crpg posts

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

The Fallout series is a highly esteemed one in the annals of role-playing game history, and for good reason. They presented one of the first cohesive non-fantasy worlds to explore and manipulate, and were extremely open-ended. Fallout is still considered one of the best CRPGs of all time, alongside other classics such as Baldur's Gate 2. It's sequel may not be as fondly remembered, but it's still a great game, and exemplifies all of the things that Black Isle did right with the Fallout series. Fallout 2 is now available through a number of channels, and is a must play for any fan of role-playing games.

Gamasutra is hosting a complete chapter from the recently released book Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games. The book is based on a series of articles previously released on Gamasutra. Those articles were great so the new book release is exciting.

The sample chapter is titled "The Silver Age." It covers the period following the release of Richard Garriott's Ultima and the birth of Sir-Tech's Wizardry series. Author Matt Barton describes an era of transformation. Before Ultima and Wizardry, he says, the genre appealed mostly to a small crowd of hardcore table-top role-playing fans. The games of the so-called Silver Age expanded the audience and changed the landscape forever, introducing many traditions that are still part of today's industry.

The article also contrasts the philosophies of design behind Ultima and Wizardry. Fascinating stuff.