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.