Rogo-Matic

Back in college, we played Spades. Pretty much constantly. One fellow who lived on floor became so addicted, he wound up dropping out after failing to basically do any homework or write any papers. Was Spades to blame? Well, it's entertaining to think so.

Me, I graduated. Barely. And I can say, with a great deal of certainty, that had I not been introduced to the DOS game "Rogue," in approximately 1984, I would have graduated considerably higher in my class.

Rogue, for those of you too young to have experienced the first generation of PC games, was an ASCII-based adventure game, modeled on Dungeons and Dragons. You worked your way down through 26 or so levels of dungeons, fighting monsters represented by letters of the alphabet (A is for Aquator, B is for Bat, C is for Centaur... Z is for Zombie). Then, if you were still alive, you'd grab the Amulet of Yendor and work your back UP 26 levels until reaching the light of day.

I'm pretty sure it's impossible. But being clever sorts, we quickly figured out that if you made a copy of the saved game, you could go back to a point and try again. And if you were really clever, you could milk a scroll of identify or magic mapping for several levels, by saving right before using them.



(In the above screen grab, I'm about to have my arse handed to me by a Griffin.)

I wrote my first column for the college newspaper on Rogue, and its addictive qualities. I'd love to find it somewhere, so that I could clean up the grammar and spelling.

So last month my friend Kent sent me to a link where one could download Rogue -- the single file, small enough to fit on a low-density floppy (A what? Nevermind -- it was a long time ago). He's been trying to win without saving the game. I think he's mad. But, partially for old time's sake, partially because I really haven't changed much in 20 years, I gave it a whirl.

Well, I can't beat it. I've gotten close a couple of times (you really do need leather armor or a ring of maintain armor, and alost certainly a ring of slow digestion. Some kind of wand of polymorph helps, as does slow monster. Even so... bad luck just kicks in). But close doesn't cut it.

If you're interested in giving Rogue a go, you can download it here.

But don't blame if you graduate last in your class....