8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good, March 18, 2008
This review is from: Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games (Hardcover)
Wow! What a comprehensive book. The book consists of several sections covering the history of computer RPGs. It starts with the origins, and goes into the bronze age, silver age, early golden age, golden age and onward into the platinum age and the modern era.
The Dark Age concerns itself with the pre home computer works on university mainframes, progresses into the Bronze Age with titles like Apshai and Akalbeth. The Silver Age brings us Wizardry and the early Ultima's I to III. and so on.
The book gives reviews of hundreds of games across many platforms. Often accompanying with a screenshot. This is one of the books weaker moments. The screenshots (apart from a couple of colour slides in the middle) are black and.. black. They are very very dark, often to the point of useless. Some are not too bad to look at and you can make them out.
The book does have a comprehensive index at the back, letting you quickly look up your favourite titles.
On first getting the book, I scanned my favourites and they were all there. Some of the more obscure titles like Legends on the TI99 were not present.
Gamasutra featured several articles by the author, which gives you an insight into the books contents, of which they are greatly expanded opon.
Most games get several paragraphs but I would have liked to see a little more critical thought in the reviews, but understanding that early games often had the 'Kill the big Foozle' plot, makes things hard to expand opon after the first time.
More notable games get much bigger coverage, like the classic SSI Gold Box games (Pool of Radiance, Azure Bonds, Champions of Krynn etc).
The book ends with discussion on recent titles like Dungeons and Dragons Online, Guild Wars and its ilk.
You can tell the author has quite a love for the genre, and if you grew up in the 80's or 90's, this book is just filled with info that provokes nostalgic memories.
If you bought a lot of computer magazines, you may feel a bit cheated, just remember the book is a collection of reviews. Probably the most complete and comprehensive you'll ever find.
Fans of CRPG's really should buy this book. (Hey, just like the gold box games, we even have Clyde Caldwell cover art, pretty cool stuff)
The reason for not giving 5 stars, is down to the dark screen captures. Everything else in the book is top notch.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book for any game lover, June 15, 2009
This review is from: Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games (Hardcover)
I read this book more for nostalgic reasons than for the actual desire to read about these games. The book covered (in small detail) a very important game to me.
That was my intial thoughts on the book. After reading, I would say that the book is very well written and very informative. I especially like the beginning of the book which indicates new features and who was the first to do it. As the book goes on things blur a little too me, as the industry itself just started copying one another.
Great book, and should be read by any who have enjoyed CRPGs.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An incredible tour-de-force of a recreational industry., April 4, 2008
This review is from: Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games (Hardcover)
Dungeons & Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing games is an incredible tour-de-force of a recreational industry. Chapters cover early tabletop wargames such as "Chainmail" and its precursors, to the pencil-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons game, to the very first computer role-playing games programmed into university mainframe computers (and often deleted by administrators, making many of the first RPGs forever lost to history!). The saga continues with early classics like Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, Ultima, and Pool of Radiance; the rise of casual-friendly action RPGs like Diablo; and the success of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs) such as the wildly popular World of Warcraft. Console RPGs are also mentioned briefly, most notably trailblazer console RPGs such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. What sets Dungeons & Desktops apart is its in-depth discussion of literally dozens of early CRPGs, many more that even the most avid gamer has likely ever heard of. From two paragraphs to several pages are devoted to each CRPG title, giving a crystal clear picture of what playing the game was like (including its highlights, flaws, and bugs), its commercial success (or failure), and sometimes notes as to what its development team may be doing today. Black-and-white computer screenshots and a handful of color plates illustrate this "must-have" history and resource for CRPG aficionados everywhere. "My advice to anyone who really wants to learn the history of CRPGs is to start with the newer classics and gradually work backwards. It's still relatively easy, for instance, to find copies of Baldur's Gate or [Might & Magic VI: The] Mandate of Heaven and get them running on a modern PC... I would recommend skipping the early Windows 95 or Windows 3.1 games though - these can be excruciatingly difficult to get running even for emulation experts. If you a little further back, though, to the DOS era, things get much easier thanks to DOSBox." Highly recommended.
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