On Dec 26, 2006, at 9:10 AM, David Boyes wrote:
http://armchairarcade.com/neo/node/1081
Surely, RPGs existed on our beloved mainframes before or around this
time
didn't they? It pre-dates me, but I've seen discussion about it
here.
Maybe the author needs a little history lesson??? :-)
*little*? Great steaming hunks of history lesson, methinks.
I'm sure that Adam will chime in -- this is his specialty area -- but
I'd argue that both SpaceWar and Star Trek are RPGs and predate
anything
in this article.
The author, to be fair, does point out that he is aware that in some
sense you "play roles" in Space Invaders or Pong, but that's not what
he means. I'll grant that Space War and Star Trek don't count,
although I've seen versions of Star Trek that come perilously close.
Ditto for ADVENT (in fact ADVENT.SAV on my TOPS-10
system is dated 1970, which seems wrong, but could be valid. I'm not
sure I ever updated that system to be Y2K-safe, so it could be off. My
ITS system won't boot at the moment, so can't check there).
It's wrong. ADVENT is 1972, or possibly a little bit later. But
even Advent isn't *really* what he's talking about: "Adventure" and
"RPG" are two distinct genres, although they certainly weren't even
in the mid 1980s--_The Book of Adventure Games_ and its sequel, from
1984 and 1985 respectively, contain not only what are now adventure
games, but also hints and maps for the Wizardry and Ultima games.
He's basically talking about games with randomized combat (although
Zork would count here), and character statistics, some sort of level
or power advancement system (oddly, Zork is still in the running:
your hit points, though hidden from you except in vague terms with
DIAGNOSE, go up, I think, as you score more points, and your chance
of hitting the thief certainly does).
The discussion of the microcomputer games is fairly competent, though.
Even if he is likely to be eaten by a grue.
Well, I checked; he's right and I'm wrong about the plots of Ultimas
I and II, so, yeah, he may be fairly competent. Although anyone who
thinks NES is the right platform for Wizardry is smoking crack.
Also, I'm pretty sure that "Beneath Apple Manor" predates "Temple of
Apshai" by a couple of years.
Adam
