Friday, February 2, 2018

1987/1988

        
1987 was a deceptively big year for computer RPGs. First of all, it was the first year that the number of RPGs really exploded. No earlier year had offered more than 20; 1987 published 35, setting a new average that would hold into the early 1990s. 

Perhaps more important, it was an extremely diverse year. The diversity exists across several variables. First is the platform. None of the earliest platforms had completely died, but some of the newer platforms that would dominate the late 1980s and early 1990s were becoming available. As a consequence, we had games for DOS, the Apple II and the Apple IIGS, the Commodore 64 and the Commodore Amiga, the TI-99, the TRS-80 Color Computer, the Amstrad CPC, the ZX Spectrum, and the Macintosh. 1987 was a true emulator-buster.
       

For better or worse, 1987 gave us the first games in the windowed Mac interface.
        
We see the diversity in countries of origin. We had our first Canadian RPGs with Alien Fires: 2199 AD, Deathlord, and Gates of Delirium. The French golden age continued with L'Anneau de Zengara, Inquisitor: Shade of Swords, Karma, and Le Maitre des Ames. The UK, still in bizarre mode, contributed The Kingdom of Krell. Finland chimed in with the SpurguX roguelike. And for the first time, four games made it from Japan to western PCs: The Ancient Land of Ys, Cosmic Soldier: Psychic War, Sorcerian, and Zeliard. This probably reflected the growing popularity of Japanese console games.
     
French games continued to offer uniquely odd settings and gameplay.
     
But the most important facet of the year's diversity was in the approaches that the games took. Good or bad, we saw a lot of "firsts" in 1987: The weird Alien Fires and its randomly-shaped rooms and digitized dialogue; the text-RPG hybrids that were Beyond Zork and Quarterstaff; the "Boolean interactive fiction" in Braminar; the odd combat system adopted by Cosmic Soldier; Wizardry IV's insane difficulty and anti-hero protagonist; the mythology and symbolism of The Seven Spirits of Ra; the RPG-side scrolling action hybrid presented in Sorcerian; the platformer-RPG hybrid in Zeliard; and the philosophical underpinnings that enlivened The Tower of Myraglen. I can't even quickly sum the eccentricity of the European titles. We will have better years, but we may have no more interesting years.
        
Console-like action combat in Zeliard. I never understood why my character looks like a human in the cut scenes and a furry little animal during the actual game.
      
Unfortunately, as we often see, originality does not always translate into fun gameplay. The average GIMLET did not improve upon 1986 (both were at 28). The top-rated game of the year, Pirates! (48), isn't even really an RPG, and almost everything in the "recommended" zone is a sequel, including Beyond Zork (46), Alternate Reality: The Dungeon (45), The Eternal Dagger (41), Phantasie III (39), Legacy of the Ancients (37), and NetHack (36).

The major exception is, of course, Dungeon Master (47), which I will probably replay sometime in the coming years. When I first played it in 2010, I was very new to RPG history and didn't fully understand its impact on the rest of the genre. I also had never experienced its type of gameplay and viscerally didn't take to it. Now that I've had more experience with its successors . . . well, I still don't prefer the approach, but I think I like it better than I did 8 years ago, and I'm in a better position to analyze its contributions.
            
Dungeon Master invented the style of gameplay that we're now enjoying in Eye of the Beholder II.
          
I originally gave Game of the Year for 1987 to NetHack, but with several years of hindsight, there's no question that I have to switch it to Dungeon Master, both for the quality of the game and for its influence on the genre. NetHack deserves to be recognized, but it's always tough to nail roguelikes, which undergo continuous development, to a specific year. Even if we can, my own rating says I didn't enjoy it as much as Dungeon Master, and I can't honestly claim it was more influential.

If not for Dungeon Master, Alternate Reality: The Dungeon would have a shot. I loved that game, not just because it was good, but because it was so much better than I expected after Alternate Reality: The City. Its unsung developers made good on the empty promises of the originator of the "series," crafting a better game with an actual ending. As for other titles, Deathlord was impressive but not really influential; Beyond Zork was mostly enjoyable for its text adventure half; Pirates! isn't defensible as an RPG at all; and everything else is a sequel that didn't improve significantly on its predecessor.
         
Alternate Reality: The Dungeon was a rare sequel that vastly improved on its predecessor.
         
