Help find me an RPG from the mid 80s

Absolutely. My biggest 8-bit gaming disappointment was finding out that the other modules in the series would never be completed. They had planned additional interlocking games including Wilderness, Palace, Arena and more that would have allowed you to transfer your character from game to game and continue to level up, explore and continue the story, eventually confronting the aliens and attempting to return home. Phillip Price went back to coding for the Defense Department though, and Datasoft fell on some financial hard times and went bankrupt not long after the release of The Dungeon, tying up the Alternate Reality IP in limbo for all eternity.

I’ve become hooked on this thread as a fascinating exploration into the fallible nature of human memory. Kind of like a lower-stakes version of the Serial podcast.

I will try to draw a better picture …but I just can’t make out details… It had vibrant colors, it wasn’t a black background game…

Can you remember anything about the gameplay? Did you shoot something or swing a sword? What kinds of interactive objects might you find? Anything about the onscreen UI you remember. Etc.

Could it be Wizardry?

unnamed

My blind guess is Legacy of the Ancients.

This could be one of those clever trick questions Captain Kirk used to distract the AI while Scotty fixed the warp drive.

That would explain the smoke coming out of my ears.

@newbrof you’d better start being more forthcoming or Gordon Cameron is going to fly to Germany and kick your ass.

Oh, it’s not anger smoke, it’s “confused Star Trek robot” smoke.

One non-sequitors Nimrod at their peril

I just want to say that this is my favorite thread on the forum and I hope that, unlike the mystery of who killed Sarah Palmer, this mystery never get solved and I can continue to enjoy it forever.

It will be solved around the same time someone actually drills holes in their monitor.

this thread went already down in history, and I forgot about it. Then it came back, and now it is tormenting me that I can’t remember.

You went through connected rooms or caves, I don’t remember (much) fighting… it had nice C64 music, potions was a thing, maybe keys… the bad news is, it could have been some German game, not an international one. I browsed hundreds of screenshots, but no success…

The game doesn’t exist. At least, not as one game. OP played a bunch of games in the '80s, and is mixing a few of them together. It’s a normal thing that happens with human memory.

That first drawing you did is straight out of one of the early Ultima games, almost exactly. Ship on the left, character where it is etc.

Yes but all the Ultimas scrolled and he is quite specific that this game doesn’t. Also, his claim that it all happens in caves or dungeon rooms doesn’t match, either. Ultima dungeons were rendered in 3D wireframe until Ultima 6.

I never played Ultima, unfortunately. Was it available on C64?

Ultimas 1-5 were native to Apple II but ported to many systems including C64. Ultima VI was designed for PC and the C64 port was absurd, as the computer by then was just too underpowered.

Maybe it was Times of Lore… that’s the closest I can find.

grafik