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. 
 
Posted by CRPG Addict at 7:54 PM

6 comments:

  1. André from MontréalAugust 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. MenhirMikeAugust 15, 2025 at 11:48 PM

    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. BuscaAugust 16, 2025 at 3:10 AM

    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
  4. POAugust 16, 2025 at 6:33 AM

    "The latest winner's board. I don't know what happened to #2."
    There's definitely a lacuna on that list.

    ReplyDelete
  5. BitmapAugust 16, 2025 at 7:07 AM

    Great video; I'd be glad to see more of this kind.

    I think that narrating while playing works very well in your case, it's lively and less predictable than narrating after the fact.

    ReplyDelete
  6. LoremasterAugust 16, 2025 at 9:45 AM

    HAHAHAH now check again! Really, it was actually you I've beaten yesterday? I thought someone just used Chester nickname since you've played this game such a long time ago. What a coincidence!

    Merely a couple days ago I've started working on a series of videos concerning the history of CRPGs. Of course your blog is an invaluable source for me (I've been checking it out from time to time since 2012, still waiting for TES Arena review after 13 years!). And while recording the footage of The Dungeon I realized that Chester must be the name of your character, but that sounded improbable since it was the most recent winner. Apparently we played the game almost simultaneously!

    Initially I didn't even plan to beat it, but something about winning the first CRPG and getting into the Hall of Fame on some far away PLATO server made me rethink that. Took me just a bit more than an hour, got lucky on my 5th try with 2 early jewelry pieces. Glad to find myself in such a legendary company!

    For anyone wondering, here's my unnarated walkthrough of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki88_JJ7a4M

    ReplyDelete

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