Other notes on the year:

  • Two games that put the A.D. on the wrong side of the year: 2400 A.D. and Alien Fires: 2199 A.D. The former remains one of the least-satisfying Origin games.
  • Four Ultima-derived titles: Deathlord, Skariten, Gates of Delirium, Hera
  • My "won?" rate is pretty low for the year, at about 66%. 
  • There will be games in the year that I try again. Wizardry IV needs to be beaten. I'd like to look at The Seven Spirits of Ra again now that I've played the first game from the developers. Faery Tale Adventure will always be a sore spot.
      
It wasn't even hard. It was just huge, empty, and boring.
        
We have only two more years before I'm caught up on the "backtracking" list and can just work off a single list (although even then, there will be some backtracking to pick up games that I missed even on the second pass). 1988 has 20 games that I didn't catch the first time, none of which I know anything about except The Legend of Blacksilver. I'm eager to play that because it's the last Charles Dougherty (Questron) title. Beyond that, I can't say that I'm looking forward to any of them, but that's mostly because I've never heard of them. I suspect a handful will fall to the definition razor, particularly the two contributed by GameFAQs (Gold of the Realm and Slaygon), which is almost always wrong when it conflicts with MobyGames.

There's less diversity in 1988 than 1987, but we still have a few foreign games, including Last Armageddon and The Scheme from Japan, Turlogh de Rodeur from France, and Nippon from Germany. 

I've already done a "1988/1989" transition posting--it was the first one I did--so when I get to the end of these new 20, it will just be a brief addendum to that. Don't hold your breath on any of these 20 games nudging Pool of Radiance out of the "Game of the Year" spot.


56 comments:

  1. Though I'm not a fan of 1st Person Perspective RPGs, I'm glad you made the switch for DM to dethrone Nethack

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    1. Agreed. I enjoy rogue-like more, but I remember at the time how revolutionary DM felt when I played it in the back of a B. Dalton bookstore as a kid.

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    2. I think this is well deserved indeed. Especially more so since Nethack has forever been in constant development up to today. For me it's really a "timeless" game, while Dungeon Master is forever marked "1987".

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  2. "The top-rated game of the year, Pirates! (48), isn't even really an RPG"

    I would really like to see what you did with pirates with "Lords of Midnight".

    I won´t say it is an RPG, but Pirates! depsite not being an RPG contributed interestign posts to the blog, and in the categories it ha di think it did well enought that soem lesson could be taken and applied to RPG design.

    I think lords of Midnight might contribute similarly to the blog.

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    1. Well, Arnold Hendrick, who was involved in the design of Pirates!, has an RPG coming up in 1992 with "Darklands". You can see some of the strenghts of Pirates! in that game. E.g., I think the attention paid to historical accuracy in both games was due to Hendrick's interest in history.

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    2. I am definitely looking forward to Chet´s posts on "DarkLands". I think it will be interesting to see him compare "Darklands" and "Pirates!".

      Maybe Chet can be convinced to play "Midwinter"? soe consider it an RPg due to the social aspects, but I don[´t think it passes on his deinition.

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    3. I would love to see a play-through of "Lords of Midnight" and its sequel.

      Darklands may occupy Chet about as long as Nethack with all there is to do. Great game though, none of that time would be begrudged, I think.

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  3. As the first computer game I ever played, Dungeon Master will always hold a special place in my heart. I'm glad you decided to make it Game of the Year for 1987, even if its enormous influence hasn't given you a lot of joy (on average). Maybe when you get to the Grimrock games in 2030 things will start to improve? At least there's Dungeon Master 2 coming up in a relatively short amount of time. That's an... interesting sequel.

    1987 was a huge year for console RPGs, additionally, with the Japanese releases of Zelda II (the closest the Zelda games ever got to an RPG), Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, the vastly expanded Dragon Quest II, and the aforementioned The Ancient Land of Ys. Definitely a stacked year for RPGs of all stripes.

    Looking forward to your imminent 1991/1992 round-up also. Curious what your favorite was from that year.

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    1. Ha, just checked back to find out that you covered most of the console RPGs I mentioned in the 1985/1986 appraisal (when discussing 85-87 as a formative period). I knew I recalled you mentioning them in a quick rundown/list.

      Well, uh, here they are again?

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    2. >> "Maybe when you get to the Grimrock games in 2130"

      Fixed that for you.

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  4. Legend Of Blacksilver... that's my favorite of the Dougherty games... Though I have yet to play the first Questron.

    Looking forward to you getting into that one.

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  5. FYI as of this moment the "Game of the Year" listing on the right-hand side of the blog still has Nethack for 1987. But as a veteran Nethacker who also played Dungeon Master, I agree that DM is far more representative of 1987 than Nethack is.

