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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
| A History of D&D Games @ Gamespy |
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Gamespy has joined the Dungeon & Dragons 30th anniversary celebrations with Part 1 of <a href="http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/538/538865p1.html" target="_blank">A History of D&D Games</a>, starting with Pool of Radiance and touching on some of the other games SSI released in '88-'91:<blockquote><em>J.C. Herz, in her personal journey through the history of video games, Joystick Nation, pinpoints the close connection between video gaming and Dungeons & Dragons:
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<br> "A high percentage of computer programmers were and are, not surprisingly, Dungeons & Dragons aficionados. There's an affinity between computer programming and games that require reams of graph paper and 20-sided dice. Both are artificial universes governed by quantifiable rules, probability, and obsessive mapping… A combination of computers and dragon-slashing games was begging to happen." </em></blockquote> |
Mon Aug 16, 2004 7:56 pm |
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Lucky Day
Guest
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quote:
Pool of Radiance
Publisher: SSI
Developer: SSI
Platforms: PC, C64, Apple II, NES, Atari ST, Amiga
This is it, the big one that started it all
Not likely! Other than the fan made D&D text games for the Apple that eventually spawned Telengard, Akalalabeth -> Ultima, and the aforementioned Rogue -> Nethack -> Diablo
D&D actually had some licensed video games long before 1988.
Intellivision had several D&D and AD&D cartridges. One was even finished after Intellivision closed its doors and the removed the D&D name from it:
http://www.intellivisionlives.com/bluesky/games/credits/intv2.shtml
What I find interesting is if you consider that Collossal Caves Adventure aka Adventure predates D&D then the CRPG was invented before the PnP RPG was by 2 years. |
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Mon Aug 16, 2004 8:12 pm |
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Lorgosin
Head Merchant
Joined: 10 Aug 2002
Posts: 69
Location: Sweden |
Pool of Radiance was the first D&D game that was any good. That's what they mean. Most people don't consider "Tennis for Two" to be the electronic game that started it all and still it predated pong by more than a decade. Collassal Caves, Adventure and later Zork, were clearly adventure games. You didn't play a role. |
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Tue Aug 17, 2004 12:24 am |
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Lucky Day
Guest
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there's a another serious flaw in the opening of this article as well:
"Despite earlier attempts to port the D&D experience to video games, the computing power simply didn't exist to accurately represent the game's rules."
The fact of the matter is this game was made on the Apple ][ and C64 at the core of which was the 1mhz 6502 processor. This processor had been used at least since 1977, 10 years since this game was made. The C64, which had been arond at least 5 years since this game came out, didn't even let the programmer use all of its 64k of memory available.
In fact when PoR was released it was just that, poor. At least five franchises outclassed it in terms of quality CRPG's: Ultima, Wizardry, Bard's Tale, Might and Magic and King's Quest. The only thing interesting about it was the Isometric combat and the ability to design the look of your characters. But it suffered what every SSI game had, tedious number crunching and an ugly look.
You can all Collossal Caverns Adventure an Adventure game now because its now a defined genre named after the game itself. There is now a clear definition of what a CRPG is. However, it didn't exist back when it was made, nor was the PnP RPG invented as I've pointed out.
In fact a modern CRPG is not much more than an action or tactical combat game without borrowing the Role Playing elements intrinsic in Adventure games now known as Interactive Fiction. Ultima 1-5 and Wizardry 1-4 were the early examples of this.
I argue that Adventure games then and now have more real Role Playing elements then games defined as CRPG's today, and I don't include Rogue/Diablo like games in that list.
oh, and Pong was not the first Video Game made, Space Wars was. |
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Tue Aug 17, 2004 1:55 am |
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Lorgosin
Head Merchant
Joined: 10 Aug 2002
Posts: 69
Location: Sweden |
quote:
Originally posted by Lucky Day
In fact when PoR was released it was just that, poor. At least five franchises outclassed it in terms of quality CRPG's: Ultima, Wizardry, Bard's Tale, Might and Magic and King's Quest. The only thing interesting about it was the Isometric combat and the ability to design the look of your characters. But it suffered what every SSI game had, tedious number crunching and an ugly look.
You can all Collossal Caverns Adventure an Adventure game now because its now a defined genre named after the game itself. There is now a clear definition of what a CRPG is. However, it didn't exist back when it was made, nor was the PnP RPG invented as I've pointed out.
I argue that Adventure games then and now have more real Role Playing elements then games defined as CRPG's today, and I don't include Rogue/Diablo like games in that list.
oh, and Pong was not the first Video Game made, Space Wars was.
I'll deal with this one item at a time.
None of the (admittedly good) series you mentioned are D&D licensed and are therefore irrellevant here.
Collossal Caves doesn't let you play a role and is therefore not an RPG.
Because the story in adventure games are mostly completely linear they don't let you make meaningful choises, and therefore it's impossible to play a role.
Space War can in no way be said to be the first Video Game since "Tennis for Two" beat it by many years. If you would have read my post more carefully you would have realized that I pointed out the very fact that Pong was not first, only the game that got the general public aware of electronoc games. |
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Tue Aug 17, 2004 9:45 pm |
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Lucky Day
Guest
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I stand by my assessment that Colossal Caverns Adventure stands as the first CRPG. Your argument that your not playing a role is incorrect. You play yourself, or as Scott Adams put it, you controlled a robot that you gave commands to. The game was all about interactivity.
Nor is the game linear as you had the freedom to explore the world. Its only because the genre split in these directions that we define them as such today. Consider Gemstone and the various MUDs that this spawned later as well. What about the adventure games where you take on multiple characters? Certainly those fit your definition of Role although I don't believe they have to. I say that your are pigeonholing these into modern understandings that didn't exist at the time,
You imply by your Tennis for Two comment (I had forgotten what Tennis for Two was and I stand corrected. We might as well throw in Chess 1.0 while we're at it.) that Colossal Caves and Zork are too primitive to be considered in the genre. I don't believe they are, and I certainly wouldn't throw Eliza as the precursor in spite of its obvious mechanics that Adventure borrows from it. Tennis for Two and even Eliza are obviously not even closely related to RPG's of any kind.
The article does seem to be saying that the Gold Box games were the first big ones but its intro clearly contradicts that. At one point the author can't tell the difference between Hollow World and Dark Sun and the editor had to make a retraction. My only credit I give him is his willingness to criticize the games when they are poor but that's easy to do when the sales were bad and they are over 10 years old.
In short, this is a lousy report and I stand by what I’ve said. |
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Thu Aug 19, 2004 9:24 pm |
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