MAG: Won!*

The "frakola" reference escapes me. Googling turns up some users on ebay and Dungeons & Dragons online.

First off, no congratulations. That asterisk next to the word "won!" means I cheated. I'm convinced I could have beaten the game fair-and-square given a little patience--the game is quite notably easier than Rogue--but with Might & Magic II on the horizon, patience is a distant fantasy. My cheating was of the simple type: I backed up saved games and reloaded when I died. While my rules say "no cheating," I'm going to allow it occasionally when it's clear to me that I won't keep playing otherwise, and I just want to see what the end looks like.

The basic gameplay didn't change. The dungeon turned out to have 25 levels, and the first 24 were randomly generated. The monsters got harder, and I should have mentioned that many of the monsters in MAG are unique to the game, including:

• Kleptums, which steal your items and vanish, forcing you to chase them around the dungeon level (much like leprechauns in NetHack)

• Reapers, which, unlike their benign counterparts in Ultima IV, "slice experience levels" from you. God, I hate that.

• Polymorphers, who turn themselves into different monsters (with the associated powers) but who can also turn you into a different creature for a few turns.
  

Fortunately, this is sometimes awesome.

The game also has, much like its siblings, a gallery of monsters that can confuse you or sap your strength.

As I said yesterday, though, Mike made it a little easier than other roguelikes. In addition to the characteristics I identified in my first MAG posting, I discovered that strength drains are not permanent, there are only a few scrolls and potions that harm your character (and these are not permanent either). Sometimes scrolls don't disappear when you use them, so you might get multiple weapon or armor enchantments out of a single scroll. Hit point regeneration is fairly rapid, so you can often just run away from enemies. Even though they follow, you quickly heal, and then you can turn around and wallop them when you're feeling hale. An easy strategy is to lead the enemy back to a set of stairs, go up (they don't follow), pass the time and heal, and then head back down to strike a few blows. Repeat as necessary. This was the only way I could defeat blue dragons starting on Level 20.


The maximum experience level in the game is 20; I only achieved 11. Probably the only way to win the game fair is to level grind up to 20 before you hit dungeon Level 20 and start having to face dragons.

On Level 25, through a maze, I found a dragon kingdom, with an "imperial dragon" sitting on a throne, another roaming the room, plus other assorted bad guys, including a lich, a hill giant, and two white dragons.


I would never have survived this area, not even with running, not even with saving and reloading, except that I had two potions of invisibility. All I had to do was quaff one and chuck stuff at the imperial dragon until he got pissed and got off his throne. Then I ran up and stole the Sudbury Sapphire.

After that, just like Rogue, it was an easy matter to run from stairway to stairway and get out of the dungeon, at which point I got the message at the top of this posting.

Incidentally, the famed "pools of vomit" were, I guess, these little squiggles:

My guy looks awfully happy for someone surrounded by vomit.

I didn't realize they were supposed to be vomit until I accidentally overate and hurled a combination of beef jerky and stale bread. Why there's so much vomit lying around dungeons, I have no idea.

As for the GIMLET, it's going to be similar to Rogue. The game world gets a 1 because there hardly is one; most roguelikes aren't big on back story. There's barely any character development and no choices to make during creation (1). There are no NPCs (0). Encounters and magic and combat are traditional roguelikes, without much complexity (3 each), although some of the monsters are unique. Like Rogue, it excels in the variety of equipment that you can find, and how it makes identifying the equipment part of the challenge of the game (5), but there are no stores and no economy (0); all the gold you find just adds to your final score. The one quest is clear but very basic, livened only by the presence of the dragon kingdom at the end (2), in contrast to Rogue, which just has the Amulet of Yendor appear in a random place. The graphics, sound, and controls are good for the roguelike genre (5), and the gameplay is brisk. Call me a wimp, but I like that it's slightly easier than Rogue. The ability to retreat up levels and the relatively lesser risk of starvation are pluses in my book (6).