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    1. I schedule the posts a couple days in advance. I have to update the sidebar manually and it maybe takes me a few days to get to it.

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  6. Copyedit: "SpuruX"

    NetHack was an iteration on Hack which was an iteration on Rogue, which is appropriately 1980 GOTY. Yes, NetHack was an important release, but I don't think it's as significant as DM.
    DM seems to represent a critical evolutionary step between Wizardry and UU (1992's GOTY, let's not pretend) and that lineage has been the dominant genre of CRPGs since maybe 2002.

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    1. Well, Ultima 7 came out that year as well... They're both serious contenders.

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    2. It will be interesting to see how Addict rates U7 when it comes around, but have a hunch it won't rank as high as our collective rose-coloured glasses think it will. The story is mostly just a series of 'sorry Avatar, but the foozle is in another castle'. The interface, graphics and sound were a solid leap forward, but 7b made them even better while delivering a much more engaging and dynamic story line.

      Ultima Underworld on the other hand brings us the first of Warren Spector's so-called 'Immersive Sims' that he would perfect through System Shock, Thief and Deus Ex, and would be imitated by The Elder Scrolls', the Bio-Shock's and many, many others.

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    3. Could you explain what "the foozle" stands for? I stumbled upon this expression in Notch's Minicraft where it's the name of the endboss. As far as I can remember Notch dedicated this minigame to his father who suffered from alcoholism. Now, in my language (German) "foozle" sounds exactly like "fusel". Now, is there a connection between those words? I don't get it.

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    4. ... I get the Mario reference, though :)

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    5. @amarant Foozle is just a generic name for the cliche Final Evil Bad Guy of any game. It is the leader of the enemy forces, the force behind the conspiracy. It has world domination or destruction as its goal. Foozle is not a proper name although it can be in a self aware game. Check out this link to TV Tropes for more info but be ready to spend the rest of your day reading about Tropes in entertainment.

      http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FinalBoss

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    6. My glasses for U7 aren't so rose-coloured, because I played it for the first time last year. It's a great game, and a major step towards the Baldur's Gate style of RPG. And I really appreciated the open-endedness of the plot, whereas I gave up on Serpent Isle due to it just piling annoying thing after annoying thing on top of me. Where U7 will fall down is the combat, which is genuinely dreadful, but the rest of the game is good enough to put it in contention. I'd give the nod to Underworld, but not by a huge amount.

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    7. @Mr. Pavone: Nice explanation, thank you!

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    8. I would say that Wizardry 7 is also a serious contender, but given Chet's history with the series, maybe on this particular blog it's not.

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    9. Might & Magic 4 as well. 1992 is a pretty stacked year.

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    10. I'd rate the 1992 games thuswise:
      Ultima Underworld
      Dark Queen of Krynn (best of the Gold Box games, IMO)
      Darklands (a unique game and very good despite some bad flaws)
      Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant (would have been so much better if the encounter rate was cut in half)
      Treasures of the Savage Frontier
      Black Crypt (best Real Time Blobber after DM and CSB, IMO)
      World of Xeen (too easy and too simplistic for my taste.
      Didn't play U7 due to hating the UI. Too bad the Lazarus guys didn't remake this one instead of U5.

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    11. Funny, while I certainly liked Ultima Underworld, I never bothered finishing it because I thought it was too empty & soulless. I recognized the technical marvel, but it lacked personality.
      I enjoyed Ultima Underworld II a lot more, even if it was more artificial & pieced together like Frankenstein's creature :)
      As for Ultima VII, it is, in my eyes, a lot better than any of the Ultima Underworld because of the story and the social/religious commentary (even if it is naive, it made me think and question the world around me - which too few RPG did, do & will do). I thought the game was very well made and very engaging. The only issue I had was the size of towns, I always dreaded getting into a new town, knowing I would want to discus with every single resident until I explored every topic possible... But every encounter was unique and interesting.
      As for Wizardry VII, it will remain forever my favorite RPG of all time because it pits factions against each other and they all explore the land in real time, which affects what you discover (or not) in dungeons. I had never seen that in any CRPG and have sadly never encountered that again to such an extent.

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    12. I played U7 using Exult, which I understand mitigates the UI a little bit by providing keyboard shortcuts for keys and feeding your party. I can understand not liking that aspect of the game, but it gets so many other things right.

