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Favourite vintage Role-Playing Games

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tezza

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As mentioned in the Adventure thread, those dungeons and dragons-type RPG games were also pretty enjoyable.

I got hooked on one of these, and saw it through the end. It was "Hellfire Warrior" again on my first computer, the TRS-80 model 1 clone. It was the sequel to the "Temple of Apshai" but for some reason I missed that and stated on "Warrior". Crude block graphics that look as much like spaceships than monsters, but the gameplay was good. An innkeeper "found thee a goodly character" , you bought your stuff by bartering with various merchants ("Thou doth insult me with thine offer!"), then it was down into the dungeon to slay creatures and find treasures.

The game was accompanied by a very comprehensive book, which not only had illustrations and information about every level, creature and treasure, but also filled in the back-story so you knew what you were actually doing there. It was a work of fiction in itself and helped bring the game alive. In many ways, the software was just the dungeonmaster. It was the accompanying book that gave the game its richness.

I still have the book and the original game. I also had a crack at "Morlock's Tower", which was another in the series.

Tez
 
I played Larry Hinzel's Dungeon Crawl for years and still do from time to time. Special place in my heart for turn based crawlers. Right now I'm looking around for some C= rpg games.

Played Oregon Trail a lot on Apple in school way back when. Not sure if that qualifies as an rpg, though.

Nathan
 
I think looking back I'd have to say my obvious favorite was Ultima IV. Very unique approach to standard RPG's of the time where you are indeed accountable for your actions and was so much more than a typical hack-and-slash RPG. A close second would be the original Might & Magic, huge scope to the game, absolutely loved it. Both of those games I played on the Apple IIe.
 
Since you didn't specifically say "video game", I'd have to say my favorite "vintage" role playing game is Dungeons & Dragons. AD&D, to be exact. I started playing it with a few friends back in early 1979, and we whiled away many a weekend like that.

In fact, that's where I met my wife, way back when. We met in 1979, but didn't get married until 1997. She always played a cleric, and I was a Dwarven fighter. :)
 
willowmoon93 said:
I think looking back I'd have to say my obvious favorite was Ultima IV.
Click to expand...
hear hear!
While my first love is Ultima III, which I played consistently for over a year, U4 was indeed a revolution in the way we think of RPG's. It was no longer a "kill everything that moves" game and really made you think twice before going on death sprees.

My only problem with U4 was the graphics! I played U3 so much in 4 color CGA graphics on my PCjr, that when I moved up to U4 and 16 color EGA, it just didn't look right to me anymore! ;)

I've since played and finished U1 and U2 as well. I never quite finished U4 and haven't played any of them beyond that, but I have plans after retirement to go through the entire series and perhaps write my own as well.

-jeff!
 
My first RPG on computer was Ultima VI: The False Prophet....that has got to be one of the best, if not THE best DOS era RPG from a freedom and complexity standpoint to my mind. Ultima VII is not that far behind either.

I also liked AD&D Dungeon Hack, this dungeon crawler I have on some "Forgotten Realms" compilation I have on CD-ROM (I got it from an ex-bandmate for my 20th birthday), that and Might & Magic stand out as pretty fun.

I also played a text based version of DND for awhile when I was 10, it was sort of rudimentary, but I still like it enough to keep a copy resident on my XT's hard drive.

As for console, I got rather big into Dragon Warrior I-IV for the NES (Dragon Quest in Japan), and also played Ultima III for the same console (called Exodus Ultima by most people). The NES version has some neat history to it, apparently it was a port of the Japanese MSX computer version, and the music in it was taken from some Japanese band...here's some vids with the music they ripped to the MSX and NES versions of the game placed over the gameplay...if you've heard the originals, you'll probably see what I'm talking about. It's pretty neat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duaX_IHHdjQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYNi3iVzbbw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duaX_IHHdjQ
 
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For consoles, gotta agree - those Dragon Warrior games are a lot of fun -- I unfortunately don't have Dragon Warrior IV and it's hard to find at a reasonable enough price.
 
Actually, similar to Mad-Mike my first Ultima to play was VI which is my favorite just because of the experience I had with it. Half graphics, half text, asking people everything about themselves and if they'd join me (I ended up with a jester and a kid both permanantly joining my party) so 6 player party was great. Had some willowhisp that would have joined but couldn't for some reason.

Other than that we played all the SSI games so I'd venture to say Pool of Radiance was a favorite with the series, and then being able to import your characters completely rocked.

Oohh.. on AOL we played Neverwinter Nights. It was the first that I ever saw graphical mmorg. Exact graphics of SSI AD&D games, (I mean essentially it was an SSI game) just with several hundred players and you could join a party of people you meet online and then allow one of them to move your character with theirs so one person takes everyone out and then in a fight each player would still control their character since it goes into the overhead/tile view instead of the first person view.

Ok.. I'm done or I'll go on and on lol
- John
 
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