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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.

Wolfenstein 3D -- the groundbreaking game that brought the First Person Shooter genre into the light of day -- celebrates its sixteenth birthday today. It can legally drive a car, drop out of high school, and maybe even get married with parental consent now.

Wired celebrated the game's Sweet Sixteen with a brief summary of its history and some quotes about how revolutionary it was. "The key to the whole Wolfenstein thing is that its success -- which was massive -- paved the way for ... thousands of games that mimicked them, transforming the PC into a gaming system best known for FPS titles," said Wired blogger Earnest Cavalli. And it's true -- whether your favorite FPS is BioShock, Call of Duty 4, or even Portal, the genre as we know it today began with good ol' WOLF3D.EXE.

But if you want a reason to hate the masterpiece then think of it this way -- sick to death of World War II games? Wolfenstein 3D started this whole killing-Nazis-in-the-first-person-perspective spree! Yikes.

[Via Joystiq]

GameDaily has compiled a list of the top 25 PC games of all time. It's quite a list. It includes everything from The Secret of Monkey Island to Doom to World of Warcraft. It's hard to argue with the contents of the list, although everyone will have his or her own opinion about the order in which the titles are ranked.

This list is a lot better than a similar list of games on one of the consoles would be. Why? Because the PC has 30 years of historic titles -- six times the life cycle of any given console. With that kind of history, you know that 25 is too small a number in which to encapsulate the illustrious PC tradition.

Oh, and the number one choice could be considered rather controversial, but we won't spoil it for you.