The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games - Michael J. Tresca [87]
In 1981, Sir-Tech Software, Inc. released Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. It was one of the first Dungeons & Dragons CRPGs offering color graphics. As in the later Gold Box games, a party could be created and ported between the games as the characters advanced.
Whereas previous games centered on creating a single adventurer, Wizardry perfected the party experience. Up to six characters from an assortment of races were possible: dwarf, elf, gnome, hobbit, and human; and four classes: fighter, mage, priest, and thief. It featured six stats: strength, I.Q. (intelligence), piety, vitality (constitution), agility (dexterity) and luck. There were also four elite classes, shades of prestige classes that would appear later in Dungeons & Dragons 3.0: bishop, samurai, lord, and ninja. The party then ventured into a maze of ten levels, with each level becoming progressively more difficult.
Wizardry used a first-person perspective and three-dimensional vector graphics supplemented with textual descriptions. When monsters were encountered, the picture of the maze was replaced by the monster.
Inspired by Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Wizardry was very unforgiving. There was no mapping program, which meant that players had to draw their own map as the game unfolded, just like early tabletop RPGs. The party could be randomly teleported into a solid object, killing them instantly—also an artifact of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Wizardry would go on for another eight installments over the next twenty years.
In 1982 Starpath debuted Dragonstomper. Created by Stephen Landrum and making use of the Starpath Supercharger, Dragonstomper was the only true role-playing game for the Atari 2600 (Glenday 2008: 156).
Dragonstomper involved, appropriately enough, dragonslaying. The character’s goal was to retrieve a magical amulet from a dragon. The player wandered the countryside, killing randomly encountered monsters and gaining gold and experience, thus raising his strength and dexterity. In his attempt to gather enough cash to bribe the bridge guard or find an ID that would let him pass, the character explored huts, churches, and castles populated with vermin, animals, and humanoid menaces.
Having passed the first challenge, the character then entered the oppressed village, where he could sell the items he picked up in the wilderness and buy new equipment. Up to three men-at-arms could be bribed to help the character in his final confrontation. When he felt he was ready, he entered the Dragon’s Cave.
The Dragon’s Cave was a long hallway of traps; poison darts and magical bursts of energy. Using a combination of magic and speed, the surviving character finds himself in the Dragon’s Lair. In the lair, the game alternated between the character and the dragon taking steps towards each other. Menat-arms served as cannon fodder in the fight. Had it not been for the video game crash of 1983, Dragonstomper would likely have heralded future innovative games for the Atari 2600 using the Starpath Supercharger.
Also in 1982, Tunnels of Doom was released by Kevin Kenney for the TI-99/4A computer system. Tunnels of Doom consisted of up to four players controlling the fates of four characters in a standard dungeon crawl. Parties of four characters could choose from the fighter, rogue, and wizard class. The hero class was available only to solo players, making Tunnels of Doom one of the first CRPGs to accommodate a group of players as well as single play. As with the Rogue-likes before it, Tunnels of Doom featured random encounters with monsters, wildly varying treasure, and a final quest that required the lost king to be defeated