe it to yourself to try them.
ReplyDeleteI found you blog last night and I just wanted to say that this is a wonderful idea and wish you well on your mission. I am looking forward to being a frequent reader and playing some of these game vicariously though you.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Patrick. I hope you enjoy the blog!
ReplyDeletei am 30, live in my own house and work as a lumberjack (workout part), being single again though, and i still turn on my old C64, Amiga, PC and Apple IIe and trudge some retro RPG's.
ReplyDeleteI just found your blog and although I've only read the first 4 posts, I love it already. I can't wait for you to get to Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (among many others)!
ReplyDeleteI am curious, do MMORPGs count as cRPGs by how you define them here? I'm guessing not but did not see it mentioned in your rules.
I'm glad you like it, Blumpy. As of the date of this posting, Buck Rogers is 64 games away.
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm not counting MMORPGs. Mostly because I'm afraid of them, but also because there's simply no way to play them historically. Once the servers go offline, the game is lost. Right? Or is there still some dedicated fanbase playing Legends of Future Past?
Well, you actually have one on your list right there: Gemstone II, on the GEnie service. It's only around now (but still around!) as Gemstone IV.
ReplyDeleteReally? That was a mistake, then. I thought I had weeded them off the list.
ReplyDeleteI love your blog. I'm the type of person who plays very few games an extreme amount of time. I've played DOTA for the past 4 years or so, I had an equally long stint with Counterstrike. I've played the same MUD for the past 15 years, and I've played much of the Civilization series over the past 15 years. In looking for my next game, I got all nostalgic and ended up downloading Bard's Tale 1. Its the first CRPG I ever remember playing and I have fond memories of getting owned by BT1, BT3, all the gold box games, wasteland, and MM1 before finally beating my first CRPG in MM2. I've always felt MM2 was the best CRPG of all time, its just such a huge world, everything paled in comparison to it.
ReplyDeleteSo anyways this nostalgia led me to you. We're kinda similar. I'm 31, I spent all of college gaming and managed to graduate in 4 years despite only attending each class 4 times per semester in my last semester (each year I was able to lower my attendance!). I too do most of my gaming in the 4 hours between my wife's bed time and mine. And I too manage to love all things dorky without being a loser in my mom's basement.
So! I've decided to follow along with you and play these games. I did cheat and use some maps and what not for bard's tale, mainly because I had no graph paper and never thought to use excel....I also don't have excel but I'll fix that. Onwards!
Thanks for commenting, Jonesy. Always nice to get a new reader!
ReplyDeleteGreat idea, I think it would be interesting people who just starting to explore other worlds, like me.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog. Will you play Crystals of Arborea (aka Ishar 0) and the Ishar trilogy? Or: Where can I find your list?
ReplyDeleteAnd three years later:
Deletehttp://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2014/10/game-166-crystals-of-arborea-1990.html
:D
It makes me sad to think someone waited more than 3 years for what ended up being a critical, one-shot posting.
DeleteIt looks to me like Anonymous is just happy that you played a game he/she was looking forward to 3 years ago. I dunno, maybe I am misreading it.
DeleteThanks, Anon. I just posted my master list to the right sidebar. Looks like Crystals of Arborea is coming up in about 55 games, so...maybe eight months? The Ishar games are on my list, but far in the future.
ReplyDeleteHi, i just signed in to read your epic efforts.
ReplyDeleteThis quest of yours is an excellent idea!
I am also a gamer at heart but with far less time than i would like.
Someday i want to visit all these old gems i have skipped.
Maybe by reading your endeavors i'll find the determination i need to play some good games with horrible interface (no map system/unfriendly control beeing the most annoying)
One of them is Bard's Tale which you've already played. I'll see if you convince me in trying this out.
Glad you like it, Stakon. But don't think of it as a "horrible interface"; think of it as a pure, unadulterated interface.
ReplyDeleteI am curious if I can find a crpg list mentioning which version was the superior one (Atari ST, Amiga or DOS). Also, I am interested in a list of CRPG that appeared only on one format (ie Sundog for Atari ST, etc).
ReplyDeleteMobyGames tells you what platforms different games appeared on, but I don't think there's any list that tells you want version is "superior"; you probably have to piece that together through careful research.
ReplyDeleteI was reading your Rules, and I think you forget that there WERE hints available in the 1980s, tho you usually had to call a pay-per-hint line (probably a real revenue generator scheme for Infocom games).
ReplyDeleteHope you don't go all "MK-Ultra" after you are done playing all these games. You know, like that 1980s role-playing made-for-tv movie where they play in a cave and then one of the guys goes skitzo and jumps off a building? Wot was the name of that movie?
Retards,
Atari XT Hacker 7C0
Mazes and Monsters, starring Tom Hanks.
ReplyDeleteMr. Addict not only acknowledges that these limited sources for hints did exist back then, he even mentions having used them in at least one occasion that comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteBut this is neatly emulated in the project by the fact that occasionaly he does request vague hints from the readers' comments, so it's still a close enough simulation of the original playing conditions. :)
I was reading the D&D Manual and found something that might help keep your focus on Page 52:
ReplyDelete"It's important to remember that the player and the character are two different persons. The more the two are kept apart, the better your games can be."
"When the players remember the difference between themselves and their characters, everyone can have more fun in Role Playing."
NOTE: This advice is for actual game playing, but I believe if that guy in "Mazes and Monsters" had read it, well, I guess he wouldn't have gone crazy and jumped off that building.
Has anyone tried calling any of those hint lines to see if someone answers? That would be a fun project...or see who has similar phone numbers and then call those guys and ask for hints like you dialed it wrong.. Fun stuff!
Yeah, I shouldn't have said there were no hints available. But they were pretty hard to get. Now, you can spoil the whole game with 5 minutes on the Internet.
ReplyDeleteStill, Atari's idea sounds fun. Next time I need a hint, I'll try calling one of the old lines and see who answers.
I found your blog from a link on RPGWATCH. Great Idea!! I am also a HUGE fan of CRPG's and actually have a collection of all the game boxes of all RPG/Adventure games I've ever played, want to play or solved since the VIC-20. I'm obsessed with these games too! I try to go back and solve older games in between the current ones and have very similar internal rules. I will be following your blog and will start it from the beginning. I intend to comment on the games I've played. My email address is even CRPGER (have had it for over 20 years) and everyone looks at me funny whenever I give it out. LOL Keep it going!
ReplyDeletehey man, love the blog, keep up the awesome work :D, if I may I would like to mention a recent ish game that has been overlooked, namely Mount and Blade Warband, it offers a lot of the standard CRPG features in a way that is very unique, in my limited experience at least, would be great to one day see what you make of it" :)
ReplyDeleteI heard good things about Warband, but a CRPG similarities? Care to elaborate?
ReplyDeleteTremendous stuff. You have another new reader. Keep up the great work.
ReplyDelete|{P}|sez:
ReplyDeleteI love RPGs because they always get me thinking. Not about what's actually in the RPG, but about other things. I look through all the tables and rules, I glance at campaigns, think about what it would be like to play an RPG (does the DM make a "girlie voice" when an NPC is female?), and then I really get to thinking: Like, "What IS a game?", "What makes a game FUN?", "What is the use of playing games?" This is why I like RPGs...
I'm glad to have all you new readers on the blog!
