The CRPG Addict

If this interests you, you'll love the CRPG Addict [0]. The guy is well on his way through his mission to play, and document, every CRPG ever made. Always a fun read. [0] https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/

You are right of course. I was speaking of the average developer only there. Regular users should be well served with many of the results of that labour though. And even if it's https://www.youdontneedwp.com/ ;) For just starting a blog a wordpress.com instance is also pretty great. And there are still great blogs at blogger, https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/ for example.

I have no answer to this question, but various people are revisiting old CRPGs in a more or less exhaustive manner. My favourite one is crpgaddict who plays a list of CRPGs in chronological order, with at least 6 hours spent on each one. He's been at it for a decade now, and his list still isn't finished... http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/

If you are interested in old computer role-playing games, you should check out the CRPG addict's blog [1]. He has played (usually to completion) every CRPG thru 1986 and every one that runs on DOS thru 1990. The reviews have great humor. And he covers everything. [1] http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com

Nice to see people discovering these games. I wouldn't really say it was niche until BG3 though, there were plenty of highly acclaimed games long before that. You might like this blog, the author plays through CRPGs in chronological order. Currently they're at the mid 90s. https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/

I was expecting this to be related to the CRPG Addict http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/

The CRPG Addict blog has done a great job reviewing the PLATO games from a seasoned player's perspective, and he touches on some of the inspiration for Wizardry. Oubliette: https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/10/game-12-oubliette-1977.html Avatar: https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/11/game-124-avatar-1979.html

This is lovely. First, I could only imagine playing ASCII like games (such as old Roguelikes, especially ones with outside worlds, such as OMEGA[0], with this as animating the fields, waters, etc - would be interesting. However, I was really drawn to how this might be used on GIS pointclouds, topographical maps (for animating flows down topographic GIS data?) [0] http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2011/05/game-55-omega-1988.html

Absolute favorite: Ragnarok / Valhalla by Norsehelm Productions, released 1992-1995. https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/02/game-354-ragnarok-1992.html

I know Star Control II relatively well, even though I have not played it yet, thanks to the CRPG Addict: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2019/03/game-321-star-control-ii-ur-qua… I can highly recommend this blog for detailed, quality writing on computer RPGs from all ages. It is one of those internet works of love that keep on giving. I'm happy to see this open source version come up!

Cannot recommend this blog enough , where the author is playing methodically computer RPGs in chronological order (he has started in 2010 and I think its going thorugh 1992 still...) , with detailed descriptions and reviews: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/p/index-of-games-played-by-year.html It has been scratching my nostalgic itch fairly well.

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/ The author of this blog is in the process of playing every CRPG created since 1975. They discuss strengths & weaknesses, its place in the history of RPGs, etc.

For anyone who wants to read about Zork-games, I recommend the play-troughts from the CRPG-Addict: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.de/search?q=zork Highly entertaining!

If you're interested in this game and want to get a feel of it, I can't recommend enough the "CRPG addict" playthrough: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2010/11/game-33-dungeon-master-1987.htm…

our oldest (15) didnt get a phone until about 13. Middle (10) has an apple watch for the phone function, 7 year old doesnt have a phone. They all have macbooks, ipads, etc. our internet goes on for them at 6am, turns off at 7am. They have to be dressed, ready for school, brushed teeth etc, before they start at 6am. I have never had to wake my kids up for school in their lives. They get internet again at night from 7:30-8:30 once all their work is done (reading a chapter in a book, math one grade level higher, foreign language, music). They function as a team so they all need to be done before any of them can start doing electronics. When I was a kid (12-17) I was addicted to one of the first online graphical role playing games in the country (80s PLATO system - avatar). My dad was a CS professor so I had easy access to the network terminals. He would never have one in our house as he had phd students drop out as a result of being addicted to the game. He constantly reminded me it was better to write the game than to be addicted to the games. https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/11/game-124-avatar-1979.html At some point I just outgrew them and I periodically try to play them, but they are so shallow compared to real life I cant get addicted again. I think as long as kids have plenty of "real life" activities that they love, they will be able to enjoy the internet in moderation. The kids that really struggle are the ones whose parents dont help them to cultivate real…

