I came back with a very interesting book from the Eurographics conference. It’s called ‘Dungeons and Desktops‘ and its insanely geeky. It covers the history of computer role-playing games from their inception in the early 70′s and up to toda’ys World of Warcrafy madness.
It starts by trying to establish what differentiates computer role-playing games as a genre, looking at traditional role-playing games, and similar genres such as action games and adventure games. I think the author manages to define it pretty well, as games in which the character/characters have an open-ended advancement system (i.e. go up levels) and in which the resolution system is based upon a fixed set of rules (and statistics).
Reading the book is really bringing back memories of games I played as a kid (and well, as an adult), such as Phantasie III: The Wrath of Nikademus, and Might&Magic 4-5: The World of Xeen.
I even downloaded Phantasie III (it runs in DOSbox, a DOS emulator). You know the saying that “you can’t go home again”? Well they were totally wrong because this game rules, even 20 years after I first played it.
Go 80′s!!!