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  7. I enjoyed Ultima, Phantasie, Wizardry and Bard Tale, but Dungeon Master (especially with superior graphics and sound on the Atari ST) changed everything. It was the first interactive game, and the first time I ever felt sheer terror in a game (playing hide and seek with those giant scorpions!). It was never equaled until Ultima Underworld raised the bar with full 360 degree movement five years later. Glad to see you rethink your position.

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  8. I'm glad to see Dungeon Master promoted to 1987 GotY. It is one of the most immersive RPGs I've played, and was an influence towards Lori and I becoming game developers and creating the Hero's Quest / Quest for Glory series.

    How does one play Wizardry IV these days? I still have the original disks, but doubt they work on Windows 10 (and I no longer have a floppy drive). I found a web site that supposedly emulates it, but without saved games it will be impossible to finish. I still have all my old maps from the Wizardry games. :-)

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    1. Acquire the files (there are many ways to do this) and use DOSBOX. This is how GoG and Steam releases a lot of the old games.

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    2. Probably the easiest way for Wiz IV is to emulate the Apple ][ and use that. This way, you know the timing will be right which is kinda important in this one; whilst Dosbox is always a fiddle with settings until you think they might be right.

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    3. I played both versions and except for the graphics the only practical difference was that the DOS version was faster and thus more convenient to play.

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  9. Aw, I was really looking forward to you making loads of people angry by snubbing Dungeon Master yet again.

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    1. Me too. I never liked DM, not when it cane out, not years later. Half the game is using movement to outwit really bad creature AI. (Try catching a real animal in a garage door—good lick with that.)

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    2. Well, I do think it's the correct choice for Game of the Year 1987. I just like to watch people gettin' mad.

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  10. I was selling Amiga games in 1987, and lemme tell ya, Dungeon Master was awesome. I never got that far with it, though. I found it very difficult, mostly because I didn't understand that you weren't supposed to just stand there. I'd been playing pen-and-paper D&D for so long that my brain just didn't think that way about fantasy combat. I tried using shields and positioning, but got stomped over and over. I loved the really early game, but as soon as things started getting hard, I failed dismally. In fact, I don't think I learned the concept of 'kiting' until MMOs!

    That's one of the real downsides to the world we had at the time: without the Internet, it was just you and your friends, and if you were the only one of your group playing Dungeon Master (as I was), there wasn't any easy way to swap tips. BBSes were just starting to be things, but I don't remember any game-focused areas in any of the BBSes I called. So, it was mostly what I could figure out for myself, and there were so many other games available that I didn't put that much thinking time into Dungeon Master, even though I respected it tremendously. (and moved VAST numbers of copies.) Honestly, it might really have deserved overall Game of the Year honors, not just RPG Of The Year. It was incredibly innovative, damn near reinventing its entire genre, all by itself. I just really, really sucked at it.

    Although, now that I'm thinking about actual sales, I don't think it came out for the Amiga right away. I think it was Atari ST only for at least a year, maybe two, and then finally got ported. I remember being very, very jealous that ST owners could play it and I couldn't. (I didn't know, yet, that I sucked at it. :) ) So, strictly speaking, you may not have been playing a 1987 game, but..... meh, close enough.

    OK, I was curious, and looked it up before posting: the Amiga version was 1988. So it only *seemed* like two years, I guess. :) Maybe it was early '87 and late '88? It definitely felt longer than a year.

    On Faery Tale Adventure:

    >It wasn't even hard. It was just huge, empty, and boring.

    Yeah, I reacted exactly the same way to it, at the time. I had multiple Amiga friends who raved about it, though. In retrospect, I think that was because it was on the Amiga, not because it was good. In 1987, it might have been the only Amiga-native RPG, although I'd have to do some research to back that up. We Amigoids were, by and large, a bunch of zealots, and software-deprived zealots at that, so *of course* the Amiga RPG was the very best EVAH. It eventually got ported to other systems, but I think that took quite some time, maybe longer than Dungeon Master, and in the interim, it was a way for Amiga nuts to feel superior to all those lesser machine owners.


    But, me? I really didn't like it. I thought it was so very blah. When people came in looking for recommendations, I'd mention it, saying that it was popular and that lots of people liked it, but that I didn't enjoy it myself. My theory about *why* people liked it didn't happen until much later, once I got some perspective on Amiga zealotry. All I knew at the time was that people constantly talked it up, and I found it terribly tedious.

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    1. Is that what's behind all the FTA admiration? It's wrapped up in the Amiga cult?