ReplyDelete{P}, you certainly have a Jack Handyish quality about you.
I love your blog. I share your devotion for old-time CRPG, although I have not undertaken the same huge project as yourself. I play literally all RPG:s I can come over. When the there is draught in the marked I go back to dosbox and play Ultima Underworld, Lands of Lore III or whatever.
ReplyDeleteKeep up your devotion!
Regards,
Richard, Stockholm, Sweden
How exactly do you have time to do all of these things?
ReplyDeleteLook at my posting regularity lately, and you'll note that I don't really have time. But in a normal month, the answer is: have no kids, don't need much sleep, don't really have many other hobbies.
ReplyDeleteThis seemed like a good place to put a first comment. I love your blog... I'm quite a bit like you (based on this description)... only a little older :) Been playing CRPGs since the very early 80's... and still own every one I ever bought (which is just about every one ever made). I really enjoy your written experiences of all the games I've grown up with. I'm lucky enough to have a wife who understands my hobby and lets me keep my den filled with all my hundreds of game boxes... and my two boys are following in their dad's footsteps.
ReplyDeleteAnyway... great reading... I really enjoy checking in on what your playing... and you've inspired me to dust off a few games that I haven't touched in years.
cheers!
Glad you like it, Bandax. Keep commenting!
ReplyDeleteCount me as another new reader starting from the beginning!
ReplyDeleteI love to hear peoples opinions and thoughts on games as they play through them, and equally love reading about classic 'not quite forgotten' games, so this blog is a wonderful thing. :D
I always think about playing old CRPGs like these, but I'm too used to modern conveniences like automapping and 'set upgrade paths' as opposed to 'put your skill points in anything'... so they kind of intimidate me to play them myself!
Older CRPGs do often have a steep learning curve. Even I, with all my experience, run into that. But if you push past it, you generally find a rewarding experience by the end.
ReplyDelete"After even a few days of playing [Rogue], there was really nothing new left to discover."
ReplyDeleteI played Rogue for ages and won twice, and I never figured out how to use the scroll of Scare Monster, supposedly the best scroll in the game.
I used to hear laughter in the distance when I read it, and I assumed that it must be a really scary laugh that intimidated monsters from being aggressive for a while...
Probably I discovered most things. But there is something else I have read since about ur-vile behaviour that I didn't know either.
[My favourite current roguelike is Dungeon Crawl, by the way. You don't have to learn a load of idiosyncrasies like NetHack, and it's tough but reasonably fair. Once you've gained a few levels, you have resources to deal with most situations.]
respect to you, adding to reader list
ReplyDeleteSo, you're on indefinite hiatus and all, but I thought I'd drop by and comment on a pair of game series that may have been added to your list erroneously in case you ever return.
ReplyDelete1) Romance of the Three Kingdoms is questionable. It's a great series set in the eponymous warring states period in the final years of the Han Dynasty, you control a single character whose stats increase and there are plenty of roleplaying options. The game ends when all of China is reunified, however you can be anything from a wandering mercenary to a general under another warlord to a warlord yourself, and neither one is particularly the "correct" ending. All the action is purely in terms of politics and military campaigns. You never once go dungeon crawling or fight small scale party-based battles (in the later games, at least, I assume the same is true of earlier installments). You do have a series of characteristics, like War, Politics, and Charisma, which can be trained up, as well as a list of tactics and ploys that you can learn. Whether or not that qualifies as a CRPG is an exercise for the reader, I guess, but they're definitely cool games.
2) Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim is an AMAZING game, but decisively NOT a CRPG. Instead of being a bold adventurer, you take the role of a fantasy king who assigns these quests. You have to build up your town and amass gold from tax collection, gold which can then be used to place bounties, hire new heroes, and build new buildings. The heroes act entirely of their own will, and will have different priorities based on their class. Rangers like to explore the wilderness, Warriors like to hunt monsters, Paladins will storm dungeons pro-bono because they're just that awesome, and so on and so forth. The heroes have all the statistics you'd expect a CRPG protagonist to have, but the actual protagonist of Majesty is the King, whose only relevant statistic is the gold in his treasury. It's a really awesome game and I definitely recommend you try it out just to see what it's like to play Ultima as Lord British (especially since you're not currently obligated to play CRPGs for the blog), but it's not a CRPG by ANY reasonable definition of the term.
I appreciate the warnings, Maldeus. I've added comments to my master list. Doubtless this is MobyGames being overly-inclusive again.
DeleteI agree with Maldeus, Magesty. It is howerever a great game. There is a sequel, which is technically superior, but tossed out the epic fantasy feel in favour of parody fantasy.
DeleteI whole heartily encourage you to play Majesty anyway, if you ever get to that year. Majesty is my "Pirates" if you will. I got so hooked on that game that I took screenshots of me winning every scenario without loosing a single hero, and that achievement took me over a year of off an on playing.
DeleteWhen I noticed a few days ago that Legend Of Grimrock was coming out I styarted to remember all teh good games on PC that I played when I was a kid. I'm 38 right now. And Decided to do something like you to play through some games from my childhood. Thank you because my GF thought i was crazy and now I can tell her I'm not the only one :-)
ReplyDeleteTrust me, you'll only get a "well he's crazy too" from your GF.
DeleteThere are some real treasures from back in the day. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I have.
DeleteJust read your article in the new issue of Game Informer and was inspired. I'm 2 years late, but joining the party now!
ReplyDeleteWelcome! At least you'll have a lot of material to read during my slow periods.
DeleteWay cool! Also saw your article in GI...Wonder though how you deal with compatibility issues? I couldn't play RAMA...action game rather than RPG...because it was too old. Guess you know your way around computers. Thrilled to c-ya doing something you like AND still work and exercise.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually a bit of a computer idiot. But DOSBox is a pretty cool emulator and there's lots of online support for it. (Even so, some readers had to help me out with LOADFIX and a couple other commands.)
DeleteI've been a bit of a lurker for some time now but I thought I'd chime in and say that I've really enjoyed your blog and your insight of these games.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to future posts!
Thanks, Daniel. I'm glad to have you as a reader!
DeleteThis makes excellent reading.
ReplyDeleteHave staked out some time over the next year to perfect some tactics for roguelikes (fortunately I married a gamer). Will be looking to some of your posts for guidance.
I hope my entries help. I only got introduced to roguelikes because of this blog, so I feel that I'm still a bit of a novice.
DeleteVery cool!
ReplyDeleteWow. I stumbled onto this blog, thru a recommendation of the game Phantasie on the AtariAge website. This is an amazing mission statement. & it is kind of how I feel about game collecting (which I do) If I am going to buy them, I might as well do my damnedest to play them thru. I'll shall keep tabs on this my friend.
ReplyDeleteDrifting through your game list, I've noticed a couple of games that are questionable in their CRPG credentials.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, Warcraft III, Battle for Middle-Earth I and II, Dominions III (and possibly its predecessors, which I have never heard of and did not see on your list), Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War and its sequel, and Majesty (which I've mentioned before) all have characters who level up in them, but you do not play as these characters, you play as their commanders. The core gameplay is looking down on your base and troops from a birds-eye view and sending them to go smash the other team's base. Whether or not that counts as a CRPG is entirely your call, but it's worth noting that if having a character advancement system is the only requirement to be a CRPG, then practically non-shooter game made after 2008 or so would qualify, and even the shooters get in on it starting around 2011.
