Re: What was the first RPG?

[Rick_Michael_Cortese@cup.portal.com]

I have both the commercial & PD version of Rogue for the IBM. You're
right about the copyright being something like 1985, but the free
version came out much earlier. I also have a version of Rogue that
runs under CP/M that was originally hacked on a TRS-80 near as I
can figure, which would probably predate the IBM version by 4 or 5
years. There's a good history of adventure games in the book "Quest
for Clues". There is some crossover since the book covers both
CRPGs as well as Adventure. The author, Adams, gives most of the
credit to Crowthers<sp?> for writing the original Colossal Cave
in Fortran on a mainframe so his kids would have something to play.
Crowthers worked as a mapping Mammoth Caves in Kentucky<Once again,
foggy memory> before he got involved with programming. My own
first experience was with "Hunt the Wumpus" on a DEC mainframe. We
would play using a huge daisywheel printer/terminal at 300 baud. When
you'd fire an arrow it would invariably respond something like;
The arrow bounces!
The arrow bounces!
...
This noisy printer the size of a microwave oven would be clanging
away: thunka thunka pitter pat pat ca chong! After about 4 bounces
you'd find out if you hit anything including the Wumpus or yourself.
I recall my son was about 5 years old at the time, so this puts it
somewhere around 1977-1979. I believe it was out before the Apple II
came out since we tried to get an Apple II for data aquisition in
our lab as soon as they came out & the Information Science group convinced
management that what they really wanted to do was buy a mainframe for
$750,000 vs $3,500 for the Apple  system we wanted. => Wumpus was already
a fact on DECs before the Apple even appeared. The funny thing is
Hunt the Wumpus gets almost no press. Apparently it was one hidden/included
on all DECs or at least available. I can only guess that the authors
didn't want managment to know they were fooling around with this sort
of thing so they chose to remain somewhat anonymous. Anyway, AFAIK,
[Colossal Caves, Hunt the Wumpus, Rogue] are the first three games
in the gen're, probably in that order.
Rick