The final rating of 26 puts it slightly higher than Rogue but not extremely high. It would be tough for most roguelikes to achieve a particularly high score on my GIMLET scale because they often lack elements of CRPGs, like NPCs and stores. (NetHack is an exception, obviously, as are some modern roguelikes.)

I really have to hand it to Mike Teixeira. This would be a great game to introduce players to the concept of roguelikes without being as punishingly difficult as Rogue or as complicated as NetHack. Both of my e-mails to him bounced back. I hope he stumbles upon this blog someday so I can send him his $10.

Okay, let's talk about the next game. I had it listed as Mars Saga, but as some of you have pointed out in the comments, the original Mars Saga was never released for DOS, only the Commodore 64 and the Apple II. MobyGames lists it as having a DOS released, but the DOS release from 1989 was titled Mines of Titan. According to the Wikipedia entry on the game, in the DOS entry, "the game was completely fleshed out...[and] the setting of the game was moved from Mars to Titan, a moon of Saturn." It also notes there are plot differences and additional side quests. Despite MobyGames's ruling, all of these changes strike me as a fundamentally different game, not simply a "DOS version" of Mars Saga.

Thus, Mars Saga is removed, Mines of Titan gets kicked down to the 1989 list, and the next game becomes...Might & Magic II. It's going to be a good weekend.

Game 52: MAG: A Dungeon Adventuring Game (1988)

At first glance, Mike's Adventure Game (which I will abbreviate MAG from now on) is the same game as Rogue (reviewed here), although you're trying to find the Sudbury Sapphire instead of the Amulet of Yendor. Check out these two screen shots, the top from MAG and the bottom from Rogue, and tell me if you see any real difference.



The textures are virtually identical. The games are the same in that you do not pick a particular class, and your attributes are only hit points and strength. Levels are randomly generated. You kill monsters represented by letters, you find unidentified potions, scrolls, and rings, and so on. There are secret doors that you have to search for, and traps that put you to sleep, teleport you, and hold you in place for a time. You can find riches, but there are no stores in which to spend them--they just add to your overall score. Like Rogue, it deletes your saved game when you reload, meaning that death is permanent.

And yet your fame lives on.

Away from the surface, though, MAG has a number of innovations that distinguish it from Rogue and make it more of a transition between Rogue and NetHack. Though perhaps the game is simply derivative of Hack, which was also such a transition. I didn't play it. In any event, here are the new features I've found:

• Doors are sometimes stuck or require a key (found at other parts on the level) to open.

• Enemies can set off traps, and if they do, you hear the sounds of it in the distance.
• Like the nymphs in NetHack, there are fairies that steal your stuff.
• But there are also scrolls of genocide!

No more stealing my stuff.

• I don't remember rings of resurrection in Rogue, although they may have been there. If you're wearing one when you die, you automatically get resurrected, although with no equipment, so you're very likely to just die again.

• If you see a torch on the wall, you can light it or extinguish it.

The developer also seems to have made the game slightly easier. The monsters respawn on each level, though not quite so rapidly. You need food and get hungry, but you find a lot more food than I remember in Rogue and you don't get hungry quite as fast. Unlike Rogue (but like NetHack), you can backtrack to previous levels. Monsters are more likely to drop food, so you can stay on a low level and grind for a while without worrying about starvation.

That doesn't mean the game is "easy," though. It is a roguelike, after all. Like most of them, escaping from battle is virtually impossible once engaged, and this screen appears frequently:



Nonetheless, in the first few hours I played the game, I managed to get a character (my sixth, I think) to Level 10 without dying, and the game notes seem to suggest that the Sapphire appears on Level 20 or so.

I'll give it at least six hours, but it's not yielding so many innovations over Rogue and other roguelikes that it's worth too much time. It's worth the $10 that developer Mike Teixeira asked for in 1988. The version I downloaded had a small instruction guide from Mike with two e-mail addresses, so he must have re-released the game after 1988; I'll see if he's available at either.