(Continued from my previous posts.)
I swear I’m not trying to break my blog posts up into convenient chunks this way but … I missed another section of the map. Look, the streets are very bland and it is easy to think you’ve tested an exit when you haven’t. Two cases in point:
East of the room facing the bank is the section I hadn’t gotten to yet; not an enormous chunk, but I did find one amusing encounter, one puzzle that I solved, and one baffling bit of geography.
The baffling geography first: upon going east from the bank area you see a court house. “YOU ARE FACING EAST” and “IN THE DISTANCE YOU CAN SEE THE COUNTY COURT HOUSE.”
Head north and you’ll get the message “YOU ARE JUST PAST BY THE COURT HOUSE.” The same will happen going east from there. In neither case does it seem to be possible to go into the court house. GO HOUSE gets the response “WHY DON’T YOU TRY A DIRECTION?” and GO COURT gets the response “YOU CAN’T GET TO IT FROM HERE”. Diagonal directions (NE/NW/SE/SW) don’t work and don’t seem to be in the game. I have no idea what’s going on here.
What I did figure out is the museum just past the court house, with a *ruby*.
The ruby is protected by a laser (and you’ll get tossed in what I assume is softlock-jail if you go for it). Moving on just a little bit farther is the electrical plant I only saw the backside of before.
Unfortunately what comes next is a game of guess-the-phrase. PULL LEVER, FLIP SWITCH, TURN OFF, YANK LEVER, PUSH DOWN, TOUCH POWER, POWER DOWN, and many more don’t work; the game is hunting for CUT POWER.
ALMOST ALL THE POWER THROUGHOUT THE VILLAGE HAS BEEN SHUT OFF!
By doing this you can grab the ruby safely and stash it with the rest of the treasures in the truck.
One last encounter is the hospital, which I’m pretty sure is just intended to be a dead end, but I can’t take anything for granted.
Maybe we can segue from here into playing The Institute.
The other new area I explored was the sewers, which was, as I feared, a maze, but not a large or terrible one. While I had tried GO DOWN, ENTER GUTTER, PRY GUTTER, FEEL GUTTER, CLIMB DOWN, and numerous other variations, it was a while before I tried GO GUTTER. (In my defense, GO for most things has the game encourage you to try a direction instead. The reason I tried GO out is that message from the court house earlier being special.)
The maze, as I already indicated, is thankfully not terrible, although I did need to drop items to be certain of my map. If you go in a direction and “loop” you need to LOOK in order to see what’s there; it’s almost as if the engine doesn’t want to support the classic Crowther/Woods maze style.
The useful items (besides the “ladder above) are a “ring” and a “wallet” full of credit cards.
There’s also a one way path to the lake which has a *raft* and a rope. Trying to go in any direction says something about needing a water vehicle, which is confusing because the raft is right there. I am 99% certain this area is a matter of guessing the right phrase but I haven’t guessed yet.
Everyone seems to struggle with syntax for launching water craft, including Sierra.
I’ve used all three of the sewer items. First, straightforwardly, the ladder lets you grab the chandelier.
Despite the “knocking down” message you don’t have to worry about breaking it.
The ring is described as rusted. Keeping the blacksmith’s note in mind, I went over there and tried to drop the ring and trade the ring and converse with the proprietor and so forth but nothing happened. Using guess the phrase again, I needed to CLEAN RING, which turns it into a valuable *ring*.
Finally there’s the wallet. I knew the gas station had a price on it, and I found from experimenting with phrases again I could FILL CAN while there, whereupon the owner of the gas station demands that you pay before any more progress is made. BUY GAS then gets the prompt “with what” and WITH WALLET didn’t work, leading to a moment of stunned confusion. The game wants WITH CARD, even though that’s not given as the primary noun in the object.
I’m still only just over a third of the way on the score.
Even given all the treasures I haven’t scooped yet (the *Picasso*, the *raft*, the *boat*, the *Corvette*, the *stereo*) I feel like I’m missing quite a bit. Maybe the mansion and Mr. Smith’s house are loaded, but none of the logical commands I can come up with a crowbar and/or brick are doing anything.
It’s much easier to grind on this sort of game when you know it is playing fair, but with the guess-the-phrase aspect I could easily have done the right command but in the wrong way hours ago. I’ll still stick with it a little longer before breaking open the walkthrough. Surely there’s a way to use the raft, right?
