Rogue is a computer game that is based off of the idea of early-days 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, well before there was even an “ancient” 2nd Edition to be had. Rogue uses procedurally generated dungeon maps and offers 26 levels within the Dungeon of Doom.
Each level consists of nine quadrants - basically like a tic-tac-toe 3x3 grid.
- I superimposed a tic-tac-toe grid here to help illustrate the point.
As you begin the game you will find yourself in some sort of rectangular room. On each side of the room there is the potential for a door to be found depending on where in the grid your room is located (and there is always at least one door). If there is a door in one of the walls, a passageway will be on the other side which leads to another room - or sometimes a small maze or dead end. To clear a level, players must search to reveal the contents of each of the nine quadrants (if he or she desires to be thorough). The ultimate goal of each level is to find the room that contains a staircase down. Down down down you must go.
On the 26th level is an amulet - the amulet of Yendor, which is “Rodney” spelled backwards. If you find it, you are to return to the surface with it without being killed by monsters or starving to death.
If you ever manage to do that you win the game.
And if you do, you will be in a very small and exclusive club worthy of song.
DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS
While the precise definition of a "roguelike" game may be subject to debate, the core essence of these games revolves around tactical gameplay, procedurally generated levels, and usually the concept of permanent death.
Tactical play in this context entails turn-based decision-making akin to games like chess or checkers. "Procedurally generated" means that the game world is constructed using algorithms, which generate unique levels each time you play. Permanent death is straightforward, signifying that you have only one life or attempt, and if you die you must restart from the very beginning without the option of restarting from a previous save point (in other words, no save scumming).
In the earliest roguelike games, the graphics were incredibly rudimentary. Rather than using pixels or polygons, these vintage computer video games relied on colored blocks, or text-based displays which employed capital letters to represent monsters, special symbols such as "#" or "!" for treasure, items, and walls. And the "@" symbol represented the player character: you. Surprisingly, these simple characters often evoked a stronger sense of immersion and imagination compared to the most cutting-edge graphics engines available today.
What is also debatable is the origin of the roguelike. While many point to the game where the name literally came from, Rogue, there actually were even older computer games that bear a very striking resemblance. One in particular BAM: Beneath Apple Manor by Don Worth, that was made for Apple II computers in 1978 and sold commercially.
But this isn’t an exhaustive history of every single Roguelike ever made. We’re focusing squarely on Rogue and its original ports, as well as what we’re calling the “core roguelikes” that later found their way to the Amiga computer in the 1980s and early 90s.
A BRIEF HISTORY
Rogue was originally free and relatively widely available, which is probably why the genre of roguelikes bears its name and not older short-lived commercial video games that employ the same basic concept.
Born in 1980 on the UC Santa Cruz mainframe from the minds of a couple of college students named Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman, and later refined further at UC Berkeley by Toy and Ken Arnold, it quickly spread to other UC campuses.
A few years later, the original source code was rewritten by Jon Lane and Michael Toy with the intention of porting it to the then-emerging US PC market. They created a company called, believe it or not, Artificial Intelligence Design, or A.I. Design. The game was ported to the PC, titled, “Rogue: The Adventure Game” with a few minor visual improvements, yet barely broke even financially. Based on the urging of some of the developers at Epyx who had played the game, Rogue was licensed by Epyx for other platforms. A.I. Design was contracted to bring Rogue to the Macintosh, Atari ST and Amiga platforms.
Toy handled the Macintosh version, which had a graphical user interface and sported mouse input rather than keyboard commands. And, A.I. Design could really make the Macintosh version shine with graphics to represent monsters and other items found within the dungeon.
The problem: Neither Lane nor Toy had any artistic skills. So, they brought back co-creator Glenn Wichman who wound up doing all of the 25x25 black and white art. He also fully embraced the Mac’s GUI interface and windowed environment. Soon, the game began to look much more modern.
Wichman was later highly responsible for the Atari ST port - a game that is often heralded as the best looking Rogue of the original core ports. Wichman brought in an EPYX artist to redo most of the graphics while he focused on the game’s overall design and mechanics, which shared similarities with the Macintosh port.
Michael Toy, the other original co-creator, did the Amiga version.
MACINTOSH and ATARI ST PORTS
The Mac version consists of multiple windows, and each window is scrollable. The playfield is a zoomed-in view of the dungeon level you are exploring. As such, you can only see about 20% of the entire level at any given time. But with the other windows eating up real estate, the playfield is rather small when compared to the PC or Amiga.
