Role-playing games have been around almost as long as first-person shooters. While the very first FPS (as we established in False Dimensions) is Spasim from 1974, the earliest known (commercially available) RPG released in 1976, Colossal Cave Adventure (also known as ADVENT, Colossal Cave or Adventure – no, not Adventure for the Atari 2600, that released in 1979).

Notice how I shoved the term ‘commercially available’ in there?
Colossal Cave Adventure was a text-based RPG, and it was based off of early text-based games found on many mainframe computers (remember those ‘room-filling computers’ I mentioned in False Dimensions?), such as Dungeon in 1975/1976 (it was literally just an unofficial Dungeons & Dragons for computers), dnd (in lowercase and with an ‘n’ instead of an ‘&’) in 1975 and pedit5 (also called The Dungeon) in 1975.

Each of the aforementioned games (including Colossal Cave Adventure) were heavily based off of Dungeons and Dragons (the original pen-and-paper tabletop role-playing game developed and released by Ernest Gary Gygax in 1974, with subsequent expansions and revisions all the way through to today).

This brings us to the first role-playing games I could find with any sort of graphics.

 

Game: Akalabeth

Developer: Richard Garriott

Publisher: self-published, later published by California Pacific Computer Company

Release: the game saw a limited release on the Apple II in 1979, with California Pacific rereleasing the game in 1980.

Game: Ultima

Developer: Richard Garriott

Publisher: California Pacific Computer Company

Release: 1981, with a remake in 1986 by Origin Systems.

 

“Jono, why you bringing up two games? Come on, man, don’t be like that, I don’t wanna get confused.”

Hold your horses, Nikita, this won’t be too confusing (hopefully), but its impossible to talk about Ultima without talking about it’s predecessor, Akalabeth.

As a teenager, Richard Garriott loved computers, and he had a knack for programming. In high school (junior year, for those interested), he began work on a school project, a game called Akalabeth, which he programmed using the school’s mainframe system and two Apple II computers (one of the Apple IIs had been bought for him by his father). Starting development sometime in 1979, Garriott demoed the game later that same year, under the working title ‘D&D28b’ (‘D&D’ was the working title; ‘28b’ refers to the revision number) to his boss at ComputerLand (a chain store specialising in selling computers; where he seemingly (don’t quote me on this, this isn’t explicitly stated anywhere, I’m just making guesses) worked during summers and outside of school hours).

His boss suggested he sell the game at the store, convincing him that it should sell well. Garriott saved up and eventually released the full game 1980, financing the printing of the manuals, copies and covers himself – but you won’t find any pictures of the original version of the game in a sealed box, they were sold in zip-lock bags, with a cover drawn by Garriott’s mother.
Garriott sold maybe a dozen or so copies in the store, for about $20 each, but with time, one of those copies made its way to California Pacific Computer Company, who contacted him and made a deal – California Pacific would publish and distribute the game (this time in an actual box with artwork by Denis Loubet, at a retail price of $35, and Garriott would receive $5 per copy sold.
Richard Garriott claims the game then went on to sell 30 000 copies, which would amount to him receiving a total of $150 000.

Why am I bringing all this up? Context.

Interestingly, Akalabeth featured both isometric (top-down) and first-person gameplay. The ‘overworld’ (where you travel from city to city and occasionally get attacked by thieves or necromancers) had isometric gameplay, with the player being represented by a little cross at the centre of the screen. The overworld map was extremely basic, with cities represented by a collection of squares, relying on the text bar (using short descriptions) to fill in the gaps.

Random fact: Akalabeth takes its name from ‘Akallabêth’ the fourth part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion, though the game is set in it’s own world.

The dungeons, on the other hand, were played in first-person. I can’t find any sources that specifically say whether the first-person elements were done in 3D or not, but it seems to have been done in much the same manner as Maze Wars from 1973/’74/’75 (which I discuss and explain in The Birth of First-Person Shooters Part 1: False Dimensions).

Quick recap for those who weren’t here for that lesson: Maze Wars basically strung together a series of images which gave the impression of moving through a 3D space and attacking/being attacked.