Renga in Blue 
I just finished the game (after having attempted it years ago). I got all but one treasure and was pretty sure what the last treasure was but couldn’t figure it out. I began watching the YouTube walkthrough you posted to maybe spark some ideas and it answered my question almost immediately.
For a 1982 text adventure, I’d say the game mostly plays fair, possibly because places on the map are easily missed (I also missed the court house/museum/power station bit, right up until I was almost done). I’d say I guessed some of the harder “guess the verb” bits because, after not playing a text adventure for some time, I was pretty loose on the parser. Definitely some surprising ways to say things that you wouldn’t expect.
The worst part is that it does, occasionally, rely on randomness. Like escaping the jail. Sometimes you get shot. Sometimes you escape. Better to just restore a save when you wind up in jail so you don’t have to reload completely.
Oh, also I just realized I needed to change my profile name from the random one they gave me (although delightfully impossible is nice!). Plus there was one bug that crashes the game but it can be mitigated by being in all text mode whenever you go to the screen where it’s been dropped.
What verbs have you tried with the raft? Probably LAUNCH, ENTER, GO, BOARD… what about RIDE?
RIDE RAFT – you can’t do that here
ENTER RAFT, BOARD RAFT – you can’t do that here
GO RAFT – why don’t you try a direction
CAST OFF – you can’t do that here
GET RAFT – you must be kidding, it is much too heavy for you to lift
push/pull – you can’t do that here
tie rope / to raft, then push/pull – you can’t do that here
ummm is there maybe some object that if you were holding it would allow you to PADDLE or ROW?
aha, ROW RAFT works
(don’t usually think of rafts as things you “row” exactly but I guess it works with the picture)
Hi Jason, I was browsing magazines on archive.org and found a mention of the game Ice Caverns of Xen, a text adventure published by Futura in 1982 for TI99, and I was surprised you hadn’t played it already. Is it on your list?
I don’t have a copy of that one! I’d love to know if someone knows where to get it.
but also, TI/99 is one of those computers where a lot of them haven’t made it to Mobygames etc so I’m sure I’m missing stuff – I have some on my list only from TI/99 sites – please keep them coming if you find TI/99 games
for example, there’s another Scott Adams database editor for TI-99 (_not_ the one I wrote about already for TRS-80) completely separate from the original made by a German in ’83, it actually uses the Scott Adams cartridge plugged in for the program file
also here
https://archive.org/details/tibook_ti994a-software-directory/page/n213/mode/2up
author Neil Weinstock
Charles Ehninger was the person who ran the company
https://forums.atariage.com/topic/250074-futura-software/
I found it:
https://forums.atariage.com/topic/349217-ti-994a-gamebase/
It’s in the Games-Disk-mc folder.
It must have had some popularity on the platform, because there’s a Futura company newsletter that seems to have had an ongoing tips column dedicated to it.
thanks to both of you!
I recommend using a GameBase frontend and downloading the gamebases for lesser-known computers. You can search for games by genre, and I’ve found some that aren’t even referenced online.
I can check for any adventure games you might have missed from the ones I have installed, but in many cases, information like the release year is missing, so it won’t be easy. Besides, there are a lot of them: BBC Micro, Acorn Atom, Acorn Electron, Oric, Memotech, Camputers Lynx, Colour Genie, Dragon 32, ZX81, Micronique Hector, Tatung Einstein, Thomson MO5, VTech Laser 200, TI99, and a few more.
These are the games I’ve found for Dragon 32 (all from 1982 according to the gamebase):
I’ll keep looking in the rest of the gamebases, although I understand that you’ll have discarded some of the ones I find for some reason (I already did some filtering) or maybe they were published later and you haven’t reached them yet.
btw, out of those in particular, the first two (Caverns, Dungeons) I sorted as RPGs, Dragon Slayer I hadn’t seen at all (look like it’s a straight adventure, I’ll add it) and Pharaoh’s Curse I’ve already played
These are the games I’ve found for VIC20 (all from 1982 according to the gamebase):
Then there are a couple of games supposedly from 1982 called Spider Mountain and The Temple, which I’m not sure who published or if they coincide with games of similar names.
