The History of CRPGs, Part One

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Written by BuckGB on December 26th, 2006

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Tunnels of Doom, like Dungeons of Daggorath, are relatively obscure titles because they were released only for a single platform. Nevertheless, they became highly successful and are considered some of the best games for the TI-99/4A and Tandy CoCo, respectively. Tunnels of Doom might be best described as a mix of themes from Telengard and Wizardry. Like Telengard, there are fountains, altars, and thrones that have random effects on players willing to experiment with them. However, Tunnels of Doom followed Wizardry's example by allowing the player to control a party rather than a single adventurer. Tunnels of Doom also predated Ultima III in the use of a separate screens for combat and dungeon exploration sequences. When the player is merely wandering the dungeon, the view is first-person, 3-D perspective. In combat, the view shifts to a top-down, third-person perspective. This mode would show up in plenty of later games. Besides Ultima III, it was also a defining characteristic of SSI's Pool of Radiance and later "Gold Box Games," released after 1988.

Dungeons of Daggorath, developed by DynaMicro, is more like Akalabeth in the use of wire-frame, first-person, 3-D perspective. However, this game is in real-time, and features a fatigue system similar to the one found in the Apshai series. A pulsing heart at the bottom of the screen beats faster or slower depending on the stress of the character. Taking too much damage or moving too quickly will cause the player to faint, thus becoming monster meat. Dungeons of Daggorath also departs a bit from the D&D convention by eschewing so much emphasis on math. Instead of showing how many "hit points" the character has left, players must listen to the heart to determine how much damage their character can take before submitting. It's a fine system that adds a great deal of realism and intensity to the game!

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