Notably, Akalabeth was quite possibly the first game where the player required food to survive (with the first survival game, Wilderness: A Survival Adventure, releasing in 1986).
Dungeon maps, the overworld and a player’s stats were randomly generated (though stats were always low at the start) based on a ‘lucky number’ the game asked the player to enter at the start of each playthrough, said number was then used as a world seed*.

World seed: these are used to determine where things are, how the world appears, where enemies are, what loot they drop, how much gold merchants have, along with what items they stock and a wide variety of other factors.

 

Akalabeth also introduced something which has stuck through in RPGs to this day: classes.

Fighter or Mage?

If you picked Mage, well done; if you picked Fighter, I just have one question: are you okay with the idea of playing super-difficult games like Dark Souls?
If not, restart the game and pick Mage.

No, the classes do not actually dictate difficulty, there are set difficulty levels (1 to 10, I recommend 2 or 3 for a first-timer), but the game’s meta almost forces you to pick Mage.
Fighters do better damage overall, but often fall just short of what is necessary, and they also cannot control the Magic Amulet, yielding random results when attempting to use it (said results can either help you or they can set you back quite a bit).
Mages, on the other hand, do less damage with melee weapons (and can’t use certain weapons) but have full control of the aforementioned Amulet – and that amulet is integral to finishing the game.

Play as the Fighter and you’ll spend an hour or two playing a brutal dungeon-crawler, occasionally using the Magic Amulet in the hopes it won’t screw you over and that it might actually help you once in a while; play as the Mage and you’ll be well on your way to veritable godhood in twenty minutes or less.
Seriously, the Magic Amulet isn’t just integral to finishing the game, it is also extremely overpowered.

 

Ultima was Garriott’s skill as a programmer and designer put to good use (although he claims it was all downhill after Akalabeth).

In Ultima, during character creation were given base stats and you could change them up slightly during character creation, the player is given thirty points to distribute between their stats, with each stat (Strength, Agility, Stamina, Charisma, Wisdom and Intelligence) starting at ten points. You would then pick from one of four races (Human, Elf, Dwarf and Bobbit – yes, that last one is basically a Hobbit), depending on your race you would get certain buffs to your skills (Dwarves have increased Strength, etc).
After setting your stats and picking your race, you would pick your class (Fighter, Cleric, Wizard and Thief), your choice of class would then add further buffs to your stats – notice how there are no debuffs, also something which has remained to this day, seemingly in an effort to ensure that all players start on a level playing field, even in single-player games.
After this, you pick your gender – which, just like with modern RPGs, has no effect on gameplay; the player ‘model’ (its more of a sprite, really) doesn’t even change depending on your chosen gender, the option seems to have been added in simply for role-playing purposes.

Ultima 1, unlike Akalabeth, didn’t have a first-person view of any sort, sticking with just a fully-flat (true top-down*) view. Where Ultima 1 truly differed, aside from overall gameplay, was in it’s look and in character creation; the character creation was simply more expansive than in Akalabeth, as for look… the game had more colours, that’s about it.

*True Top-Down: these days you hear the term ‘isometric’ and ‘top-down’ thrown around interchangeably, but they are quite different. Top-Down generally still aims to give perspective of height, so you view things from the top but slightly angled, allowing you to see the sides of objects. Isometric is a 45-degree view, both vertically and horizontally (roughly, the angle does sometimes change; most strategy games are isometric, The Sims automatically starts from an isometric viewpoint, but the view can be changed). True Top-Down is similar to Top-Down, but without the slight angle.

Ultima 1 went on to spawn an entire franchise – ten main entries (not including Akalabeth, which only recently became officially recognised as Ultima 0), three spin-offs (four if you count the MMO), two console exclusives and a ton of ports.
But Ultima 1: The First Age of Darkness didn’t just start a franchise, it birthed a genre…
Fantasy races, classes, magic and monsters… Ultima took Dungeons & Dragons and put it in a video game.

Welcome to the Birth of Role-Playing Games.

 

Sidenote: The Birth of Role-Playing Games Part 2 can be found here.