- Example of the Macintosh experience while playing Rogue.
The ST version mirrors the Mac, but it provides a very rich and detailed view of the game world and its inhabitants. The graphics, frankly, are beautiful. But like the Macintosh, the view is highly constrained to a very small overall portion of the level you’re on. As a result, it is necessary to zoom out and back in quite a lot to understand where you’ve been, and where you might need to go to find the stairs down to the next level, or find a secret room you may have missed, or even determine if you’ve found each of the 9 potential areas of each level. You often only see 1-2 rooms per screen, and it’s usually just 1 room plus some hallway. Of course, this allows the game sprites to be much larger and detailed as a result. So while it certainly looks better, it actually doesn’t feel better.
- Example of the very attractive ST port.
You’re also heavily reliant on using the mouse to play the game, whether it be searching for hidden doors or selecting items from your inventory (pack) to equip or use.
Also, your various character stats aren’t shown as explicit easy-to-understand numbers, but instead are bar charts - a health metaphor that was an accepted norm in platform and fighting games.
And several key commands must either be clicked on with the mouse, or chosen from menus across the top of the screen.
In general, both the Mac and ST ports create a much slower experience in regards to character movements and viewing and navigating a level’s map. And, simply invoking commands takes a bit more time to use the various buttons and menus.
But damn, the game is pretty.
Most of the other ports were either some lesser version of these two (I’m looking at you C64) or straight-up clones of the PC or mainframe versions (e.g. CP/M).
AMIGA PORT
After playing the Amiga version for years now, without hesitation I sincerely believe it is The Best One of the original core Rogues made for home computers. The fact that this game squanders the graphical capabilities of the Amiga make absolutely no difference here. Compared to the ST, the Amiga’s gameplay is far more fast-paced and produces almost no user experience friction at all.
The Amiga version shows you a single level’s entire field of play all at once - similar to the ST’s zoomed out view, except it uses much more of the screen.
- Sometimes less is more. A lot more.
The sprites are much smaller and less detailed as a result, but the gameplay experience and fluidity of play is greatly increased.
When this game becomes your daily solitaire ritual and you’ve played for years, speed matters. Especially during the fairly stress-free early levels that are almost time wasters (except for the items you collect along the way) until you get to level 8 or beyond.
The entire game can be keyboard driven, and while the mouse can do some things you honestly never need to touch it (except to move it off the damn screen when it gets in the way).
The ‘Help’ screen is also much more manageable than the PC version as it fits on a single screen. And more importantly, your Inventory is entirely keyboard-driven. No clicking on a small pack window and clicking on scrollbars to try and find an item you want to use (or 3 or 4 in a row). Simply tap ‘I’ then press the appropriate keyboard character you want to use right then and there. Bam! Then continue on your quest.
Your character stats are NUMBERS, so you can quickly see them change, and immediately understand how powerful (or weak) a particular item might be. SUPER helpful.
For what it’s worth, the Amiga and ST share a very similar startup screen. Fact is, the Amiga version actually uses more colors and therefore has more detail. But the trimmed down visuals in the Amiga port's game, while seemingly anemic at first glance, is actually a huge bonus. And it’s a game I still play multiple times every week due to its almost perfect attention to the game mechanics, and not the graphics and sound. (In fact, there isn’t any sound at all.)
The following roguelikes were inspired by the original Rogue and emerged in the mid-80s and beyond. The games shown here are all Amiga versions, which were generally ports of earlier MS-DOS or UNIX games. And, they were almost always converted from keyboard glyphs to rudimentary graphics of some sort.
HACK, HACKLITE and NETHACK
The Birth of the Original "Core Roguelikes"
The original Rogue had never been open source software and was obviously commercialized, however many other programmers found it easy to imitate. And, they made their own creations open-source, which introduced a lot more variables as more creators entered the mix. This is what ultimately led to the entire roguelike genre.
The history of Hack, Hacklite and Nethack is convoluted and complicated. But essentially these clones took Rogue to entirely new levels. Literally.
First, they introduced multitudes of character classes players could choose from, which grew in diversity over time. And, the varied classes start with their own inventories.
I have multiple original disks of Hack that were distributed back in the day and my character class options range from: tourist, speleologist (later replaced by the more common term "archaeologist"), fighter, knight, cave-man, and wizard.
