The CRPG Adventure Begins

In the last decade, computer and video games have become a large part of our entertainment landscape. The industry has grown, gaming has proliferated amongst the younger generation, and for the most part it's become an accepted leisure activity, right up there with going to the movies and watching TV. It has almost become (dare I say it) cool.

Conversely, my own gaming career has taken a major backslide in the last decade. I got married, had a child, got a job and decided to focus more on my writing; something had to give, and computer games took the hit.

I've loved games ever since I got my Commodore 64 at age 8, and played them incessantly for the next two decades. RPGs were my bread and butter: Bard's Tale, the Gold Box series and Ultima went a long way towards preventing me from becoming a productive member of society. Adventure games were my second love, and I poured a lot of hours into the likes of Zork and Quest for Glory.

But as I said, I gave them up.  Not completely, of course.  I've still found time to eke out a game here and there, but not to the extent I would like. Lately, however, I've been feeling like something's missing from my life. Between family, work and writing I don't do anything for fun anymore. Thinking back on my earlier days, some of the most fun I had was playing computer games.

So I decided to start a blog. There are a lot of games from the last four decades that I want to play. Because I am thorough and methodical, I have made a list. I intend to play through said list, starting with the games from 1975 and working my way forwards chronologically. Because not only am I thorough and methodical, I am also clearly mentally ill.

This blog will mostly focus on RPGs and adventure games, but I'll throw in some other things here and there if they take my fancy. My list extends to 1989 at the moment; trust me, I have enough games to last for a while. If I ever get near to that point, I'll consider continuing on. I haven't put the list on the blog yet, but you can expect the usual RPG and adventure game suspects, along with a lot of obscurities and lesser known works.

(At this point, I should acknowledge my debt to The CRPG Addict, who has spent the last four years blogging his way through the history of role-playing games.  It's an excellent blog, and reading through it has inspired me to attempt a similar project.  More accurately, it made me want to go back and play through all those old games.  If you're reading, cheers Chester; I hope you don't mind me horning in on your territory a little.)

As usual, it seems like I have taken something intended for fun and made it into work, but I'm one of those people who feels the need to blog things. If I don't add this to my to-do list, I'll spend another decade not playing games, and that's something I really don't want.

So that's my blog: CRPG Adventures, named for the two genres that I intend to cover most thoroughly.  There should be another post coming soon, covering the earliest available CRPG: the poetically titled PEDIT5, aka The Dungeon.