Black and White is not a CRPG, it's a god game. You play as a deity who can use his divine powers to lead his personal civilization to dominance over various lands either by blessing your village and your opponents' village until the followers of other gods convert to you out of gratitude, or else you terrify them into submission by hurling meteors and summoning packs of wolves. It's a very cool idea with a mediocre execution (everything Peter Molyneaux has done is like this), but I don't see how you could possibly qualify it as a CRPG. Nothing even levels up. You do unlock new powers as time goes on, but unlocking new features based on game progress happens in every RTS game with an upgrade tree (which is most of them).
Character limit reached, will continue
An unsourced quote in the notes section claims it is possible to play the 1991 version of Neverwinter Nights offline. I tried very hard to find such a playable version of this game and was unable to, but I'm not entrenched in any relevant communities so maybe it's just deep magic not shared with the uninitated. Either way, the 1991 version was an MMORPG, which I thought was excluded from your list.
DeleteYohoho! Puzzle Pirates is an online game. If it's on the list, World of Warcraft should be too (note: for God's sake, do not put World of Warcraft on your list).
Fable is another Peter Molyneux game. It's definitely a CRPG, I just thought you might want a heads up that the spectacular promises of the game's premise will never be delivered on. Same goes for the sequel.
Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is a particularly well-known amateur effort. Well-known purely because of its shock value. It is a short and mechanically dull game, though the MIDI renditions of a bunch of 90s rock are kind of catchy and you can yank those right out of the game files. Point of this, however, is that if you add SCMRPG! there's no reason not to add every other amateur game ever made, in which case your games list will balloon out to an absurd level. Kongregate.com alone has hundreds, if not thousands, of flash-based CRPGs of approximately the same level of quality as SCMRPG and it's only been around since 2006. If you want your already Herculean task to remain even remotely doable, I recommend you rule out amateur efforts entirely, and take SCMRPG! with it. You don't need the controversy and its credentials are non-existent.
I'll throw another voice behind LelqTian: Spore is not an RPG. That said, it may have RPG content on the end if you get the one space adventure expansion. On the gripping hand, this content is entirely user-generated and hypothetically infinite.
Note on Deathspank: Deathspank is an indie game. This has the same problem of amateur games of being way more common than mainstream games, however amateur games are effectively infinite (a new one crops up literally every few hours) and indie games are not. On the other hand, there are a huge number of indie games not on your list and no easy way to keep track of them. It would be perfectly justifiable to eliminate indie games entirely. On the gripping hand, you've already reviewed plenty of games that could be considered indie at best, and several of the ones from the 70s or early 80s are clearly amateur efforts, albeit from a time where being an amateur game developer was the only way to be a CRPG developer at all.
Huh. I had heard Two Worlds was an MMORPG, but it looks like I was misinformed.
Oh, God, I can't wait to relive the Mass Effect 3 ending clustercuss in 2030.
Also, a general note: You've been going through games slower than they came out, i.e. taking longer than a year to get through 1988, but that's actually okay. The CRPG market is going to dry up a LOT once shooters hit their stride in the mid-90s. You can, in fact, catch up (so long as you don't try and hunt down every amateur effort produced).
Online games and MMORPGs are indeed excluded; I just deleted Yohoho for that reason, thanks. But I was given to understand that the 1991 Neverwinter Nights had an offline, single-player mode. (The quote you reference came from MobyGames.) If I can't find it when I get to it, I'll just have to move on.
DeleteYou make a good point about amateur and indie games, but I don't want to eliminate them entirely. My lame answer to your point that there are hundreds not on my list is simply that no one cared enough about them to make a MobyGames entry. Yes, I should have better criteria than that. It's a decision I'll have to make later.
An offline playable version of the original Neverwinter Nights is available at http://www.bladekeep.com/nwn/ (be ready for an intro with music)
DeleteThe link is on the left side, under NWN offline. There are two issues with it. One, it isn't rebalanced for solo play, and two, there is no way to save your character. There is a "GM" sort of debug mode in it though, which at a glance, you might be able to "save" by noting your stats then editing them to that point when you re-start. The game's quests are re-playable, so by doing this there aren't story advancement issues, as far as I know.
There are also two Gold Box style remakes. One is for Unlimited Adventures (FRUA) that allows the use of a full party. The other is Forgotten World, which is online and seeks to recreate the same experience as the original.
I'm playing through both at my own blog http://thisbardstales.blogspot.com/2014/04/forgotten-world-page-1.html
I'm re-reading Chet's posts for a little inspiration (and to pass the time between posts.) I'm glad I had the answer to this little conundrum!
Update: It is entirely possible to "save" by screencapping, then editing your character on the next load. DOSBox save states would probably work as well. (Why didn't I think of that earlier?)
DeleteThanks. When I get to this game, I'll find these comments in my pre-game search of past e-mails. I appreciate the ideas.
DeleteHi there.
ReplyDeleteI realy enjoy your blog. I have started to play Ultima IV. It is fantastic game. I never played a game from the Ultima series before. I'm realy enyoing when you starts with my first CRPG series and read your meaning abaout this.
I have started with the Realms of Arkania series (german version) and later I played the older Amberstar.
Thanks, Marius! It's good to have you here. I hope you enjoy the ending of U4 and it launches you on a journey through a lot more classics.
DeleteYou just got a new reader, curretly playing Ultima IV also, well, not exactly, i just cant finish it, basically im not that patient to go after the 8 dungeons and the abyss, getting the eight virtues and the diverse objects was amusing, but the combat is just so tiresome for me, after grinding a lot to have money for reagents, food and gear, starting Deceit was a pain, and even with the Y and Z spells (and the map gems) i almost got sick finding the stone, just cant keep going. I see why the game is good, but i cant do the rest after getting started with the first Ultima underworld, or having played games like Fallout or Arcanum before.
ReplyDeleteOh, well. Great blog also, hahaha.
I wanted to know if some games were worth playing, some hidden of forgotten gems from the past to try, and your blog is a really good reference, its informative, its funny, even addictive, i salute you good sir.
Glad to have you with us, Vianen. I can imagine that if you didn't grow up in the era of U4, the combats might become a dealbreaker.
DeleteYeah, was born in the middle of the 90´s, and i grow up with games like DOOM, the NES classics and Monkey island, older games than those sometimes requires some effort for me.
DeleteI fist wanted to play Ultima IV-VII after watching a youtube restrospective of the series, but they are a bit more focused on the humor than in a deep analysis, then i discovered your blog and got even more interested,if you want to take a look at the videos, here is a link:
(attetion with the games you havent played yet, spoilers)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpaNqz1vDmSixriNnNTD3FKXJ5D_y9wKS
Yesterday i just left U4 and started with U5, i find it more interesting, specially the responses of the NPCS, those were improved a lot, and the combat is a bit more flexible, i like it; my original plan was playing the two Underworld games first, but then realized that Laberinth of Worlds is a sequel to ultima VII, so i decided to play the games in order after all.It seems like i will not regret it.
At last, sorry if my english is filled with some fuckups, i can understand it with no effort, but you probaly noticed that my grammar is pretty weak and rushed, tell me if you have difficulties trying to decode it ^_^!