Bomb Scare is Bomb Threat, I played here – https://bluerenga.blog/2023/08/28/bomb-threat-hospital-adventure-1982/
Caves of Silver is ADV.CAVES, I played here – https://bluerenga.blog/tag/adv-caves/?order=ASC
Warlock and Dragon’s Lair I discarded as RPGs — they’re two Clifford Ramshaw games from one of the Melbourne House books
video of Warlock here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38YBsUKs8ns
and files here http://www.vic20listings.freeolamail.com/book_innovativecomp.html
it might be worth mentioning the second one in the context of Arkenstone, but really doesn’t even get to that level of adventure
Space Hero is new to me, I’ll add it (does it say where 1982 comes from, though? it’s 19xx on one archive)
Neither The Temple nor Spider Mountain are existing games I have. The Temple has a 1982 in the game). Does it say how it got 1982 for Spider Mountain?
Tomorrow I’ll try to find more information about Spider Mountain, but I’ve seen Space Hero listed in magazines from March 1983, and a collector’s website has photos of the cassette and although there’s no date in it, they also list 1982 in their database, so at the very least its copyright must be from then.
Regarding the games you’ve already played, I apologize for repeating them, but with the name changes, I didn’t notice them (I didn’t even realize “pharoah” and “pharaoh”). As for the ones with RPG mechanics, now that you mention it, I myself ruled them out because they lacked character development (some have experience points, but I think it didn’t function as such, but rather as some kind of scoring system).
yeah, there’s this weird space between adventure and RPG on some of these, doesn’t really fall in either category that well
The Temple and Spider Mountain are the early Swedish games we discussed a while back via email. I played through them a few months ago and finished my research on them. They’re from the same author and I can go through the whole history again, if you like. The Temple is hilariously broken, and Spider Mountain does have some notice differences to The Mutant Spiders, btw.
forgot about those! I still have that, just I have everything under mutant spiders.
Feel free to paste it though!
That should be “noticeable differences”. Android spellcheck rules!
I think most of the stuff I wrote before should still be accurate. The main thing I’ve learned since is that Spider Mountain (and thus The Mutant Spiders) was definitely also written by Stefan Modin, and that his “SkultSoft” label was so named because he was from Skultuna, which is near Eskilstuna where RPU/Zyntax were located. I also found an old Handic catalog that specifically dates the original Vic Mutant Spiders from late ’82.
The truth is, after checking all the game databases, I haven’t found much with the dates they have listed, since most are undated, even though in some cases the copyright information appears on the title screen (like in the case of Ice Caverns of Xen, which also didn’t have a date in the gamebase).
I only found several games from TI99 (all from 1982):
this is still good!
and yeah, TI-99 is definitely the one I think missing the most in terms of being indexed on the various archives
Interesting finds. I dug around a bit more, and found that there are a few other Walt Dollard adventures from that time that are listed in several databases:
Medieval Graphical Adventure
Sundial Island Part I
Sundial Island Part II
There are screenshots of these in the TI-99 gamebase folders, so the games must also be in there somewhere (maybe on those “mc” disks). I also found what seems to be the first game in this series, which appears to be completely unknown:
Graphical Adventure
The title screen is “created by Walt Dollard, December 1981”, and the game screen has the same weird overhead graphical style, with what looks like a visible inventory (colored keys) and and a monster approaching your character (who appears to be holding a sword) in the maze. Maybe this one is more RPG-ish, or perhaps an Atari Adventure/Copts & Robbers type of thing?
From what I’ve seen, the mechanics of that game have nothing to do with those of Egyptian or Medieval, which do use text commands and puzzles.
In Graphical Adventure, you only control the character’s movement and must advance through a three-story dungeon to reach a goal, needing keys that can be stolen by certain enemies. There’s no character development, so it’s not an RPG, but it’s clearly not a text adventure either.
Okay, I dug up the whole story on Walt Dollard and his games, and it’s pretty interesting:
He was from Pittsburgh, and first showed up in a letter about TI-99 BASIC programming in 99’er magazine in early ’82. Starting from the February ’83 issue, he was advertising Medieval, Egyptian and Graphical (which he described almost exactly as Explorador did), then the two part Sundial Island and a text-only adventure called Haunted Mansion were added the next month. He also offered a low price demonstration tape that included selected parts of the first three “Graphical” adventures. After a few months, Haunted Mansion disappeared from the ads, but two new graphic adventures were added: A Night Inside Ulysses Mansion and The Yanks or the Rebs. He kept these ads going through late ’83, and one more time in early ’84 when 99’er became Home Computer Magazine. In the April and May ’84 issues of Home Computer Compendium/MICROpendium, he was part of a group interview of TI-99 programmers, where he talked a bit about his adventure games and revealed that he was then a 19 year old college sophmore studying electrical engineering, and that he had gotten started with computers over four years previously in high school. Also in ’84, he was credited in a book about TI-99 assembly programming that was published locally in Pittsburgh.