Hacklite - an Amiga-specific port - eventually added even more classes, like priest, samurai, valkyrie, elf, and others.
- Hacklite, an Amiga-specific port of Hack, is very cool. It's HARD, but it is an interesting take on the genre.
Additional game elements include:
- Pets, like a little dog that follows you and often gets in your way but can also assist during battle.
- Boulders found in the passageways.
- The ability to gain attributes from eating corpses. You are what you eat!
- Shops, for upgrading armor, weapons and more.
- Complex quests one must take in order to complete the game.
- Much longer monster lists.
- The potential for more than 1 door per wall.
- Level maps that break out of the 3x3 tic-tac-toe grid into much more organic, and therefore difficult to explore and search.
- Oh, and there are more than 26 levels.
- And, save scumming is OK! Which felt weird at first, but due to how many more variables are involved it’s actually a welcome change.
- Some versions even offered an Immortal mode to help folks learn the game, but that definitely removes a large chunk of the challenge and tension. If you go this route, you might as well save scum because Immortal mode actually is more like “Reincarnation mode,” where you get reborn after death but lose things along the way.
Now guys, I told you this was complicated.
Nethack came a few years later and is still in active development to this day. It adds tons more complexity and nuance to a game that looks utterly basic while the gameplay is extremely deep.
As an example:
You can write notes to yourself with your fingers in a dungeon’s dusty floor and the letters will actually degrade over time. It’s insane.
- Nethack takes things to the next level. And while the graphics are a small step down, the added complexity is impressive and interesting. It took me a while to even figure out how the heck to install the dang game! As soon as I did, though, I learned how to customize my color palette. The default Amiga palette - white text on a gray background - is horrific. I quickly made it much more enjoyable for me to play. "Marble" is the name of a neighborhood cat I'd grown fond of that would play with me and my dog during our morning walks. She was killed by coyotes this year. True story. So, I keep her memory alive whenever I play Nethack and the game chooses Feline over Dog during startup.
I play Nethack 3.1 from 1989-1993 because that’s the last version that supported Amiga OS 1.3, which is my jam. The last version ported to Amiga, however, was version 3.4.3 made in 2003 and ported to Amiga in 2007, which requires OS 2.0.4+, which I play using my Amiga 1000 equipped with a Parceiro II.
As of February 16, 2023, Nethack is up to version 3.6.7, but isn’t being ported to Amiga anymore so who the fuck really cares?
I’m kidding, guys… well, sort of.
Where to find these games for Amiga
Hack
FRED FISH DISK 62
Hacklite
FRED FISH DISK 187 (1.0)
FRED FISH DISK 799 (2.0)
Nethack
FRED FISH DISKS 189 & 190 (2.3)
FRED FISH DISK 460 (v3.0)
FRED FISH DISKS 822, 823 & 824 (v3.1)
Also See: Version 3.4.3
LARN
Larn is a really fun enhanced Rogue with some key differences.
- The quest is not to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, but rather a potion that will save your daughter from some affliction called dianthroritis.
- Instead of being “timed” by starvation, which you can put off by finding food in Rogue, in LARN there is a literal time limit. There are scrolls which can buy a little extra time, if you find them.
- Like Dungeon Master 2, which came about 7 years later, you start in an outdoor area with shops and guilds where you can improve your skills and equipment.
- You can go back UP the stairs! And you’ll have to. A lot!
- In the ULarn version, instead of bats, the game is infested with Lemmings, which is pretty awesome.
- There’s an actual economy in this game (and even a bank) and it’s pretty good. Upgrading items through the acquisition of wealth and gems can be quite a thrill.
- You find and collect a TON of cool stuff.
- But you also have to deal with a limited inventory/pack.
- No tic-tac-toe grids here. Almost the entire screen is filled with a very twisty maze instead.
Larn is easily my favorite of the original core roguelikes. You can play it in your Web browser, too, and the port is fantastic. In fact, it is actually better than the original as the original lacks the map's grid dots, which makes exploration a slight pain. The web port also puts your inventory right on the main screen, which is a very nice enhancement.
- I couldn't agree more. It's a much-needed enhancement.
ANGBAND, and MORIA
Angband, like Moria and frankly D&D itself, spends a lot of time and energy in the character creation phase of the game. You get most of what you’d expect in D&D’s second edition rules, and based on your choices ANGBAND does a great job leading you towards logical results. You can choose from multiple fantasy races like human, half-elf, elf, hobbit, gnome, dwarf, half-orc, half-troll and so on.
