Go on, try to tell me this doesn’t give you the warm fuzzies.
I saw this pic on an article at Joystiq mentioning NATAS (which I guess is not just Satan backwards?) giving an award to the original Neverwinter Nights CRPG, an MMO that ran on AOL from 1991 to 1997– making it the first graphical MMO.
While I didn’t play this NWN, the screenshot instantly triggered memories of the feel of the Gold Box games. More than the characters, gear, spells, or equipment, I could still sense what it was like to move a character through the square spaces, to line up a 2×2 stinking cloud or 3×3 fireball, to aim a lightning bolt, or even just to move to an adjacent tile and attack. The graphics, as primitive as they were, still did an excellent job of instantly communicating all the important gameplay data, and delivering clear feedback.
I have no illusions about going back and playing Pool of Radiance, which even for the time had some horrendous flaws. This screenshot is a reminder, though, that as we add more detail and fidelity to our simulations and graphics, it becomes that much harder to communicate that core gameplay signal through all the noise.
January 14th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Anyone ’round here play both the early Ultimas (1-5) and the Gold Box games? I always wondered how they compared. The Gold Box games came out during one of my non-computing periods.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:11 am
I played 2 of the early ultimas, but I would have to go look up which ones they were. I specifically remember getting slaughtered by town guards for doing anything remotely wrong (and feeling that it was too easy to say, walk up and attack a merchant when I actually wanted to buy something); and some later part where I wasn’t sure where to go and all the random encounters seemed to ramp up significantly in difficulty. Fortunately this all occurred well before my OCD completionist syndrome (OCDCS?) fully set in, or I might still be stuck on it today.