Someone younger then me on this blog! GASP AND SHOCK!
DeleteI'm surprised you grew up with those if you were born in the mid-90s though. I was born at the very end of the 80s and those were before my time. I remember watching Dad play DOOM when I was very young, but the first shooter I played was Goldeneye in the late 90s.
I´m 18, so, i guess the rookie here gets special treatment... rigth?... hahaha!
DeleteThat was because my awesome cousin gave me his games when i was a child, a bunch of CDs, some floppys... and even his game boy color! good old times.
I never had a big console until the PS2, but i had friends who owned things like the NES, the Sega, and the PS1 with the time.
Also i never changed the PC, some things where replaced, we changed the screen to a modern one when the old broke, and the motherboard is not the original, but its still my crappy pentium 4.
My gaming experience was always kind of inconsistent, i never had enough money to afford the latest console, or another PC, so it forced me to play in another way, when others where playing Halo or GTA san andreas, i was playing GBA emulators or something else, the only title i played along with the rest of the world was resident evil 4, LOL.
18? Damn.... Ok, william, we have a kid with us, on your best behaviour!
DeleteHey! i´m older enough to go to jail!...wait...
DeleteGreat Blog you have going, Chet. I'm only surprised I haven't found it before now. Came across it while trying to figure out hit points in Ultima I (the formula - no luck yet). I have just started on a similar journey (though I do not blog), going through all of the RPG's I have played before, only a few decades down the road (I still have my original Starflight floppies).
ReplyDeleteI plan on doing a series until I need a change of scenery, and then going back and forth until I complete them all (Ultima, Wizardry, M&M, Most of the D&D's). I had intended on doing only games I had completed before, but I may try out some of your more highly rated ones to see what I missed. As it is, I had completely forgotten about Apshai trilogy, and look forward to remembering some other lost games as I continue through your blog.
I spend most of my gaming time these days simracing (iRacing, mostly) but am enjoying getting back into the RPG's as I wait for a Skyrim successor.
Cheers.
Glad to have you with us. Your plan sounds much more accomplishable than mine. Good luck!
DeleteWhat a great idea and affort! This is kind of cultural archeology ... I'm already fascinated and hooked.
ReplyDeleteHey Chet,
ReplyDeleteHope you are well.
Man, let me just start by writing that I wish I had read these words in 1994.
“If my problem was that CRPGs were competing with my to do list, they would become part of my to do list.”
Quoted from Chet's Initial Blog Post.
You haven't by any chance run across any time travel devices in the course of your play yet, have you?
You gotta elaborate, man. How would my spectacularly poor logic have helped you in 1994?
DeleteIt sure helped me!
DeleteBy quoting someone else to justify my lousy actions, it somehow made it sound more legit.
"If my problem was that killing people repeatedly was competing with my efforts to fill up my trophy shelf, those dead people would become part of that shelf's decorations."
Sry, I am new to blogs + actually your blog is the first I have ever read more than a few pages of. Basically exiting "social online networking/media" a few years back.
DeleteWell, your logic could have helped me by introducing the idea of discipline in regards to gaming, something which I don't think I ever learned. I don't think this is the correct medium for me to try to explain more than this as it would basically boil down to some personal history which would most likely not be very interesting other than to myself and a person I visit once a week that listens to me because I pay them money, and their interest is dubious at best.
Thanks a lot for your blog! I don't even remember how I got here in the first place, but the fact is that I've just found myself reading post after post, at half past two in the morning., despite having some urgent work to do... Ugh... Gotta try to close the browser and actually work a bit.
ReplyDeleteIt's so refreshing to see a blog with such detailed and thorough descriptions of both classic and obscure games and with such honest opinions - without both mindless worshipping of "everything retro" and criticising any older games for being outdated.
Thanks again. I've just found a new favorite place in the internet and you've just found another dedicated reader (who is also a crpg addict, a family man and a big lover of jazz music). Maybe I'll even sign up for Blogspot.
Good luck with your quest and don't be eaten by a grue.
---- Paul Chaliapin, Moscow, Russia
You have a new reader. I discovered your blog some days ago looking for sites dedicated to old games and I have started reading all your posts. So far I am loving it.
ReplyDeleteI have not played many CPRGs myself, I think the first one was Eye of the beholder, and later on I played Ishar 2, Ultima IV, VII and VIII, Waxworks, Lands of Lore and Wizardy 7 as far I can remember. Last years I started also some Roguelikes like DoomRL, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and Brogue. And recently I started Dark heart of Uukrul. I was fascinated reading about it on magazines when it appeard but I had an MSX at that time so I couldn´t play it.
Keep the great work, I am really anjoying it. I think I am already a CRPG addict addict.
First glance at your blog. Looks definitely interesting, I hope you'll be doing this for many years, still, and enjoy doing it. I hope you'll reach Nahlakh eventually!
ReplyDeleteJust found your blog through a search for, believe it or not, War in Middle Earth!
ReplyDeleteMy first game of this type was Bard's Tale I think, ZX Spectrum port, back in the late 80's! You've worked your way through many of the games I never got to play as a kid, and for that, I thank you sir!
Carry on brave knight!
Found your blog after Googling for Wizadry 6.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few titles from Spiderweb Software missing from your list:
Avadon: The Black Fortress
Avadon 2: The Corruption
Avernum 4
Avernum 5
Avernum 6
Blades of Avernum (update of Blades of Exile)
Avernum: Escape from the Pit (update of Avernum)
Geneforge 3, Geneforge 4: Rebellion & Geneforge 5: Overthrow
Nethergate: Resurrection (update of Nethergate)
Avernum 1, 2,and 3 are updates of Exile 1, 2 and 3 so you might want to skip those. Spiderweb are updating these titles again (so far, only Avernum 1 has been released as Avernum: Escape from the Pit) so it might be worth waiting for the new versions, unless you want to compare them to the originals.
Thanks for joining us, Andrew! My list is only meant to be complete through 2003. I'm deliberately giving the databases a decade to shake out what is and what isn't an RPG and to create comprehensive catalogs, so I don't have to re-check the lists all the time. I think all the games you mention are post-2003.
DeleteYes I think all those games are later then 2003.
DeleteReally enjoying the blog so far (I'm starting right from the beginning)
I also noticed that you have Lords of Midnight and it's sequel on your list. These are great games but I'm not sure I'd class them as RPGs - they are a blend of wargame, adventure game with a few RPG elements mixed in. Unofficial PC conversions are available from http://www.icemark.com if you do decide to play them.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of games on the list that are questionable. The key issue is whether they have 1) character development; 2) probability-based combats; and 3) flexible non-puzzle-based inventories. I evaluate each title when I get to it, but for the master list, I err on the side of inclusion. Given the number of games I have, I'll certainly be glad to pass by LoM if it doesn't meet my criteria.
DeleteLords of Midnight fails both 1 and 3, and the combats are usually between armies commanded by your characters instead of individuals. It's probably closer to the Heroes of Might and Magic series than a genuine RPG.
DeleteI can't comment on the third game in the series as I've never played it
That's really amazing stuff, thanks a lot for it! I have two passions- travel and games, and really if we consider games a kind of virtual travelling, there is no genre more similar to travel than crpg. So your blog is kind of "Lonely planet"guidebook to these virtual worlds:)
ReplyDeleteWell! I was supposed to be finishing Avernum (or, more sensibly, sleeping at 2:30 AM), but instead I'm stuck reading your blog. It is impossible to stop. It's all your fault. I'll sue!
