- Where can I find a copy of Rogue/Nethack/Moria?
- These titles all fall into the general category called Roguelike Games (games based upon Dungeons & Dragons).
They are already well-covered in other places on the Web. A good all-around source for information and
downloads is
The Roguelike Games Home Page. For an account of the development of Rogue from the perspective of one of its authors, check outA Brief History of Rogue by Glenn R. Wichman.
Daniël Löwenstein provided the following addendum: "In the FAQ about Roguelike News you could replace the old link with this one: [link has changed again, see below] (because the original Roguelike News is sadly no longer maintained). This dungeondweller page is well supported by the rec.games.roguelike.development newsgroup and contains a lot of news articles, all about the real (ASCII) thing." Thanks, Daniël!
The dungeondweller link has changed, here is the new URL: roguelikedevelopment.org. Also, a visitor has pointed me to what may be the most advanced roguelike yet created, Ancient Domains of Mystery. Be warned, this game is almost incomprehensibly vast and complex—you might want to think twice about downloading it, unless you have the next two years of your life to spare!
- Where can I find a copy of [insert title of text adventure game here]?
-
You are standing at the end of a road before a small
With that simple paragraph began a gaming tradition that took the computing world by storm, and is still going strong today. Text adventures (sometimes called interactive fiction), were effective because they appealed to the imagination. Using simple commands such as GO EAST and LOOK UNDER BED, players could take the leading role in an interactive story, one in which textual descriptions of events and surroundings created a more memorable and compelling experience than the finest graphics ever could. Text adventure games are an enormous subject, and I cannot possibly cover it all here. Visit the Interactive Fiction Archive for downloads. You can read more about the history of text adventures at The Colossal Cave Adventure page.
brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream
flows out of the building and down a gully.
- There was a great game from the early to mid-eighties called Empire. You started off with one city and no idea of the terrain of your world, so you had to build armies to explore and take over other cities. You moved around with different letters representing men, ships, etc. Not graphically stunning, but excellent gameplay -- any chance of finding it?
- Unfortunately, this is not an easy question to answer, because I have found several different versions
of this game, and there seems to be some dispute over who created it. Apparently, it has been ported and re-ported between
UNIX, VAX, and DOS, making its lineage difficult to trace. The closest thing I have found to an "official" web site is here:
classicempire.com. If you are looking for Empire, I would suggest visiting that site.
- I'm looking for a game that's not mentioned anywhere on your web site. Can you help me find it?
- I might be able to help you. But rather than e-mailing me, please post an article describing what you are looking for
in the Text-Mode Games discussion forum.
I am always checking in there, but more importantly, other visitors will be able to see your message and they might know
something about it, too.
- The games are running too fast to play on my new computer. What can I do?
- Check out the MoSlo page. There's some information and a utility you can download to solve this problem.
- I'm getting "Run time error 200" when launching a game. Why?
- This problem is caused by
an initialization bug in Turbo Pascal,
the software development language
that some of these games were written in. Again, I suggest checking the MoSlo page, that may solve the problem.
- I've tried MoSlo but it isn't working for me. Any other suggestions?
- There is a new, open-source utility called DOSBox that might solve your problems. I haven't used it much yet myself,
but it looks promising.
- What if I have a cool text-mode game that's not in your collection?
- Feel free to post a description and/or link in the discussion forum.
You might also consider submitting your game to Underdogs - ASCII Classics and/or
Text-Mode.com , two more excellent text-mode gaming sites.
Discussions
Still more questions? Post them in
our discussion forum.
Myself or another visitor should be able to help you out.
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