The History of the TRS-80
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Temple of Apshai (Automated Simulations, 1979)
Retro dungeoneers of a certain age will recognize the Apshai series by name, although this screenshot from the original TRS-80 version published by Epyx forerunner Automated Simulations may not look familiar. Slow, clunky and crash-prone, with graphics running at half the TRS-80's normal resolution for the sake of squaring the pixels, this early attempt at an action role-playing game managed little of either.
Item names were abstract (it's the fabled TREASURE #17!) and objects of interest were simple blocks. Enemy creatures didn't look much different from the player, so text at the side of the screen display was employed to indicate just what variety of foe had appeared. The game's innovative line-of-sight effect took forever to calculate, exacerbated by the frequent screen redraws as the player explored the dungeon, step by painful step.
But this newfangled ability to do just that -- stepping through the dungeon, bringing an invisible bow and sword to bear, dealing invisible wounds to nondescript enemies in featureless hallways -- was quite clearly compelling. The dungeons of Apshai would spring to memorable life on future Atari and Commodore hardware.
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Avalon Hill Microcomputer Games (1980)
Wargame and pencil-and-paper RPG publisher Avalon Hill was among the first to venture into computer games in 1980, producing hex-map wargames and strategy titles for the TRS-80 and its contemporary platforms. These turn-based, graphically sparse games were a long way from X-Com or Civilization, but they provided a counterpoint to the "TV games" of the era and paved the way for more sophisticated gaming on PCs.
While the chief attraction was that these games could be played without the hours of setup and lengthy group commitments required by their tabletop forerunners, Avalon Hill also innovated with its multi-platform releases -- even though there was no common engine and games had to be coded specifically for each machine, multiple versions were released on the same cassette tape.
