I'm offering money for a town I already somehow own. This is the least of the problems I experienced this session.           The Red Crystal turns out to be hilariously broken, which likely explains why there are no walkthroughs or videos longer than 15 minutes to find online. At the end of my first entry, I had discovered some fairly bad mechanics (NPCs, combat), but this session produced a plethora of bugs that--and here I have to give the game credit--I've never seen before.     A lot of the bugs have a common theme ..read more

A minotaur prepares to swing his axe, which looks like it ought to be impossible with the height of the ceiling.          I started over after the first entry, deciding to go with a slightly easier game. I lowered the levels to 10, kept secret doors turned off, said "no" to the water level, and created a mage/cleric named Tirena. She got some decent statistics within the first few rolls:           No one's pretty or healthy after 10 levels in a dungeon anyway.        ..read more

Why do I have the letter "A" on my shield twice?          Legend of the Red Dragon United States Robinson Technologies (developer and publisher) Released 1989 for Amiga, 1992 for DOS Date Started: 30 March 2024 Date Ended: 15 April 2024  Total Hours: 11 Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5) in one sense but still frustrating Final Rating: (to come later) Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)              Well, my first experience playing an online game with other players led to a few interesting revelat ..read more

     The Red Crystal United States Wild Card Software (developer); Quantum Quality Productions (publisher) Released 1993 for DOS Date Started: 11 April 2024       I like to start every new game as unbiased as possible, so I try to avoid learning anything about it from external sources. There have been times that my reactions to universally-adored games have been negative, and there have been times that the opposite has occurred. I feel that either scenario is more likely to happen if I go into the game with a blank slate.      I did tha ..read more

           Labyrinth United States Released 1980 for the PLATO mainframe at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Date Started: 4 April 2024 Date Ended: 7 April 2024 Total Hours: 6 Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5) Final Rating: (to come later) Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)       It's amazing how, this far in my chronology, I'm still not quite done with the PLATO games. I could almost believe that people are somehow going back in time just to invent new ones for me. Ha ha! Seriously, Randy Harmelink and Michael Wei: I ..read more

The endgame cinematic doesn't even remember the opening cinematic. I wasn't called "Shadow Caster" because I cast a shadow on your future; it was because I cast a shadow on the ability of others to read my future.         Shadow Caster United States Raven Software (developer); ORIGIN/Electronic Arts (publisher) Released 1993 for DOS, 1994 for PC-98 Date Started: 16 March 2024 Date Ended: 27 March 2024 Total Hours: 13 Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5) Final Rating: (to come later) Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)      &nbs ..read more

          Legend of the Red Dragon United States Robinson Technologies (developer and host) Released 1989 for Amiga, 1992 for DOS Date Started: 30 March 2024             Legend of the Red Dragon, or LoRD as most fans abbreviate it, is probably the most famous game from the "BBS door" era. It is a subgenre from which I have tried only one other offering, Dustin Nuff's Operation: Overkill (1990). MobyGames catalogs nine total BBS door RPGs (and 31 total BBS door games), although there were almost certainly more, betwe ..read more

         Fate: Gates of Dawn Germany reLINE Software (developer and publisher) Released in 1991 for the Amiga and Atari ST       It's hard to believe that it's been over seven years since I wrapped up Olaf Patzenhauer's epic Fate: Gates of Dawn. As longtime readers may recall, I left the game with an unfinished map, which has always gnawed at me. It was time to take a second pass and really get into the meat of this seminal title.        What unique encounters lurk within that white space? Time to find ..read more

If not for those dilithium crystals, I would have escaped with no wealth at all.         NetHack [3.1 series] United States Independently developed and released in four versions between January and July 1993 Date Started: 11 February 2024 Date Ended: 27 March 2024 Total Hours: 34 Difficulty: Hard (4.0/5) Final Rating: (to come later) Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)        Summary:   NetHack 3.1.3 is not quite the version of the roguelike that modern players experience, but it's the closest that I'v ..read more

  A globe shows this world to be quite a bit different from Earth.         As I closed the first entry, I had just gained the ability to transform into a Caun. Caun are the physical size of toddlers, but they have a number of special abilities, including faster regular healing, a healing spell, sneaking, the ability to create light, the ability to create a shield, a kind of "insect swarm" spell, and the ability to grab things at a distance. They are the rogues to the Maorin's fighter.     Although he isn't a great warrior, I spent ..read more