Friday, August 15, 2025

The Dungeon (pedit5): Back on Top

 
The latest winner's board. I don't know what happened to #2.
     
I happened to note the other day that enough people had won The Dungeon (1975) to push me out of the Hall of Fame, so I took some time this week to restore my rightful place. It took about 4 hours and maybe 30-40 characters. As we learned in my previous coverage of the world's first CRPG, winning The Dungeon is more about luck than skill. 
   
I took the opportunity to make a video:


   
 
It's not a great video. If I'm ever going to be good at videos, I know I need to separate video and audio, narrating after I play rather than while I play. Nonetheless, it covers the salient points and checks a longstanding item off my "to do" list. 
    
Back to the regular program soon, but I got really frustrated with Ishar 2 after the last entry. 
 

3 comments:

  1. AndrĂ© from MontrĂ©alAugust 15, 2025 at 10:56 PM

    Hi Chester! Thank you for showing The Dungeon and other PLATO games. I really enjoyed to see how these games work and to be informed about historical facts.

    I hope you'll be able to have fun playing Ishar II ( because personaly I couldn't stand it. I tried it after finishing Ishar 1 and I was so annoyed by some of the game features that I got back to the original Wizardry on applewin and started Ultima!)

    I am empressed by your dedication! I know you'll be able to finish it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your last sentence encapsulates my feelings about the Ishar games. I WANT to love them for their looks, but I dislike them for just not being very fun compared to the competition.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your rightful place as the most recent player to win ;-)?

    Nice to have the chronology and some gameplay in a video. In addition to the blog posts, that helps to understand both.

    Sounds like all three games you currently play for the blog have some interesting / positive features, but considerable potential for frustration as well. Hope you don't get bogged down too much.

    ReplyDelete

I welcome all comments about the material in this blog, and I generally do not censor them. However, please follow these rules:

1. DO NOT COMMENT ANONYMOUSLY. If you do not want to log in or cannot log in with a Google Account, choose the "Name/URL" option and type a name (you can leave the URL blank). If that doesn't work, use the "Anonymous" option but put your name of choice at the top of the entry.

2. Do not link to any commercial entities, including Kickstarter campaigns, unless they're directly relevant to the material in the associated blog posting. (For instance, that GOG is selling the particular game I'm playing is relevant; that Steam is having a sale this week on other games is not.) This also includes user names that link to advertising.

3. Please avoid profanity and vulgar language. I don't want my blog flagged by too many filters. I will delete comments containing profanity on a case-by-case basis.

4. I appreciate if you use ROT13 for explicit spoilers for the current game and upcoming games. Please at least mention "ROT13" in the comment so we don't get a lot of replies saying "what is that gibberish?"

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.