ReplyDeleteKidding aside, though, I'm really glad to have stumbled upon it. It makes me very happy that such a worthwile and incredibly ambitious project is underway and still progressing smoothly. The thing with me is, I enjoy CRPG games a lot, and I have a tendency to play old games for the first time decades after their release, but anything pre-1992 has so far been too much for me. I'm hoping that your blog will inspire me to try again and approach those games with a new perspective and determination. The topic is fascinating and makes for a riveting read -- and I still haven't reached the "Ultima IV and beyond" part of the blog where it's supposed to get even better. It makes me look like the cat from the "(heavy breathing)" meme.
Here's one interesting coincidence. You certainly seem to approach CRPGs very seriously and thoroughly. I used to simply rush headlong into the game, usually trying to explore as much as possible, but my playing was plagued with savescumming, impatience and resorting to online guides. A short while before discovering your blog, I resolved to change that, and reading your posts only inspires me to pursue my resolution. So far, my attempts consist of dilligently taking notes during my playthrough of Avernum. And not just notes like "go to X to finish quest Y" -- I have filled a small notebook outlining my entire progress and game world. The result is a jumbled mess, but I'll be able to make heads or tails of it eventually, and perhaps write a proper guide. Or at least make maps.
I'm touching the topic of maps on purpose, since your early posts mention it a lot. I have to say you make it sound very appealing. I tried drawing some maps for Avernum (well, I could just printscreen the ingame map, but I just... don't want to) by pencil and paper, but didn't like the result and decided to use the computer after all. While I think using Excel was a very creative idea, I wanted something even better and discovered that Inkscape can be easily turned into a very flexible, interactive graph paper sheet. Not sure if you still map nowadays, but telling you just in case.
So, thanks for sharing your valuable gaming experiences. The blog is a real treasure trove. Keep it up!
I'm guessing your first post is the best place to put this due to general nature of the thing, so here goes:
ReplyDeleteDue to my constant paranoia reminding me that it is somehow possible for my own blog to completely disappear one day I copied all of my posts into a Word file. Just in case.
Then I was curious as to how many words exist on the CRPGAddict blog. So I copied ALL your posts into another Word file.
Your first blog post is on February 15, 2010 and up to July 27th, 2014 you've written 1,087,657 words. You're just shy of L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth, which clocks in at roughly 1.2 million words and may be the longest non-translated English novel. The blog is also twice as long as Atlas Shrugged as if that somehow matters.
After doing all of that, which took a good week and a half, I learned that you can simply export a blog as an XML file for backup purposes. So the time spent copying my own blog to Word was wasted (I only have 166,372 words), but at least I can re-read your blog whenever I want to.
If you would rather I not do this, please let me know and I'll delete the file.
I've often wondered how my production stacks up against the great works of literature, so thanks. I do occasionally save the XML backup, but the format isn't very conducive to reading off-line.
DeleteI don't even know if Mission Earth could be considered a "great" work of literature (oh shit, better hide from them Scientologists especially Tom).
DeleteI guess I'm a CRPG Addict addict as well. I've read through this blog twice after the Pelit magazine interview and here I find myself starting over for the third time...
ReplyDeleteA BIG thank you to Chet and to all the commenters also. This truly is an awesome blog.
I really appreciate your support, Morblot, but there are so many cooler things to read than my blog for the third time!
DeleteHaha, well, that may be true, but this blog is the perfect choice when I have just a few minutes to spare, for example when I'm riding the bus home after work.
DeleteAlso, I just finished reading the Thomas Covenant series and I feel like charging my batteries a bit before taking on another book. I wasn't aware of Stephen Donaldson before reading about the game The Land here, so I guess I have you to thank for that; I know you didn't like his writing, but I found I enjoyed quite a bit!
"I write parts of the story that don't exist, send my characters off on quests that the game doesn't provide, and otherwise act like a five-year-old playing with his "Star Wars" figures."
ReplyDeleteI think this was the intention of some developers back when RPGs weren't really that widespread. I remember reading in an interview that some RPGs never directly showed the actions of your choices because the developers did not want to force a conclusion onto the player (and therefore left things up to the players' imagination.)
That can sort of seem like a cop-out, though (since the developers can use that as an excuse to implement the choice -> consequence system, but with the consequence taken out of it).
Do you have any particular thoughts about how developers used to leave the consequences of the players' actions to their imaginations?
Some of the early game manuals--Telengard, Fracas, Warrior of Ras, and Dungeon Campaign come to mind--explicitly encourage players to mentally (and vocally, if playing with another person) elaborate on the action. I think it's clear that in these early games, we were meant to treat the wireframe dungeons and monster portraits as literal "sketches," filling in the rest with our own imaginations and narration.
DeleteIn the modern era, graphics and sound are so good that mental elaboration is hardly necessary. I don't really mind that, either. What I dislike is the halfway-in-between point of the early 1990s, when developers clearly thought that their graphics and sound were good enough to carry things on their own but, from a 2015 perspective, they're really not.
Mara was reading this comment to me and I thought I'd add a comment that didn't occur to me at the time. The is still abstraction in games, even 3d ones like Skyrim and Fallout 3&4, in some ways more than say, Baldur's Gate or the first Witcher game.
DeleteIn Baldur's Gate you visit Naskel and it has farms filling a large chunk of the map, going off into areas you can't get to. In modern open world games you can't show all that. For one, it would be hugely expensive, and another spending hours walking through farms before getting to the wilderness would bore a lot of players. This developers have taken to using abstractions. They have little plots of land meant to evoke farming, of show epic battles with a few dozen people instead of hundreds. I'm not sure how well it works. It is ready to pretend some things, like larger farms, but harder to make the battles larger in my minds eye.
I guess the problem is that with newer games, it's not as obvious that the abstraction is intended. People wander around Whiterun and note its 12 buildings and 15 NPCs and laugh at the scale because it's not explicit that the developers intend your imagination to fill in the rest. I'm not even sure it's true.
DeleteFallout games (the latest ones) do a better job by having a lot of structures that you just can't enter. Yes, they pose their own realism problems, but at least they make the cities seem bigger (if still not big enough), and you can imagine that thousands of innocents are huddling inside.
I think you've hit the nail on the head.
DeleteWhew! O.K., I finally got through all five years of CRPG Addict articles (including the comments). Creating this blog is quite an accomplishment — the playing, the writing, the commitment — I just wish I had thought of it. Many times I've decided I would play through all the Ultimas, or all the Wizardrys, from start to finish, as an academic endeavor, of course. I always poke around for a few nights, get frustrated by the lack of modern UX and design, and lose momentum. And, I never had any intention to enrich the public with my experiences...
ReplyDeleteIt's struck me how much the conversations in the comments section are such a part of the blog, occasionally even weaving back and forth through subsequent entries. I really enjoy how so many games, sometimes esoteric, sometimes wearisome, have champions who have retained such detailed information about them. Clearly these games mean something to people (not just me).
So, thank you, Chet, and the Chet community, for providing such engaging "research" material for me to study while I'm procrastinating on my own indie retro CRPG side-project — and congratulations (somewhat belatedly) on five years! If you ever find yourself in the SF Bay Area, you have a Vodka Gimlet waiting for you.
