I taught myself to program typing out games and apps from Rainbows magazines in the mid-eighties. I was obsessed with text-adventures, and creating my own, from about age eight and onward.
Playing games back then was a wildly different experience; pre-internet, there was no way to find hints. You'd come to a wall, somehow, and be stuck. I never got to the end of Raaka-Tu, or Madness and the Minotaur, or Bedlam. I wasn't even ten-years-old, and those games were an impossible undertaking.
That said, in 2021, finally got to the end of the first graphical RPG I ever played, Dungeons of Daggorath, and killed the final wizard. I was absurdly pleased with myself that day. That goddamn wizard had been a regret-tinged concern of mine for 39 years.
After a number of very frustrating experiences I ended up buying this. For example, in the Sierra Online game "Dark Crystal", i was absolutely stuck in one spot (ruining my enjoyment of the full game) where I needed to "LISTEN BROOK".
There was another game, (Mad Venture), where I needed to read the book so I could do "THROW DOLL".
> the first graphical RPG I ever played, Dungeons of Daggorath
In case you didn't know Dungeons of Daggorath (1982) for the Radio Shack Color Computer featured significantly in the best-selling sci-fi book "Ready Player One" (although it was not an element in movie). https://readyplayerone.fandom.com/wiki/Dungeons_of_Daggorath
I got my Color Computer in 1982 and banged my head on Daggorath for many hours. Randomly reading Ready Player One in 2012 was surreal. There were so many impossibly obscure references to esoteric 80s computer and arcade trivia that was personally very significant to me - but to almost no one else - it felt like I was being punked by someone that knew me. And the more I read, the more bizarre coincidences kept piling up - from Daggorath on the Coco to knowing how to beat a Joust arcade cabinet with the arcane pterodactyl bug which was only present in Red/Yellow Joust cabinets. The Coco was obscure, maybe 1/100th as popular as the Commodores and Ataris, and Daggorath wasn't even close to a top selling game on it.
In the early 80s, every time I'd go to an arcade I was always on the lookout for a red/yellow Joust so I could drop a high score. I also read Rainbow Magazine every month and even flew across the country to attend the first RainbowFest in Chicago. Good times, indeed.
I had the same experience when I read Ready Player One. Nearly fell out of my chair. But surely dozens of us must have played that game - dozens!
BTW you had to 'incant' a ring, near the end, and I could not have figured that out on my own. It was fantastically fun to me as a kid, despite being, lets be reasonable, impossible to beat without knowing some things outside the game. I actually believed I did beat it, in the late 90s, after I killed the 'false' wizard. However, I thought Level 4 was the game restarting back to Level 1, so exited, thinking it was all done.
Rainbow Magazines were magical and incredibly inspiring. I probably typed-up most of the games they ever published and had them saved on cassette. This one was very lengthy -> https://ia903403.us.archive.org/0/items/rainbowmagazine-1984.... (search for 'Karrak')
Sadly, my brother recorded over it before I could play it more than once ... you know, deliberately, out of pure 80s evil older-brother spite. Some part of me wants to paste that code into Claude Code, and generate some sort of working game, as an act of defiance.
I couldn't play joust on the cabinets (no money as a kid); the TRS-80 game was called Lancer. Good times, absolutely.
Playing games back then was a wildly different experience; pre-internet, there was no way to find hints. You'd come to a wall, somehow, and be stuck. I never got to the end of Raaka-Tu, or Madness and the Minotaur, or Bedlam. I wasn't even ten-years-old, and those games were an impossible undertaking.
That said, in 2021, finally got to the end of the first graphical RPG I ever played, Dungeons of Daggorath, and killed the final wizard. I was absurdly pleased with myself that day. That goddamn wizard had been a regret-tinged concern of mine for 39 years.