Monday, November 24, 2008
This Is Where It All Began...
We were talking about Akalabeth: World of Doom over at Scorpia's Gaming Lair, and I couldn't resist downloading and trying to play the 1979 game from Richard "Lord British" Garriott.
And though I knew it was one of the very first commercial computer RPGs for home computers, I discovered that it was also the first of yet another - less wonderful - tradition:
That's right, the very first "Go Kill X Giant Rats" quest (In this case , X = 1) came from Lord British himself, back around 1979 / 1980.
Dang. There goes my opinion of him.
But that's not all!
I looked at this old box cover (or was it an ad?), which I remembered totally seeming cool when I first saw it back in 1981 or 1982 in a friend's computer magazine. Of course I understood at the time that the ad graphics probably had nothing to do with the game itself. But I still wanted the game just because of the cool picture. Unfortunately, it was only for the Apple at the time, and I was stuck with a Sinclair ZX80, which had trouble running Tic Tac Toe without running out of memory.But while it wasn't a first, it was another example of video games using pretty graphics to disguise lack of content, a practice fully embraced by today's game publishers.
(Yeah, yeah, I know, Akalabeth was probably pretty cool for its time... Throw me a bone here...!)
And one more thing, while I'm at it. Note the price in the picture. $34.95. For a game that teenaged Garriott was able to whip up during a summer vacation in his bedroom closet. Visiting the handy-dandy inflation adjustment calculator, $34.95 in 1980 had the same buying power as $91.86 today.
And for that money, they got a game which had them die of starvation while trying to find the dungeon!
Nowadays, an indie can spend tens of thousands of dollars on top of a year of Herculean effort, paid for by a second mortgage on his house, and people complain about it costing anything more than free. And you no longer have to drive all the way into a neighboring town to buy it anymore, either.
Times change, don't they?
Labels: retro
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:48 AM (Permalink)
Comments:
Links to this post:
<< Home
It's both an ad and cover. It was an ad at first, then they used it for the third reissue. You can see the details in the trivia section at mobygames. The original was sold in ziploc bags.
The really mindboggling bit for me is that they very obviously used this as the basis for Pyro in Ultima 8. I wasn't aware there was such a tribute to Akalabeth inthat game.
The really mindboggling bit for me is that they very obviously used this as the basis for Pyro in Ultima 8. I wasn't aware there was such a tribute to Akalabeth inthat game.
# posted by 
: November 24, 2008 10:57 AM
: November 24, 2008 10:57 AM
Not finishing my own RPG about the same time is one of my biggest regrets. I saw what he did and did something similar, probably to about 50% done, and never followed through on it.
And he went on to become a multi-millionaire, and I, well, I'm doing just fine, thank you, but I sure could use those millions. :)
And he went on to become a multi-millionaire, and I, well, I'm doing just fine, thank you, but I sure could use those millions. :)
Akallabêth means "The Downfallen" in Adûnaic. It refers to the fall of Númenor and is, in fact, a Tolkien reference.
(I recognized it immediately, but had to look up the spellings and the langauge it came from. I didn't realize I was that nerdy...)
Sweet.
(I recognized it immediately, but had to look up the spellings and the langauge it came from. I didn't realize I was that nerdy...)
Sweet.
Tell me about it. Though I don't know if my efforts have been "Herculean" either. I'm still using the day job to finance my game development ... er, job.
And yeah - I wish I'd stuck with it when I was a kid, too. Those were amazing times if you new how to get a job done and hustle.
Though - really - I don't know if times have changed that much, after all. :) I just need to learn how to get the job done and hustle more.
And yeah - I wish I'd stuck with it when I was a kid, too. Those were amazing times if you new how to get a job done and hustle.
Though - really - I don't know if times have changed that much, after all. :) I just need to learn how to get the job done and hustle more.
Akallabêth was also one of the longest buildups to a bad pun I've ever read, if we're discussing Tolkien.
Times change my friend! That said I sometimes wish I could travel back into 1983 and start all over again, doing things like Richard Garriot did them.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
<< Home
