Akalabeth: World of Doom

Akalabeth: World of Doom, which was released in 1980 for the Apple II, is one of the first commercial computer role-playing games considered (although it was started as a hobby project ) and as a predecessor of the Ultima series, the decisive certain Richard Garriott's career.

Formation

The game was programmed in the summer of 1980 by the then youthful Garriott in BASIC for the Apple II, while he was working at a computer country shipping Dealers in Clear Lake City ( Texas) ( some sources give the date 1979, see " Release Date " below). Garriott drove the game by hand in Ziploc bags until the California Pacific Computer Company acquired the rights and took over its distribution. Akalabeth, Garriott's 28th game of his high school years, was his first significant commercial game.

In his work on Akalabeth, Garriott was largely inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and the works of JRR Tolkien. The game strives to adapt the gameplay to the pen -and- paper role-playing games on the computer. The player is given the task of Lord British to destroy a series of ten more demanding becoming monsters. The name is derived from Tolkien's Akallabêth, part of the Silmarillion (although Garriott originally " D & D28b " called, the 28th of Dungeons & Dragons inspired by him programmed game).

The main part of the gameplay takes place in a dungeon in simple wireframe graphics in the first-person view instead, with a simple overworld map and text passages during the remaining season. Garriott's earlier games, including D & D28 were solely text-based. For Akalabeth he added first added graphics for the Apple II computer.

Of course, gameplay and graphics of Akalabeth viewed from today's point antiquated, yet the game attracted a lot of attention. There tens of thousands of copies of the program have been sold, with Garriott took $ 5 per copy sold.

Although it was never explicitly confirmed Akalabeth is considered the first (or " zeroth " ) part of the Ultima series, a popular and influential RPG series. It was integrated with the first eight parts of the actual Ultima series in the 1998's Ultima Collection, where it received the official nickname of Ultima 0. The version of the Collection have been added CGA colors and MIDI music. It ran on DOS, making it the first official porting to a system other than the Apple II, with an unofficial fan version was to be found for the PC on the internet since 1995.

Since the original Apple II version was written by Akalabeth in BASIC, it turned out to be relatively straightforward for users to modify the source code as they see fit. The magical amulet for example, that exercised initially unpredictable effects on the protagonists (for example, transformed him into a hochgelevelten Lizardmen ) could be modified to do this with every application. Thus, the force of the avatar was almost raised to immortality. Furthermore, could the attributes of character which are usually placed at the beginning of the launch on rather low, random values ​​are brought to any desired value.

Date of publication

The majority of sources, including self Garriott and Origin Systems give as release date Akalabeths to the summer of 1979. The created his own floppy label of the first version, which he sold during his high school years in clear plastic bags ( there is no known fully preserved set of this period, but the number of those sales was given by himself with about 15 pieces), but are clearly with " © Richard Garriott 1980 " marked. The publication date in 1980 and 1981 at the California Pacific Computer Company is not subject to appeal.

Ports

There are remakes of the title

  • For iPhone, iPod and iPad, composed of original author Richard Garriott at AkalabethApp.com
  • For J2me phones from dimjon

Left

  • Akalabeth in the Internet Archive ( with scan option )
  • Akalabeth - DOS Gamer
  • GameSpot: "The Ultima Legacy - D & D28b and the Apple II"
  • Ultima Collection: Akalabeth - Pictures of the first Akabaleth - edition ( archived version )
  • The Dot Eaters article on Garriot / Lord British, Ultima, Akalabeth and his other games.
  • Computer game 1980
  • Computer role-playing game
  • Apple II game
  • DOS game
  • USK without classification
Video game publisher Role-playing video game Single-player video game Ultima (series) Color Graphics Adapter
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