Thanks for the feedback, Iffy. I'm glad the blog has been valuable to you.
DeleteNow that I've made it to be beginning of your blog I can stop living like Merlin and read forwards for a change! :)
ReplyDeleteFantastic blog, thank you for playing a good handful of games that I always wanted to and now realize I don't need to.
I do have a few though - starting with Ultima VI. Being a Commodore 64/128 user, I never got to play that one. By the time I had a decent IBM-compatible it was time to play Ultima VII and the two Underworld games. I also missed out on the two Worlds games, but that one doesn't bother me. Time to dig out my Ultima Collection CD from U9 and play through it.
Sorry for the long post - your blog has been fantastic. I'm looking forward to more as the years go by.
Codewheels! \:D/
Glad you like it. And it's always nice to meet a fellow Once and Future King fan.
DeleteWhat a blog! What a lovely blog!
ReplyDeleteOK, I am ENTHRALLED reading over your blogs for several games and I really want to start playing - Might and Magic 1 is first on my list. But I have NO experience with CRPG or many RPG's in general (outside Dragon Warrior that I played and LOVED). I wasnt a huge fan of the genre or the idea for years but now at 37 I really want to get engaged and into this world. But I dont know how...do you know of, have you written, does anyone know of, somewhere I could learn the basics of what I am getting into so I can play these games with some understanding going in instead of move forward, try to fight lose...repeat, which is my current way.
ReplyDeleteI understand trying and looking around is a big part of it but I have no background in this stuff, so any help or "how to for newbees" would be appreciated...
Maybe pick a game for me to do first?
You've given me an idea for a "special topics" post. I suppose that getting into RPGs can be somewhat daunting if you don't have any idea what ability scores, hit rolls, damage rolls, and other conventions of the genre are.
DeleteMight & Magic, while a great game, might be a difficult one to start with. As it only allows saving in towns, you might become frustrated with the constant dying. Also, you may or may not like the process of mapping games on graph paper (or an electronic equivalent), and first-person games of the era generally require it.
I'll offer two recommendations and see if others chime in with more.
1. If know for sure you want to "get engaged and into this world," I'd look at my "must play" list in the right side bar and try those--and perhaps some of their sequels. (I generally don't include sequels on the list if they offer identical gameplay experiences to the originals.) You might find that the first few entries aren't really "enjoyable," but there's still plenty of documentation online, and the role-playing elements are light enough that you don't need to be as concerned than you might be if jumping right into a more advanced role-playing title. (If you go this route, though, I might suggest starting with Ultima I instead of the others, because it's pretty simple to figure it out.)
2. Go right to a classic and play Pool of Radiance. Even though you might face a bit of a learning curve, there are several advantages to starting with this game. First, it uses D&D rules, which almost every game owes something to in the 1980s and early 1990s, so if you master those, you'll have a good basis of comparison for other games. Second, the manual for the game is quite good, covering the conventions of RPGs well enough for new players to understand. Third, it's awesome, so if you end up not liking it, you'll know that retro-gaming probably isn't for you.
3. I'd actually recommend Baldur's Gate. It's one of the earliest CRPG with an in-game tutorial to walk you through the basics.
DeleteComfortable RPGS to start with in various genres:
DeleteOpen-world turn-based RPG: Avernum: Escape from the Pit, Geneforge 5
JRPG: Final Fantasy 7 or 10
Real-time Isometric RPG: Diablo 1
Newschool console-style RPG: Mass Effect 1 or Knights of the Old Republic 1
Roguelike: Dungeons of Dredmor
DM Clone: Legend of Grimrock
Each of them ease you into the game, have clear GUIs and few bugs or obscure under the hood mechanics. Plus they're all well-regarded within their genre.
I am stuck between Ultima 1 and Baldur's Gate. Whichever I choose, I am gonna blog about it (not to infringe on yours as what you do is phenominal) but from a "I have no friggin clue what I am doing as I go forward and learn" point of view!!! I will see where it goes or how I do!
ReplyDeleteIt's funny that Kenny came along and offered that, because I was going to suggest Baldur's Gate as a possible #3.
DeleteBut while the tutorial is good, there are a few reasons I wouldn't recommend it as a "first RPG." First, BG and a few other games of the same year really begin a new era in RPGs. By playing it first, you won't have any idea whether you can stomach some of the classics of the earlier age.
Second, BG is so good that it will spoil other RPGs for you.
Third, even though there's a tutorial, I can see the game being very confusing if you don't have a handle on RPG conventions and D&D in particular.
Whatever you do, let us know about the blog. I think it would be fun to read one from a complete novice's perspective. "WTF is a 'hit point' and why do I keep losing them?!?!"
Suddenly I can't help thinking of an RPG put together by someone who doesn't quite get RPGs. "I lost some hit points, but then I found them under the couch" or "An orb sent me on a quest to find the king. Wait, is that right?"
DeleteI am going to start putting the blog together tonight and will give the link to it here....should be fun to go through. I started reading the Ultima Manual last night to get an idea, but man, I am in a whole new world...so enjoy my follies
ReplyDeleteAlso, what is your secret to mapping in excel? I'd like to take that approach as well....each cell is one step?
ReplyDeleteWhat? You want to map out the entire Ultima world in Excel?!
DeleteEr... good luck?
I've only mapped first-person tile-based games of limited size in Excel. In such games, most dungeon levels are between 16 x 16 and 24 x 24. I've never mapped any overland games this way, where the size of the game map might be anywhere from 65,536 to over 1 million squares.
DeleteThis video I made for Wizardry V basically shows how I do it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pNlVVVwO7U
You should be grateful nobody ever came up with the idea of making a first-person tile-based game with a world map of 256,000 squares. Oh wait...
DeleteJust checked smack2k's blog - turned into a wrestling project after like three months. Too bad.
Well, the name fits at least.
DeleteI think smack2k deleted his original blog and then replaced it with a new one at the same URL with a different subject.
DeleteHere's my blog -http://smack2k.blogspot.com/. I have already changed my first game to Wasteland, reasons given in my first few posts.
ReplyDeleteCome along for the ride as I make errors and ask 100's of questions from all of you and I am NOT gonna read CRPG Addicts write up on Wasteland and try this on my own. Anywhere I can get a manual to get my read on? I am gonna get the game setup tonight and post some early shots and thoughts...
Please laugh with my mis haps and mis quotes as I go as I tend to enjoy when others get a kick out of my learning at a SLOW PACE!!!
Hey, how do I pretty up my blog site and give it some class kind of like yours?
ReplyDeleteI commented on your blog.
DeleteThanks for great blog, I so enjoy reading it!
ReplyDeleteI am wondering if you are aware of: https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/2015/12/21/update-11-the-third-release/
and cooperate / or maybe want do to something similar out of your blogpost?
Yes. I was invited to be a part of it, but I dithered on my reply, and by the time I said I would, any game I cared about was already assigned to another author. I look forward to reading the completed edition.
DeleteAs for doing something similar out of my own posts, it's an idea I've been playing with for a while, but producing a book is a major project--even with existing material, you have to edit and format it--and I just haven't had time.