Haunted Mansion, Ulysses Mansion and Yanks or Rebs don’t seem to be in the gamebase and may be lost, but the TI-99 preservation scene is quite chaotic as you’ve noted, so maybe they’re out there somewhere…
I found this TI-99 catalog and started testing the games that could be adventure or role-playing in the gamebase that matched those in the catalog, and it seems that Bomb Adventure is a different text adventure from Bomb Threat, and at the latest from 1983 (catalog date):
https://archive.org/details/stx_International_99-4_Users_Group_catalog_and_price_list_1983-04-15/page/n20/mode/1up?q=%22bomb+adventure%22
Well, this is interesting:
“Bomb Adventure
Programmed by Mikael Elsila
Based on the framework by David Lubar”
What this means is that Elsila used the “Adventure framework” section of Lubar’s Adventures in Videoland 1/82 Creative Computing article to make his own game. Or rather, some kind of mixed adaptation, as there seem to be elements taken directly from both the framework section and the Videoland game itself, based on the screenshots.
Also, I found this:
Adventure (Sceptre Software, Gary Sawyer, 1983)
It seems to be a simple “choose your direction” adventure, but with specific commands for taking or using items in certain spots, based on a quick skim of the code. Sceptre Software was located in Newcastle, and placed some small generic classified ads selling unspecified games for the TI-99, Dragon and others in a few mags in ’83, and released an unlicensed Snoopy game on ’84. This game appears to be totally undocumented, in any case.
Two possible RPG-ish games to check out as well, which you’ve probably already found:
Dragon’s Lair – Listed in that ’83 catalog, and it’s in the game base.
Catacomb – (“Werner bros., Oct. ’82, Tempe, AZ”) There’s a “Catacombs” listed in the ’84 version of the catalog that sounds like an RPG, but I’m not sure if it’s the same as this earlier one in the gamebase.
Sorry, I replied in the main thread.
I found another TI-99 adventure on the Gamebase. It’s called Quest for the Sword, published by Pegasus Software in 1982.
On the Gamebase it’s called Sword Quest, but looking at the source code, there’s a reference to Aron, so it must be the same game.
https://archive.org/details/99er-magazine/99er_Vol_2_No_01/page/36/mode/2up?q=pegasus
Pegasus also released a sequel, Aron’s Revenge, and another adventure called Ship of Doom, both in ’83. Unfortunately neither seem to be in the gamebase.
thanks to you both!
By the way, have you tried the Atari games Haunted House Adventure and Pharaoh’s Curse Adventure, both published in 1982 in the Magatari disk magazine? They’re a kind of graphic adventure.
Have you got either one to load? I get black screen on both Altirra and Atari800Win
…and immediately after I post it I manage to stuff AtariWin through in OSA even though it did hard crash first time around
still can’t get out of the opening room but that’s a future me problem
hm, scratch that, Haunted House loads with OS-A, Pharaoh isn’t loading at all
looking at the source code, though, I think Pharaoh is an action game, not an adventure game?
(add: managed to get a load … it still seems like it’s just maze movement with a joystick rather than an adventure game? also seems to be broken but it probably requires weird settings
Haunted House definitely an adventure game)
oh! the same game magazine has two Pharaoh’s Curse games, just a few issues apart. because of course it does
the first one, vol 1 issue 6, is the one that’s just a maze game
the second one, vol 2 issue 1 from 1983 is the one that’s an adventure
I do have that one, listed as 1981 on CASA
https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C7522/Pharaoh%27s+Curse.html
I’m guessing the date came from the source code
I don’t actually have the Atari disk and the link goes to the newsletter but there’s no disk file.
Why didn’t I just do an “all the US-published NES games blog” it would make my life so much easier….
the ’82 Haunted House one is also on CASA
https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C9144/Haunted+House.html
The Appletree version of Haunted House can be found on Vol. 1/5 (it’s on IA) but the disk seems to be messed up. Checking the code lists the author as Barry Gaskins, which is at odds with the CASA entry. Maybe he was specific to the Apple version, but there’s no co-author credited.
