One observation from when I asked about peeps' first RPGs and genre-hooking ones: a lot of the CRPGing folks responses felt almost apologetic that they weren't console ones like Chrono Trigger or FF7. Wondering if their firsts and favourites, such as Telengard, Bard's Tale, Ultima etc, counted. 1/2 - ThreadSky

sharkabytes.bsky.social • 44 days ago

One observation from when I asked about peeps' first RPGs and genre-hooking ones: a lot of the CRPGing folks responses felt almost apologetic that they weren't console ones like Chrono Trigger or FF7. Wondering if their firsts and favourites, such as Telengard, Bard's Tale, Ultima etc, counted.

1/2

Reposted from Sasha's Retrobytes 🏳️‍⚧️

One game kept popping up from the CRPG-playing folks when I asked about first RPGs the other day (especially those who C64'd early on): Telengard.

The name rang a bell and so I fired it up for a little try-out. It's a wee bit rough being coded in BASIC but I dig the moody little title screen intro.

Comments

ndchristie.bsky.social•44 days ago

Goes hand in hand with dismissal of European game market and its history, and AA shops in general. Chinese and LATAM markets also frequently snubbed.

The collective bias is that only AAA efforts made in US (or made in Japan and released in US) are eligible.

Speaks to the urgency of preservation!

michirin.bsky.social•44 days ago

The funny thing is, there was a time when Japanese RPGs were being relentlessly trashed by western games media, to the point where they almost disappeared from home consoles (in the west), while modern 'CRPGs' were flourishing and being called "The future of gaming" and getting console ports...

michirin.bsky.social•44 days ago

And said western media was trashing Japanese RPGs BECAUSE they were "Turn-based and Linear" like FF7 and Chrono Trigger, and glorifying Western RPGs because they were "Action-based and open-ended"...

And that attitude has shaped both sides of the industry to this very day...

michirin.bsky.social•44 days ago

I for one am GLAD for the comeback Japanese-style RPGs have been making in the past few years, (DQ11, Octopath, Sea of Stars)

But on that note, I must add (with a bit of sarcasm)
I WONDER what Japanese devs were doing in the mid-to-late 80s... Open-ended action games with RPG elements perchance?

sharkabytes.bsky.social•44 days ago

Yeah, for sure. The Xbox 360 era comes to mind for that attitude and how it was celebrated that non-Japanese devs were ascendant, things like Gears of War, Fallout, Dragon Age, etc, and how ugly racism could sometimes factor into it, too.

michirin.bsky.social•44 days ago

It is truly regrettable that the early history of computer RPGs is as neglected as it is, especially given that it's where the genre was born.

It is also regrettable though that computer RPGs not made in the west are even more neglected, especially given how different a direction they took.

sam-animeherald.bsky.social•44 days ago

Honestly, huge props to anyone who came in with the Ultima games. False Prophet and Black Gate are still amazing to this day.

suikojunkie.bsky.social•8 days ago

I admit i didn’t know just how influential Ultima was until Sven Vincke from Larian Studios talked about it.
Grew up playing jrpgs on consoles and i never heard japanese developers publicly aknowledge their western rpg roots, apart from Akitoshi Kawazu (Unlimited SaGa is a masterpiece) and Matsuno.

suikojunkie.bsky.social•8 days ago

But now that i’m playing more CRPGs thanks to Divinity Original Sin 2 and i’m going back & experiencing crpg classics from the past, i actually see the similarities more and more. JRPGs & CRPGs. Two sides of the same coin.
I love my jrpg stories & characters & CRPGs gave me the depth i craved for.

notmiki.bsky.social•44 days ago

For my own part, I could have said Wizardry 7 instead of FFMQ as my first game. It didn't occur to me because to me, the core RPG experience was to play as a character distinct from myself. Even though Wizardry 7 has NPCs with personalities, the blank slate of a party made me not think of it.

notmiki.bsky.social•44 days ago

I'm not saying my opinion is right or that you should discount games based on that criteria. "RPG" is an elusive thing to define, and its definition is based as much on what other contemporaneous games weren't doing as what RPGs were. Just explaining what RPG meant to me when I got hooked on 'em.

sharkabytes.bsky.social•44 days ago

Ah, no worries, thanks for doing so! And yeah, it can be a little nebulous. The first one I played, Master of Magic (not the MicroProse game, aha), was half a parser-based text adventure and a lite-RPG. You had HP, and Magic, and moved a little dot around a map, but no other stats.

sharkabytes.bsky.social•44 days ago

Compared to the stat-heavy dungeon crawlers of the time, it's very light, but I'd still count it as a role-playing game. But then that opens up another question: do you need stats for it to count as an RPG? What other things fit a particular definition as you sub-categorise RPGs down further still?

notmiki.bsky.social•44 days ago

I think the definition has changed significantly over time and is very context-dependent. Something published in 1991 that is a command-based fantasy adventure with stats and a smattering of plot clearly counts in a way that same game published in 2025 may not. The story and character elements...

notmiki.bsky.social•44 days ago

...in particular matter a great deal to defining early RPGs because games in other genres were not focused on those elements. But that's no longer true - basically any AAA game incorporates those elements - so when we define RPGs now, the mechanical elements - stats, input style, etc - matter more.

sharkabytes.bsky.social•44 days ago

I think that's such a shame and demonstrative of how easy to is for early CRPG history and importance to be left behind.