First of all, Congratulations on a masterpiece of a blog. I'm on my late 30's and a retro-computing addict since many years (I started with my original real hardware - a 64, an Amiga, an Epson 386, a 1984 Mac 128k, a SegaCD and a NES - and have now gone almost completely to emulation due to time and money constraints) and regularly keep track of sites like Hardcore Gaming 101, MobyGames, Lemon, Digital Antiquarian, etc... as well as read articles and reviews from my (now almost totally digital since paper occupies much rack space) collection of old magazines from the 80's and 90's : Gazette, Compute, Commodore Magazine, INFO, AmigaWorld, CGM, Byte, PC Mag, ...
ReplyDeleteThis background lends me some authority to confidently say that your blog stands out as a true gem among all of the content i've mentioned. Your blend of review, playtrough, gameplay and technical analysis is very appealing and well executed. A must-read for us enthusiasts.
I'd also like to comment on my first RPG (this site's rite of acceptance into the club) : like yourself, it al started on a C64 with, in my case, twin 1541 disk drives back in the late 1980's. I'd just returned from a family trip to the US (I live in S. America) carrying something called ULTIMA V. I remember reading the "Book Of Lore" and studying the map in the hotel and at the airport on the trip back. I held the 'big avatar coin' in my hand as i did so. Once I was back home I booted it up very anxiously and was transported to Brittania. I had plenty of games, 100's of disks (Piracy wsn't a big deal in my country back then), but this was something else, this was SERIOUS, an experience, a journey, not a stupid videogame. I finished high-school, started college and didn't play much RPG's. A decade later, under similar circumstances, I came across the 'Ultima Collection' CDrom and brought it home. Since it contained not just Ultima 5, but all of them up up to VIII, plus reasonably good supporting material, this time around my trip to Brittania was more of an exile. I spent whole nights there for months on end. It was powerful. But I returned after college.
Now, enabled by today's powerful Internet infrastructure and the wonders of emulation and vast storage and processor power,and inspired and guided by THe CRPG Addict, I'm ready to take on new journeys .....
P.S. I just became your 500th member !
Welcome, Bernie, and thanks for taking the time to write. It's always great to get a new reader. Your recollections about Ultima V mirror mine with the previous title in the series. It was something more of an "experience" to buy a new game back then, wasn't it?
DeleteSide question: It's always nice to watch the number of "members" grow, but I literally have no idea what that does for anyone. I mean, if you like my blog and want to come back, why not just bookmark it? What does subscribing do?
Well, Chester. I'm happy to know you liked my comment. And yes, I have to confess that i'm a sucker for boxed software "back then". Google Play and Steam are cool, but not an experience as you put it. I guess, GOG comes closer when they put together their "packages" with manuals and all, but that's still software from "back then". I would like your opinion on this: nowadays all mainstream-commercial releases are either "casual gaming" or "social/mmorpg" at heart and this necessarily implies they're low-immersion (and HD gfx and audio don't count for me !) and must be cheap in order for 100.000's of people to download and play them. This rules out high production values in contrast with back then. Gee, that C64 Ultima V cost my dad something like $60 and it must have taken Origin years to sell 100.000 copies for all platforms combined, if it did ever reach that sales level. It's not that I'm against contemporary RPG's ; like you, I will try them one day when I exhaust the ones from "back then" and their wonderful packaging and supporting materials which, thanks god, can be easily enjoyed "virtually" thanks to efforts like MOCAGH and C64sets (Replacementdocs is not bad either).
DeleteP.S. Subscription to blogs its not a big deal. Google let's you get "updates" on your "blogger desktop" and your picture gets to appear on the blog's sidebar. It's more of a show of appreciation for the authors (I only do it when I really like the blog, but maybe in general it's more akin to Facebook's "friends").
To be honest, I don't really bemoan the loss of manuals and cloth maps and whatnot even though they offered a nice visceral appeal back in the day. Most games today have tutorials that ease you into the controls, and the best of them seamlessly integrate the tutorials into the gameplay. To me, this is much better than trying to figure things out with one hand on the keyboard and another holding your place in a manual.
DeleteNot to mention, modern games generally offer a LOT more in-game text and background lore than was ever contained in the old game manuals.
Yes, I sometimes think wistfully of opening the box in the car and thumbing through the manual impatiently as my mother drove us home from the mall, but not enough to wish modern games shipped with paper.
Thanks for clarifying the subscription thing. That's what I thought, but I didn't know for sure.
You don't? Interesting. I would consider maps (especially!) and manuals, if done well, extremely poewrful fuelers of imagination. So does this mean you are fine with modern RPGs drawing upon imagination less and less?
DeletePersonally, no matter how much I like Skyrim, I can't quite say that. Of course, I also read pen&paper RPG sourcebooks for fun, and things like the Ultima books of lore are essentially nothing else... it's just that I think that those games that don't require imagination anymore also leave no place for it, which for me is regularly detrimental for what is called "immersion". (At least as long as the content present doesn't outperform my imagination, which would be quite the task.)
Your extrapolated my comments in a weird way. No, I'm not "fine with modern RPGs drawing upon imagination less and less," and I don't necessarily agree with your premise that they do. In any event, my comments were about the loss of PAPER manuals and maps. Modern RPGs have replaced them with in-game analogues that, to me, excite the imagination just as well as the printed books. They just intersperse them throughout the story and let the player learn the history and lore more organically.
DeleteOrigin was definitely ahead of its time with the world-building in its manuals, but you can't possibly think that they hold a candle to what Bethesda has done with the in-game texts in TES and Fallout series.
As much as I loved my boxes and manuals for Civ 2 and HoMM 3, and the unsurpassed 'Vault Dweller's Survival Guide', I can't say I miss paying more than twice as much for the privilege of getting physical goods.
DeleteHmm. Well, my extrapolation came from the connection with another one of your comments (don't know where right now) saying that you were fine with the games of yore that used simple graphics + descriptor tags ("kitchen"), leaving your imagination to fill out the rest; and just as fine with today's games, which are generally so explicit and detailed that imagination is no longer required. Apparently I misinterpreted.
DeleteOf course the printed manuals of older games cannot compare to the magnitude of the TES ingame texts (have yet to play a Fallout). But I think they worked upon a different level anyway. Those manuals (and maps) were designed to open up a world, to prepare the player for a journey, and at least for me this led to imagining how that journey would shape up, what I would discover and experience. Possible journeys, so to speak. (I would consider the German manual of Realms of Arkania I to be the best manual of this kind.) This approach works better in the old games because those usually consist of placeholders, with your mind making up the rest.
In the TES games, Bethesda has put extreme effort into making the world consist not of placeholders, but of elements that could pass for the real thing, with extremely detailed settlements dotting a landscape so large that you get the feeling of walking actual distances. I have experienced the in-game lore as adding more depth and background to those existing elements rather than giving your mind reasons to go on further journeys. And there's no reason to give it fodder to fill in the blanks, because there are none. What these texts instead do is instilling curiosity about further backgrounds, as in the case of the Dwemer disappearance, for example.
Bottom line - as much as I enjoy traveling through the detailed TES worlds, I miss mind journeys of the former kind. The "printed" thing is not really relevant to me here, although having the manual being a seperate entity from the actual game maybe served to reinforce the notions of "this could be" versus "this is". But I'm getting esoteric.
Certainly, printed manuals have a slightly different flavor than in-game texts, and if that particular flavor appealed to you, I could understand feeling the loss.