Both games worked perfectly for me on the first try with Altirra and the internal BASIC enabled, at least the versions available on Atarimania:
https://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-haunted-house-adventure_2403.html
https://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-pharaoh-s-curse-adventure_19807.html
Haunted House takes a little while to load, but then it works. Although it doesn’t seem like a command-based adventure, since you start by moving the character with the joystick, pressing the button switches it to text-based command mode. Moving with the joystick, activated by the MOVE command, is only useful for interacting with some objects by moving over them, as even leaving rooms through doors requires the LEAVE command. I think there’s a bug with the INVENTORY command, but otherwise it seems to work.
As for Pharaoh’s Curse, it loaded instantly for me, and it works entirely with text commands.
There are versions of both games for the TRS-80 MC-10 translated by Jim Gerrie from the original Color Computer versions (I haven’t been able to find the originals, but they might be on the Internet Archive, which was down at the time).
yeah, like I said, the main problem is there are _two_ Pharaoh games (see vol 6) . the other one (just a maze game, move around with joystick) needed some fiddling and also took a while to load (as in leave, do some chores, come back, it still won’t be done yet)
I was reading some Data Chip newsletters that were uploaded to the Internet Archive last year, and I decided to check the Compucolor software archive again, and I realized that there are two versions of Colossal Cave Adventure (one of them from 1981), which I don’t know if they are documented:
https://www.compucolor.org/vmedia.html
I posted about these in the Lost Media Part 2 thread
“Rob on April 20, 2025 at 3:38 pm
Yet more obscure Adventure adaptations, this time for the Compucolor II:
Colossal Adventure (Peter J. Hiner, 1981)
Hiner was the head of the UK Compucolor Users Group, and ran their “CompUKolour” newsletter. He wrote this adaptation in 1981, and released it for free distribution by the membership. It’s ostensibly a conversion of standard Woods 350, but there are quite a few differences that I’ve noticed in playing it a little and looking at the code:
A strange graphical title screen, terse descriptions with different phrasing, psychedelic multi-colored flashing effects when using “Xyzzy”, a completely different scoring system that goes to 1000 points, no endgame (I think?), etc.
Hiner was very active in the small international Compucolor scene, and there’s a profile of him in the November/December 1984 issue of the Colorcue newsletter, which I’ll quote part of here:
“I wrote a rudementary sort of Invaders game -not very thrilling- and then got hooked on the idea of writing a version of the original adventure game to fit a 16K CCII machine without repeated disk reads. This was a magnum opus, using quite sophisticated techniques. The program consisted of a small interpreter (about 2K) driven by a 4K table of data. The huge amount of text (25K) for descriptions and messages was compressed into about 10K using a mixture of dictionary and other text compression techniques. This huge task took about a year to complete, but left me with a powerful tool for writing other adventures, and I was later able to produce a version of Scott Adam’s Pirate Adventure in a few weeks.”
I noticed that his version of Pirate’s Adventure also uses the same 1000 point scoring system.
Adventure/Colossal Cave Adventure (Garry Epps, early ’80s)
Garry Epps was an Australian coder who, along with his brother Graham, wrote and marketed a number of games and programs for the Compucolor in the early ’80s while still a teenager, before moving on to other platforms like the Microbee and VZ200. You can read an interesting profile of him and his buddies/co-workers as part of the “Class of ’82” feature in the 4/83 issue of Your Computer (Australia), p.26-27. Once again, this seems to be another “made from memory” conversion, rather than a port, as I noticed many differences:
Different scoring system, that also gives you a percentage of the game explored as well as score and rank. But most uniquely, it’s on a timer! It keeps track of your time spent playing (in minutes), and there actually seems to be a limit before the game tells you that you’ve taken too long and quits you out. It also seems like there may be no endgame, and you just need to return 16 treasures (not sure what’s counting as the extra one) to the house to win. It also starts you in the forest, rather than in front of the house, and some of the text is different (it adds “Have fun!” to the description of the Hall of the Mountain King, for instance), etc. There’s also a bug where if you “GET ALL” in the house, the Treasure Chest suddenly shows up in your inventory!
Finally, there seem to also be a couple of versions from the extensive CHIP program library that may be unique. The first was on disk 20 (which would have dated from 1979-1980, I believe) described only as:
“ADVENTURE – The now classic game adapted for Compucolor. There are no instructions – you’re on your own.”