A note about Master of Doom: There is a small part about the departure of ID Software guys from Softdisk that is inaccurate and has been corrected by John Remoro himself when he spoke to the blogger who writes the famous CRPG Addict series (btw, completely out of topic but this blog is EXCELLENT if you want a COMPLETE view of pretty much every RPG out there since the 70s). The correction (as the blogger wrote) was a correction about a mistake he made in writing one of his earlier post about Dark Design, but I think it also corrects the claim made in Master of Doom. The link to Romero's correction is as following: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/09/game-378-goodcodes-cavern-1982-… You will need to scroll down to the second part, or just search "But since I was only able to get 1,200 words out of Goodcode's Cavern" on the page. To simplify things I'm pasting the paragraphs: >I had consulted several sources to assemble that paragraph, including one that purported to have interviewed both Carmack and Romero in detail, and I was pretty confident in what I had. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when John Romero (who I didn't even know was aware of my blog) invited me to participate in a podcast interview of Stuart Smith. (We're recording in mid-September; I'll let you know when it's out.) I took the opportunity to run the paragraph by him and found out that almost everything I'd written was wrong. To wit: - I was a year late; 1990 was the year most of this happened.…

PLATO is notable for being the origin of the of the computer role playing game. The history of early CRPGs is murky, because PLATO was intended for educational use and games programmers had to work in secret to avoid the administrators deleting their work, but it's possible that the first ever CRPG was the Reginald Rutherford's 1975 game "The Dungeon" (a.k.a. "pedit5" after its inconspicuous lesson name). The Dungeon was probably earlier than the lost game "m199h" that was previously thought to be first. These early CRPGs are all influenced by Dungeons and Dragons, which was first published in 1974. The Dungeon is still playable today. The CRPG Addict blog has details: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2019/01/revisiting-dungeon-1975.html And more information about lost games: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2021/06/brief-everything-we-know-about-…

I first learned of PLATO thru the writing of the CRPG Addict: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/10/game-12-oubliette-1977.html?m=1

Your comment reminds me of this interesting article: https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2010/06/game-economies.html?m=1 In many rpgs as you progress through the game the need for expenditure diminishes to zero. Different case if it is mmo or designed around grinding though.

He hasn't played one made since 1993? http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/p/index-of-games-played-by-year.html

The dungeon generation shown is the same as Brian Sawyer's 'Dungeon' game from 1979: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/02/game-85-dungeon-1979.html Not sure if Brian Sawyer is the original designer of this approach though?

For a historic perspective, see the CRPG Addicts posts: - Hack (1984) http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2015/04/game-186-hack-1984.html - NetHack 2.3e (1987) http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2011/01/game-38-nethack-1987.html - NetHack 3.0 (1989) http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2012/06/game-71-nethack-30.html

Back when video games where interesting and tried new things, they did in fact make a mega traveller game, it may nerf character death during creation a little, but you can still come out with unusable ones. http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/search?q=MegaTraveller

Sounds like Operation Overkill ][. Here is a writeup about it that includes the little 3x3 tile map for movement: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2015/04/game-187-operation-overkill-199…

Elite is not an CRPG as defined by the author. http://crpgaddict.blogspot.jp/p/blog-page.html

The CRPG Addict also played _Wraith: The Devil's Demise_, his second game: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.be/2015/04/game-184-wraith-devils-demise-19… And _Dark Designs_, a more elaborate RPG, one of his first games for Softdisk: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.be/2014/01/game-133-dark-designs-i-grelmina… http://crpgaddict.blogspot.be/2014/07/game-152-dark-designs-ii-closing…

I feel like a lot of this comes from an "Ultima fan" perspective where Ultima VIII "ruined it" because it was too different. Conversely, I played it first, and enjoyed it; it did many things no game I'd played before had tried, although was not short of many flaws (which tbf the post-release patch resolves quite a few of). Playing other Ultimas later, they were in many ways good but also felt a bit trite in their morality. I don't think it's trivially an awful game. I've heard a lot about how wonderful Ultima VII is, but more recently I get the impression (after reading articles like http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/08/ultima-vii-black-gate-summary-a… that there's another side to it: also dramatically flawed in many ways, maybe less obviously so than Pagan but the writing may have already been on the wall. Assuming everything just went terribly at the end and blaming on "the bean counters" seems a bit lazy to me.