DeleteThere are different kinds of imagination. The wireframes of Wizardry force me to imagine the environment, while the beautifully-rendered dungeons of Skyrim don't, sure, but that just frees up imagination resources for other things, like the nature of my character and how I want to role-play him in a world that offers lots more opportunities for role-playing. I find both types of games perfectly enjoyable on their own terms.
This is as good a time and place as any to mention that this blog has been a favorite of mine for a couple of years now, ever since I played through Ultima IV and loved it, then googled around and found this great documentation of classics, oddities, and regretful experiments I never would have known anything about otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI was born in 1994, so you haven't covered any of my contemporaries yet, but if anything that makes it more interesting. I don't mean that in a "look at me, I'm so precocious" sort of way - I'm not special, and in some ways these games are more accessible today than ever before - but just to satisfy your demographic curiosity.
At this point I've also hopelessly entrenched myself in a life of media addiction made relatively meaningful through writing, but my purview is far too broad to be relevant or cohesive so I've kept my ever-growing heap of opinions to myself for now. It's nice to have your blog as an example of someone making the most of that in a very personally characteristic way that's still interesting to a broad audience.
I won't have much to add until you hit 1995 and start playing Heroes of Might and Magic, but I'd been meaning to speak up in a small way for a while, so hey!
Glad to have you with us, Rodan. That you could love Ultima IV despite being 9 years younger than the game shows that certain RPGs are indeed timeless.
DeleteLOL, talk about biting off more than you can chew. There's way too many computer role-playing games over the last 50 years for you to even make a dent in them.
ReplyDeleteAw, man. Where were you 9 years ago? I wish I'd known then--before I wrote 1,100 postings, covering more than 300 games, visited by more than 5,000 people a week--that my blog was going to be a failure.
DeleteHaving played every cRPG from 1975 to 1991 is not even making a dent? "LOL"
DeleteAt some point the Master will handpick and teach a few disciples, who will then live up to the legacy...to play Oblivion.
ReplyDeleteHi! Thank you for this blog. Are you planning to play Atari ST's SunDog: Frozen Legacy someday? I think it fits your criteria.
ReplyDeleteI think I rejected it when I initially passed the year, but I don't remember why. Character development, flexible inventory, and stats-based combat. Does it have all three?
DeleteI actually started to remember the game and read couple of reviews of it and now I think you are right. I played it long time ago and remembered as a real RPG, but it seems to be really light RPG, more adventure game. No character development at least. There should be more deep sci-fi RPGs. Maybe I should play it again, but I think you did right rejecting it.
DeleteHello there. Only just discovered your blog. Was re-playing Eye of the Beholder and stumbled on to your blog postings about it.
ReplyDeleteYour blog is very enjoyable and I look forward to slowly working my way through it from start to hopefully the current day.
Your right about the comments section as it's often just as informative and interesting as the blog itself. So will be reading my way through those at the same time.
cheers
Thanks for this blog, it was one of the big three that inspired me to start blogging my own video game journey (Digital Antiquarian and Data Driven Gamer are the other two). Your posts are all well thought out and have that personal element that makes them fun to read. Please keep it up!
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't have minded if you'd posted a link:
Deletehttps://raisingthevgbrow.blogspot.com/
It looks promising. I'll try to remember to check in from time to time.
I just wanted to let you know, CA, that I am rereading your blog from the beginning. I was going to skip the comments section, but that would be missing so much information. I just got done reading all the comments on this first post. I'll drop at least one comment per post to keep track of my progress. I want to rediscover the deep interest I had for your blog that kept me reading every post as they came out.
ReplyDeleteCheers!
- Adam
That's cool, but don't feel like you HAVE to comment on every entry unless you can think of something to say. Some of them aren't worth it.
DeleteAlright, I'll play conservative with my comments. I wonder when I'll come across my first comment. I may have commented anonymously at first, and I think I lurked for quite some time before then. This feels like visiting a past lifetime!
DeleteFound out about this blog through the PCGamer article and instantly subscribed to the Patreon! I'm a sucker for these kind of chrongaming projects, but sadly there aren't many people insane enough tackle these kind of huge game lists - Chrontendo and Jeremy Parish (both on youtube) are the two others I watch regularly and I'll gladly add this site to the list.
ReplyDeleteI really miss the more insular, community focused feeling of blogs so I'm glad someone out there is still using this format, I look forward to reading through everything!
Hi Chet. I don`t like CRPGs. My favourite genre is the point & click graphic adventure (Maniac Mansion and The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes are my favourite of all time), although i play a lot of FPS since i played Half Life 2, which blew my mind. Anyways, a couple of years ago i started reading a lot of retro gaming blogs and sites, starting with The Adventure Gamer (now The Adventurers Guild). I read several people mentioning your blog, including The Trickster, who admitted that your blog was a main influence to start his. Today i read a lot of blogs like yours: CRPG Adventures, Data Driven Gamer, FRGCB, The Digital Antiquarian, etc....The thing is, although i don`t like CRPGs, i like reading about people who played them, so i figure, heck, let´s go to the primordial spark that started all...and here i am. Maybe, reading this massive body of work i will learn all the tricks to this genre, and maybe i will finally start enjoying this games....for now, a good point to start is reading every single post and comment in chronological order, so i got a lot to chew on for months to come. Cheers from Argentina
ReplyDeleteHi, Leo. I get it. I used to love reading Roger Ebert's movie reviews even for movies that I never intended to see. I hope my blog gives you some of the same entertainment.
DeleteThank you so much for all your words you've put into this, you must be near five million of them! That's more than three volumes of Gibbon's The History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, and I do find it quite humorous that you joked about comparing yourself to a film historian when you have become a defacto guide to the CRPG, both the popular and the weird. Thank you again.
ReplyDeleteJust a message to say thanks for making your full scores available in a spreadsheet. I never had a chance to play CRPGs until the mid-90s (Exile: Escape from the Pit, my first and still favourite) and I fell out love with modern gaming about 20 years ago. I'm keen to identify the best of the 80s and 90s to buy from GoG and your spreadsheet helps me identify games that might appeal to me. Firstly, because gameplay and combat are the most important variables for me (and I can filter on them to see I really must play Pool of Radiance) and secondly, by listing their difficulty I get an idea before I start of whether I need to min/max characters or if I can experiment with multiclassing etc without making the game impossible. Really helpful. Here's to the next 490 games!
ReplyDeleteJust a message to say thanks for making your full scores available in a spreadsheet. I never had a chance to play CRPGs until the mid-90s (Exile: Escape from the Pit, my first and still favourite) and I fell out love with modern gaming about 20 years ago.
ReplyDeleteI'm keen to identify the best of the 80s and 90s to buy from GoG and your spreadsheet helps me identify games that might appeal to me. Firstly, because gameplay and combat are the most important variables for me (and I can filter on them to see I really must play Pool of Radiance) and secondly, by listing their difficulty I get an idea before I start of whether I need to min/max characters or if I can experiment with multiclassing etc without making the game impossible. Really helpful. Here's to the next 490 games!
i have to admit, I hadn't quite imagined people using the sheet for those purposes, but I'm glad it's been helpful to you either way. Just keep in mind that sometimes a high-rated difficulty is about more than just combat.
Delete