Vote for the Best DOS RPG - Discussion

This thread is solely for the purpose of discussing the "Vote for the Best DOS RPG".
Please post all of your questions, comments, explanations, rants etc. in this thread - not the voting thread itself. Thanks.

Discuss!

The Voting itself is going on in this thread:
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2298

Might & Magic IV and V were originally meant to be as a one single game.. and they are available nowadays combided as "World of Xeen" so I felt it would make no sense to have IV and V separately.

I'm pretty sure in a week or two I'll be coming back and changing some of my votes… nethack is in great danger of being replaced of some of the classic games I'm gonna try soon for the first time!

EDIT: Some of The votes made by HiddenX (for example) are games that I'm gonna try soon! Very interesting games indeed.

Oh, and the early Wizardry games (1-3) were never technically
released for DOS. They were only released for Apple II, Commodore 64, NES, PC booter. I checked from two different sources so I believe this really is the case.

Note: Bard's Tale I is on the list with the name "Tales of the Unknown, Volume I: The Bard's Tale" in case someone wants to vote for it.

Doesn't qualify for my list as I played it on C64.

Wizardry 1,2 and 3 were released for DOS -
look here

I think Fallout is a PC Windows game.

Fallout 1 was released for both DOS and Win.
My info for the early wizardry games came from:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/wizard…y-of-llylgamyn and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizardr…y_of_Llylgamyn

Edit: Even the link you gave me shows:
http://www.thelegacy.de/Museum/game….5&game_id=5876
publishing
1983:Apple II/+
1986:IBM PC (Booter)
1989:Commodore C64/128
….No MS-DOS.

EDIT2. ahh.. You must be talking about the trilogy release? But the list does not include shovelware (like the Wizardry 1-3 box).

is there a poll somewhere I'm missing? I don't see a poll on this thread.

I would hardly call the Wizardry series "shovelware". Besides my copy of Wizardry I: Proving Ground of the Mad Overlord was both Apple and IBM compatible in the same box; a rarity for 1983.

What does "IBM PC (Booter)" actually mean ?

By the way, I've saved the list on my harddisk - wanted something like that for quite some time now, thanks.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
is there a poll somewhere I'm missing? I don't see a poll on this thread.

The Poll is here : http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2298

Okay MS-DOS was not needed, but a DOS IBM-PC - I would include Wizardry 1-3 in the list.

What does "IBM PC (Booter)" actually mean ?

They included a mini-OS in the bootblock of the game disk.

Wiki

I don't mean that wizardry games are shovelware. I just mean that the list includes only games that were originally released for the MS-DOS operating system. The list does NOT include games that were later released for MS-DOS as a part of some compilation(=shovelware) release, for example.

I did my best with the list and I'm sure I made some choices that not all of you agree with. Also I'm not going to bother Jaz again with uploading an updated list without a very good reason (If I started doing this… I'd have to update that list many MAANY times )

So please let's try to have fun with it. It was quite a bit of work compiling that list. I'm sure you can vote for some other game in the wizardry series or some other game alltogether. This is not a matter of life and death.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
By the way, I've saved the list on my harddisk - wanted something like that for quite some time now, thanks.

Yeah, this is a usefull list even without any of the voting results themselves.
Nice to have a nice compact list of all the dos games with the release year.
Glad you liked it!

well you do realize that with the Ultima and Bard's Tale games most of them were first released on the Apple ][ and later to IBM so by your definition they shouldn't belong there either. For example you list Ultima I as 1987 when it had been around since 1980.

Rogue was built on Unix systems. DnD even predates this going back to 1974 for the Plato.

Otherwise its a great list.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
well you do realize that with the Ultima and Bard's Tale games most of them were first released on the Apple ][ and later to IBM so by your definition they shouldn't belong there either. For example you list Ultima I as 1987 when it had been around since 1980.
Otherwise its a great list.

Umm.. no. They were still released for the MS-DOS operating system without them being a part of a compilation. We are voting for individual games. One game at a time. Not trilogies or collections.

I'm curious as to why King's Bounty is included as an RPG? It's the forerunner to Heroes of Might and Magic, with a generic fantasy setting, and a TB strategy style. While it's very simplistic in any respect, I wouldn't consider it an RPG.

Also Mars Saga was released as Mines of titan for MSDOS. It was Mars Saga on the C64 and maybe other systems.

Nice list, now I have a resource to use when digging for ancient games to play.

I don't know. It is listed in mobygames as a roleplaying game. As I said in the voting thread.. the first post.. Please guys.. Let's not waste this possibility arguing about what is or isnt an rpg or what should or should not be included in the list….

Please.

I LOVE the fact that Mystic Towers is on it . It's not anywhere near my favorites, but I played and liked it, and it never appeared on any other list before.

Thanks for those who have already voted and thanks in advance to everyone else, please vote. The more we get votes the better the ranking list will be!

BTW. There can be seen already some popular games that just seem to pop
on almost everyone's list. Interesting. Very interesting.

Also.. Any estimates on how long we should keep this thing open to get a satisfying number of voters? Few weeks? A month? Two months? More?

So the real test is that it had to be released for IBM not as a compilation? Then Wizardry qualifies as one of the first big IBM games. All of them were released as individually as PC games.

Not IBM. MS-DOS. I just took the games from mobygames that were listed as RPG and released for MS-DOS and then I removed Compilations, Addons etc…

As simple as that.

IBM's PC-DOS = MS-DOS. They were virtually identical.

I'll let you off the hook though. These games were PC-Booters. I personally think that PC-Booters should qualify, especially since most of them were developed in DOS to begin with, but c'est la vie.