Then, on disk 59 (circa ’82) there’s this:
“ADVENTURE – Reworked with all rooms.”
Unfortunately, neither of these disks are archived on the Compucolor database.
Regarding the Compucolor adventure scene in general, aside from these, all I’ve found are TRS-80 ports (Dog Star, Lost Dutchman, Spider Mountain, etc.), but I feel there must be at least a few originals out there somewhere. The problem is that many of the newsletters are unarchived, and the software library in general is poorly documented and preserved.”
Sorry, I didn’t realize you’d already found them.
What I’ve found now appears to be the source code for three French text adventures published between 1982 and 1983 in the magazine Casus Belli
:https://archive.org/details/casus-belli-011/page/8/mode/1up
https://archive.org/details/casus-belli-013/page/17/mode/1up
https://archive.org/details/casus-belli-018/page/n24/mode/1up
Oo, these are good! I haven’t seen this magazine before
Do you know what the lag time is on this one? If it is fourth quarter ‘82, which month would it be available?
I’m sorry, I only knew of the magazine by reputation until now. I don’t know any more details.
By the way, I’ve taken a closer look at the games code, and the second one uses fixed commands, so it might not be a text adventure, but since it seemed like an evolution of the first one, I thought it was.
Now that I think about it, The Wargaming Scribe can definitely help you.
These are great finds! I’ve skimmed through Cassus and it’s sister mag J&S before, but obviously not enough.
I did a little more research, and came up with this:
Philippe Fassier, the author of the first two games, was a major contributor to Jeux & Strategi, and did at least one other text adventure, a multiple choice type of thing for Apple II called Le vaisseau fantôme, published in the 12/83 issue. That issue also features an interesting ultra-compressed sort of RPG for various systems called Survie, which is supposedly based on Ultima II in some way.
The co-author of the third game, Olivier Boulot, was one of the main writers for Cassus Belli, and created many kinds of games and puzzles. He went on to do a couple of Apple II graphic adventures circa ’84/’83, Le Casse and Opium.
These mags obviously need further investigation, as it’s not always clear from the indexes if the listed games are for computers or not.
Sorry, I made a mistake:
The co-author I was talking about was Olivier Tubach, not Boulot. It should also say ’84/’85, obviously.
The 12/83 issue with the other games I mentioned is no. 24, btw.
Regarding the dating of Casus Belli issues:
No. 10 was the last early issue specifically listed as bimonthly, and is cover dated September, 1982. Starting with No. 11 (which contains the first game), it goes by “trimestre”, with No. 13 listed as the 1st trimestre of 1983. So it’s a bit confusing at that point, but No. 11 must have been published around 10/82, I think.
One last thing for now: In Casus Belli No. 19 (early ’84), Olivier Tubach published a follow-up article to his adventure game, where he uses it for an adventure game creation system, Squelette.
Also, there are one or two follow-up notes regarding Fassier’s first game, as there seem to have been some bugs.
Well, turns out that I wasn’t quite done…
In Jeux & Stratégie No. 20 (4/83), Michel Brassinne, who was one of their main writers and did most of the video/computer game coverage, published another “create your own adventure” article, which includes a sci-fi mini-Adventure in BASIC. He also co-authored the Ultima II-based game I mentioned previously.
Finally (I hope!), issue 25 includes a bug fix and complete solution for Le vaisseau fantôme.
Yes, thank you, it is indeed the Catacombs game from the catalog (the disk image has the catalog number for both games), but I ruled both out as RPGs. I ruled out Catacombs when I was finishing 1982 and I don’t remember the details, but in Dragon’s Lair the only way to increase a character’s skill (and therefore develop them) is by finding equipment randomly, not by fighting, which only provides gold. If they were older games I could let it slide, but I can’t keep analyzing all the pseudo-RPGs if I want to move forward, so since 1982 I’ve tried to be a bit stricter with my definition of an RPG and discard those that don’t meet it.
I use this definition: a role-playing video game must have character development, so that by repeatedly performing the game’s main mechanics (usually combat, although there are others), the character becomes more powerful than at the beginning, and this helps them perform those mechanics more successfully. This character development can be direct (gaining experience in combat that improves their stats) or indirect (earning gold in combat to buy stat upgrades), but it must be intrinsic to the character (equipment upgrades alone are not enough) and must be achieved at the pace dictated by the repetition of the main mechanics (it cannot only happen at fixed points in the game).