      I can't explain it, but a lot of people were raw when I quit it. They still bring it up.

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    2. For me, the appeal of FTA was the (admittedly sparse) encounters & discoveries to be made. The world was otherwise quite empty and boring, but the discoveries were nice and engaging (at least to my young mind).
      You also have to understand that this kind of game was not exactly common on computers. so, while console players were probably more jaded and critical towards it, it still was standing out at the time. It marked a true break with the 8-bit computer games.
      I never considered it to be a masterpiece or anything, but I still have fond memories and still remember some of the puzzles and situations to this day.

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    3. Not an Amiga owner, then or now, so I can't speak to that angle of things -- I played the console port on the Sega Genesis. But playing FTA, I specifically liked the huge scope and emptiness of a game world that's largely indifferent to your existence, in which not every corridor or area has a payoff, and points of interest are deliberately few and far between. It feels truthful to me, somehow, to have an adventure where the bulk of your time is spent hoofing it over long distances and seeing little of importance -- until you blunder on some abandoned cabin or weird stone monument.

      It's a deeply flawed game but it didn't make me feel like I was in a Skinner box, which so many RPGs do these days.

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    4. I just ran into this on Medium: “The Faery Tale Adventure: A personal history” by Talin https://medium.com/@dreamertalin/the-faery-tale-adventure-a-personal-history-4fae0617a18d

      Interesting details from the game author.

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  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. I never understood the appeal of FTA. Huge open game with nothing to do in it.

      I never liked DM but I can understand why many people do. If the tactics that work in DM seemed remotely plausible I would like it better. Kiting, side-stepping, combat dance, door-smashing. .

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  12. Probably you need to play Eye of the Beholder to recognize what Dungeon Master did. I'm curios for the replay. Maybe a custom dungeon, I heard of this "Imprisoned Again" being quite okayish :o

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    1. I liked Eye of the Beholder far better than DM. Played both back in the day. Didn’t like either enough to play sequels. UU was great, but had very different gameplay. To each his own I guess.

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  13. Dungeon Master was the first modern RPG.

    Real-time combat, intuitive mouse controls, drag-and-drop interface, no requirement to read a manual, not split into separate screens for exploration and combat, and requiring some agility of the player. It's lineage can be seen in today's Immersive Sims and in MMORPGs.

    To me, it's not just RPG Of The Year 1987, but RPG Of The Decade.

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    1. I'm glad you feel that way about the game, but you have to recognize that not everyone sees "real-time combat" and "requiring some agility of the player" as steps forward in the RPG genre. Clearly it was influential, which is why I gave it GOTY, but I still prefer a purer RPG approach with turn-based combat.

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    2. Dungeon Master is a slow for being real time game (try playing IE games real time!), and the icons are quite big, so unless you're handicaped in some way, it shouldn't really rely on your physical agility and dexterity. Your characters even have the sense to turn around if attacked from behind or from the side.

      Also, I think it should be possible to play "honourably", with no combat walzt (except for the Dragon(s)). After all, you get a lot "freeze boxes", spell points regenerate without resting and there are shield spells that reduce enemy damage.

      Try playing this way if you're gonna replay Dungeon Master.

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    3. @CRPG Addict
      "I'm glad you feel that way about the game, but you have to recognize that not everyone sees "real-time combat" and "requiring some agility of the player" as steps forward in the RPG genre."

      Yes, I know. I understand players who miss tactical possibilities such as those of the Gold Box games, or the NPC interactions of an Ultima game, and I completely understand that you rate a lot of 80's RPGs higher than DM. No argument there.

      Nowadays there exist lots of Action RPGs as well as many other games with RPG elements that are far from classic turn-based, tactical RPGs, and they have a different (though overlapping) audience to classic RPGs, and you could argue that this trend started with DM.

      @PetrusOctavianus
      Several people have suggested this, and though I'm actually one of the people who like playing DM the waltzy way, if I ever play it again (which would be the 4th time or so) I'll seriously try this "honourable" method.

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  14. I wouldn't exactly call DM intuitive... its entire interface is exceedingly clunky, from its character generation to its spellcasting; from displaying each character in three different spots on the same screen to mixing up action buttons in the middle of the inventory paperdoll; and from its three seemingly-identical status bars per character to the general shortage of keyboard controls.

    Yes, it's clearly innovative and influential, but it's also clearly an early attempt that needed lots of polishing in later games.