Ultima especially was selling hundreds of thousands of copies each installment and telling deep and meaningful stories from Ultima IV onward, examining politics and racism.

2/2

verdantsage.bsky.social•44 days ago

Gosh this is how I feel about my love of Might and Magic

sharkabytes.bsky.social•44 days ago

Aha, a bit more to add. And even when they weren't, you had fun sci-fi and fantasy mixes and post-apocalyptic weirdness, high fantasy humour and just so much more before.

sharkabytes.bsky.social•44 days ago

Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, etc, deserve credit for popularising RPGS on consoles, but they were by no means niche in the West as I've seen claimed more than once. Practically everyone who had a computer, especially during the 80s, played some sort of RPG.

caelyn.bsky.social•44 days ago

People forget we didn't even have Final Fantasy in Europe until FF7.

katewillaert.bsky.social•44 days ago

Alternate take people aren’t going to like: Home computers were niche in the US up until the late 90s. Most US families could not afford one, most kids were only exposed to computers at school, and as a result more kids experienced Oregon Trail than any hit non-edu game.

katewillaert.bsky.social•44 days ago

The people who get most upset when I point this out are Ameicans who grew up with a computer in their home and are in denial that they were upper middle class or upper class, because all Americans no matter how rich or poor want to think they had the definitive middle class experience.

sharkabytes.bsky.social•44 days ago

While I'd agree that DOS and early Windows PCs were expensive, there have been periods where home computers were more popular and affordable in the US. The Commodore 64 is the best selling microcomputer in large part because of its adoption in the home in US in 82-85.

katewillaert.bsky.social•44 days ago

And yet in the US it was still niche compared to home consoles.

kidfenris.bsky.social•44 days ago

I got a little curious and looked up just how many US households owned computers in the 1990s, and it seems like about a third had them by 1997.

The attached PDF here breaks it down in some interesting ways. I'd like to see how it compared to game system ownership.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/1999/Apr/wk1/art01.htm

sharkabytes.bsky.social•44 days ago

And while I'd also agree it's important to take into account and understand socio-economic circumstances that led to computers becoming niche again in US homes, it is a take focused solely on a US perspective which isn't only only one I include here.

agentprince.bsky.social•44 days ago

I don't think it was any better in the UK: I got my first PC at 17 in 1998 for college, and it was around £1200 for a PC with just 3.5gb of storage. You could get 3/4 games consoles for that easily.

58dreamstreet.bsky.social•44 days ago

And, of course, we don't get those games without their forbearers (the original Dragon Quest is basically "what if Ultima was also Wizardry?")!

I came to RPGs via console, and in recent years it's been a trip to go back and see the roots in those series!

edisonthefox.dev•44 days ago

I think my first RPG I played was Icewind Dale 2 on PC. On console it was definitely Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance

reki.gay•44 days ago

just another way in which the focus on consoles is hurting the conversation abt retro games

clockworklady.bsky.social•44 days ago

Ultima has become niche at this point, but in its heyday it was a juggernaut. Earlier JRPGs were in no small part based on the hyper-popular Wizardry series. It's both indicative of forgetting and of the limitations of early CRPGs as a field.

jasonbwilson.bsky.social•44 days ago

Akalabeth was my first (I am old!), and while I have a great deal of affection for Ultima, my favs skewed toward Bard's Tale, Might and Magic and Wizardry (then the Gold Box games).

exiledgamer.bsky.social•44 days ago

Bard's Tale was the first RPG I played, but FF7 is what really got me into the genre.

sciencesaveslives.bsky.social•44 days ago

I loved Ultima AND the Bard’s Tale. Fun games.

amiga.vision•44 days ago

Legend of Faerghail on the Amiga was my first. I have never seen anyone ever talk about it 😅

matchuthematriever.bsky.social•44 days ago

Of course CRPGs count, your experiences are valid to you ^^

Just because something is more popular or you hear about it more often doesn't make yours less valid.

I think it also comes down to alot of kids not having PCs but maybe having NES/SNES.

You should be EXCITED for having had CRPGs 😊

kalina2hu.bsky.social•44 days ago

More than just personal validity, we have an upcoming and highly anticipated season 2 of a Japanese anime that is *literally* an extensive Wizardry fanfic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxXID_zR-HY

matchuthematriever.bsky.social•44 days ago

True ^^

There's also the Etrian Odyssey Series, more of a classic dungeon crawler but with anime artstyle.

Or the Labyrinth of Dusk/Galleria.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1868180/Etrian_Odyssey_HD/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/566540/Labyrinth_of_Refrain_Coven_of_Dusk/

echelm.bsky.social•44 days ago

Ah, I remember Telengard from my Atari 800 days. And then having REAMS of maps for Bard’s Tale on graph paper. Screw teleport traps!

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