Author: CRPG Addict

Having woken up after 200 years, Penumbra really needs to hit the head.           We leave the troubled Vesper behind us–planning to return once we have the “Unlock Magic” spell and some more money–and head east across the channel. It has been long enough since I played an Ultima that […]

              Morabis I: The Dungeons of Morabis United States Independently developed and released as shareware Several versions released for DOS between 1991 and 1992 Date Started: 2 May 2020 Date Ended: 10 May 2020 Total Hours: 11Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)Final Rating: (to come later)Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) […]

Generally speaking, you probably shouldn’t do what menacing faces tell you to do.             I begin this session on top of a flying carpet outside Castle Britannia, with the ability to go literally anywhere. But as I look over my growing “to do” list, I realize I am just addressing […]

There’s some title confusion (covered later). I suppose the title is technically The Dungeons of Morabis: Morabis I: “The Dungeons of Morabis.”          Morabis I: The Dungeons of Morabis United States Independently developed and released as shareware Several versions released for DOS between 1991 and 1992 Date Started: 2 May […]

Regrets: I’ve had a few. But then again, I’m riding a goddamned magic carpet.             There he was in front of me: Batlin of Britain. The anti-Avatar. The con man with a shuck-and-jive so powerful that he even seduced the in-game narration. “At once humble yet dignified, his gentle eyes […]

Executive: “See, the game is called Planet’s Edge, so many the box should have this guy standing on . . . you know . . . the edge of the planet.” Artist: “Aren’t we all by definition standing on the edge of the planet?” Executive: “That’s not what I meant!” […]

One of many in-game books that make in-jokes and build lore.          I’d have to look through my notes to see what game first offered full-text books–not as plot devices but just as random background flavor and world-building. It might have been Ultima VI. But even if they appeared in […]

Excited about the renewed interest in Camelot from my series of 2019 entries (beginning here), author Joshua Tabin has developed a 101-page guidebook to the game.                       The book walks you through setting up a Cyber1 account so that you can play Camelot and other PLATO games. It includes […]

More than once, in idle moments, I’ve gone through a sentence like this, seeing how it changes meaning depending on where you put the emphasis.          After speaking to Lord British, I had three items on my “to do” list for Britain–five if you include a quick trip back to […]

This session resulted in a full set of resources, and not much else.       As I reported a couple weeks ago, my Planet’s Edge adventures were curtailed when my save game got corrupted, resulting in a freeze every time I tried to beam down to a planet. I tried various […]

Pride goeth before the fall.                       Lord British wasn’t quite as bad as I suggested in the last entry, although I might have expected a warmer greeting (and an explanation) from someone I haven’t seen in 200 years. It occurs to me that […]

Crystalware was not the sort of company to let trademarks deter them, whether incorporating the Enterprise in their logo or marketing an unlicensed game called Imperial Walker.             A year ago, I’d never heard of Crystalware. Then, someone rediscovered their catalogue and uploaded all of its games to MobyGames and […]

This is taken out of context, but it amuses me to pretend it happened right after I said. “Hello, Lord British! It’s good to see you again!”            I thought I remembered that The Black Gate’s plot leads you around Britannia on a leash, and for the purposes of my […]

Where fortune and fame await the oold? What does that mean?               An awful lot of administrative work and emulator-fighting went into tracking down, sorting out, an running the three variants of this exceptionally mediocre game. This was not time well spent. When Dragon magazine, home of the modal five-star […]

The Fellowship has managed to infiltrate Britannia with the closest thing this world has ever had to a church.          For a game that gets really good, Ultima VII does not start promising. Particularly disappointing was the character creation process. This is the first Ultima since II not to allow […]

The Moonbase commander congratulates us on retrieving one of the eight artifacts.             As several commenters have noted, Planet’s Edge has shaped up to have a real Star Trek feel, with the quest titles obvious analogues for episode titles. In fact, it’s safe to say that without budget constraints for […]

A deceptively pleasant introductory screen.               Ultima VII: The Black Gate United StatesORIGIN Systems (developer and publisher) Released in 1992 for DOS; 1994 for SNES Forge of Virtue expansion released later in 1992 for DOS Date Started: 20 March 2020 I first played Ultima VII in 1999. I had just […]

One of several stitched-together mini-quests that I encountered this session.           Planet’s Edge is not shaping up to be what I thought it was going to be, which was a New World take on Starflight. I think that the developers perhaps started with an intention to imitate Starflight; certain similarities […]

I’m playing the second edition of the game. The first is not available anywhere.              OrbQuest United StatesAlternate World Simulations Released in 1981 for CP/M Date Started: 10 March 2020 Date Finished: 15 March 2020 Total Hours: 25 Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5) Final Rating: (to come later) Ranking at time of […]

Note that the game’s title screen does not technically exclude the possibility of returning from this point.           Planet’s Edge United States New World Computing (developer and publisher) Released 1991 for DOS, 1993 for FM Towns and PC-98 Date Started: 5 March 2020            Because it […]