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    1. It's possible the UI was improved in later games, but no real time blobbers really improved on the core gameplay of DM and Chaos Strikes Back. With the exception of some NPC interaction, later games didn't improve anything, but instead were dumbed down. And they were also sped up, making the combat waltz more important.

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    2. Intuitiveness and clunkyness are actually two different, orthogonal criteria. An intuitive interface means that the user understands it without needing to read instructions. An interface that is not clunky means that the user can do what he wants quickly and without errors.

      So you could say that DM's interface is extremely intuitive when compared to other games of the time, and still quite intuitive when seen from a modern viewpoint. The only thing that requires reading instructions are the names of the magic runes.

      And it can also be said that DM has a pretty non-clunky interface when compared to other games of the time (reviewers back then praised the interface and didn't complain about clunkyness), but a somewhat clunky interface when viewed from a modern viewpoint.

      (Though you could also argue that the difficulty of the interface, such as the act of spellcasting by stringing runes together, is part of the game and as such, deliberately difficult and not accidentally clunky.)

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    3. Fine, if you want to be that nitpicky about definitions, then DM is highly unintuitive AS WELL AS very clunky. Because of the examples I mentioned earlier.

      And yes, most other blobbers that I've played do dramatically improve on the interface. In terms of core gameplay, I note that DM scores low in the areas of: game world, NPCs, equipment, economy, and quests; so other blobbers improve on that, too.

      So yeah, a good first try but lots of room for improvement.

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    4. I never had any problems with the DM UI. It's elegant and gets the work done.

      And NPCs, economy and quests are hardly the core gameplay for a real time blobber; those things are more important in less abstract games. In real time blobbers navigating the dungeon (level design) and puzzles is the core gameplay.

      DM and CSB also had a better game world than later RTBs in that the dungeon was more interactive: you needed light, you could bash or fireball doors, you could use doors and pits against enemies and you could throw missiles though bars, you need to eat and drink and most of all the dungeon levels were interconnected, while later games mostly had seperate levels.

      Later games so dumbed down in these regards that they could as well have been turn based, since they removed or dumbed down some of the things that made it a point in making the game real time in the first place.

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    5. I played DM with 8 years and fully understood it without a manual or knowing any english (I got a dictionary, though). I couldn't cast spells, but that's kind of a copy protection, so by design. The spell casting system makes a lot of sense in a real time game, it can get really hectic to heal for example.
      Actually, DM and especially its clean interface spoiled me for years for other games to come, because it was that easy and direct.

      The core gameplay is unmatched in this genre, even modern clones like legend of Grimrock basically play the same and games like Eye of the Beholder, 4 years later, play far slower and more indirect and clunky. In DM, stuff happens instantly and you get feedback instantly. In EoB, you have 5% story and 95% a worse DM. And that on a newer generation of PCs.

      It's argueable and up to personal preference, if NPCs and cut-scenes really improve on the gameplay. But the bare bone design of DM actually made it very immersive, the player controls everything and is in the game all the time.
      Surely a dungeon crawler isn't the perfect medium to tell an epic story, that's why isometric games took over starting with Baldur's Gate.

      But the thing about DM is that I and others have written posts like this all over the comment section of this blog. It simply got people hooked like very few other games.

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  15. Elegant. Really. Character life bars are in the top left, character position is in the top right. Character action buttons are in the bottom right but the weapons they represent are in the top left. Oh, and they get three identical unmarked bars that represent different things. That's the opposite of elegant, really :)

    Regarding gameplay, I'll just call you on a "No True Scotsman" fallacy and leave it at that.

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    1. We get it. You dont like DM very much. Well I did then and still do.

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5. Comments on my blog are not a place for slurs against any race, sex, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or mental or physical disability. I will delete these on a case-by-case basis depending on my interpretation of what constitutes a "slur."

Blogger has a way of "eating" comments, so I highly recommend that you copy your words to the clipboard before submitting, just in case.

I read all comments, no matter how old the entry. So do many of my subscribers. Reader comments on "old" games continue to supplement our understanding of them. As such, all comment threads on this blog are live and active unless I specifically turn them off. There is no such thing as "necro-posting" on this blog, and thus no need to use that term.

I will delete any comments that simply point out typos. If you want to use the commenting system to alert me to them, great, I appreciate it, but there's no reason to leave such comments preserved for posterity.

I'm sorry for any difficulty commenting. I turn moderation on and off and "word verification" on and off frequently depending on the volume of spam I'm receiving. I only use either when spam gets out of control, so I appreciate your patience with both moderation tools.