Matka roolipelien historiaan
Yhdysvaltalainen kirjailija ja pelimies Matt Barton on julkaissut teoksen Dungeons & Desktops, joka kuvaa tietokoneroolipelien historiaa aina Richard ”Lord British” Garriottin Ultima I –pelistä eteenpäin. Teoksen voi tilata kirjakaupoista ja siihen voi tutustua netin kautta yhden kokonaisen luvun verran.
Gamasutra-sivustolla on julkaistu teoksen viides kappale, The Silver Age, joka kertoo 1980-luvun ensimmäisistä tietokoneroolipeleistä.
The most important games of the Silver Age are Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness and Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (both 1981). Both games launched successful and influential series that lasted into the 2000s, but it was Ultima that catapulted the genre into the mainstream — indeed, its influence even extended overseas and inspired the Japanese console RPGs that so many of us are familiar with today. We’ll talk about the first three Ultima games in this chapter.
Wizardry, meanwhile, earned a reputation for challenging, hardcore gameplay. It also demonstrates what would become a long and established practice of ”engine recycling,” or reusing the bulk of a game’s code in subsequent games. This technique allowed developers not only to create games faster and for less cost, but also to focus more on developing content, such as graphics and stories.
Tension began to build between gamers who expect sequels to be quite radical revisions and those who resent such changes and demand consistency — a tension brought out nicely by comparing the Ultima and Wizardry series.
The Silver Age also saw several other important and influential games, such as Telengard, Sword of Fargoal, Dungeons of Daggorath, Tunnels of Doom, and Universe. Each of these games introduced or affirmed gameplay concepts that would show up in countless later games, and each vividly demonstrates the diversity of the genre in the early 1980s. They’re also some of the more beloved of the early CRPGs and are still regularly played today by hundreds if not thousands of nostalgic gamers around the world.
Teoksen voi tilata vaikkapa Amazonista: Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games (Hardcover)
Kirjanäytteen voi lukea täältä: Book Extract: Dungeons and Desktops: ’The Silver Age’
Lisää aiheesta
Dungeons & Dragons – roolipelilegendasta virtuaalimaailmaksi
Dungeons & Dragonsin luoja matkasi tuonpuoleiseen
Richard ”Lord British” Garriott: pelit ovat sekä pulp-viihdettä että taidetta
Richard Garriott sulkee avaruusympyrän
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