Did you notice "hobbit" in the previous sentence? That's included because these games are based entirely on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. So you get the D&Dness of Rogue interwoven into Tolkien's universe. Kind of a cool idea.
You get to choose sex and then class options from warrior, mage, priest rogue, ranger, and paladin. Your race choices will impact the classes you can pick from, which makes sense. And the character attributes you roll for are what you’d expect, like strength, intelligence, wisdom, etc.
Gameplay starts at a town level, rather than down in a dungeon. In many respects this feels very much like a similar experience, albeit in a very different view, to Bard’s Tale or RPGs from SSI, like Pools of Radiance. Or, to Larn, which we already took a look at earlier.
In town there are multiple shops, a temple and even your own house which you can use for storage.
When you think you’re ready, you take the stairs down into the dungeons. Where Rogue kept each level to a single screen, Angband's levels sprawl across multiple screens. And, there is no level permanence. If you go back to town and return, the level will completely change. As a result, there is no pressure to clear levels before you head down deeper.
One of the most innovative aspects of Angband is how it allows players to target foes using missile weapons or magical wands and staffs to anything within range, and not be beholden to perfect columns, rows and diagonals. What a massive leap forward in tactical battles! I wish more early RPGs had stolen this idea.
Another key difference between ANGBand and Rogue is it takes MUCH longer to play and requires a lot of grinding to build up your stats and equipment before you go very deep. In fact, I’m not entirely sure if ANGBAND is even winnable at this point. If it is, you have to be willing to play for months, if not years. It’s also so cruelly unfair at times I frankly won’t even play it anymore.
Rogue can be played from a few minutes up to an hour or two if you’re having a great run. At this point in my life, I’ll take Rogue.
Where to find these games:
Angband
Version 2.9.1 (as seen in the video)
Version 3.0.1
Moria
FRED FISH DISK 194
CONCLUSION
The issue for me with the expansive old-school roguelikes is they feel almost like a literal D&D campaign without much story that require a massive time investment.
And most modern Roguelikes today go too far the other way. They generally focus almost entirely on the look and feel of the game, leaving the actual game underneath utterly shallow, slow, and not addicting enough to play more than a couple of times - then forgotten.
OG Epyx Rogue on Amiga is the king of Roguelikes. It is simple on the surface, but the depth and playability make it the best of the core ports and their offspring.
It can be viewed and played very quickly, which is important in the generally stressless early levels. With a bit of initial patience and self-training, Rogue on Amiga can reap huge rewards for gamers. It’s very hard to beat, but that is actually a feature. By being procedurally generated, the game is as addicting as a great game of fantasy-based solitaire - with a strong enchantment spell cast upon it. If you give it a chance, I predict you’ll lose your saving throw to resist coming back for more.
Nowhere else can you play a D&D-inspired “mario speed run” game with this level of depth in tactics and luck. Literally everything about the game is a roll of the dice, but you also need to know what you’re doing. And since the game isn’t hard to start, or complicated to learn the basics, it’s extremely easy to start over and try again and build your muscle memory.
The perfect balance of playability, surprise, skill and tension makes Amiga Rogue one of the best games on the platform and arguably the best Rogue of any of the core roguelikes. Sometimes it’s not about fancy graphics or mind-blowing sound. And I’m proud a game this “anti-Amiga” is actually an Amiga exclusive in this format. I hope more D&D hack ’n slash fans with Amigas give it a chance if they’ve not done so before.
Out of all of the various original versions there really is only one way go to for the uninitiated. And it’s Rogue, created by one of the inventors of Rogue, on Amiga.
- Let's play a game. Let's play Rogue!
Notes:
You can find a complete listing of the meanings of scrolls and potions in the AmigaLove Game Library for a quick reference. I still use it myself!
I beat Rogue in 2019. It was easily one of the greatest gaming achievements I've ever experienced. And I keep going back for more to this day multiple times a week.
Finally, I highly recommend the somewhat rare book by David L. Craddock titled "Dungeon Hacks." His book goes very in-depth around several of the games mentioned here, including Rogue. While the book is now a spendy collectible, the audiobook is also fantastic. I got the paperback in 2022 and it is now a prized possession, but I also listened to the audio version and it's an incredibly important record of gaming history not to be missed for Rogue and CRPG fans.
