Thursday, April 5, 2012

Deep Retro... Moria


Moria... It's a rouglike, or dungeon crawl adventure created in 1983.  Moria was not the first dungeon crawl (the first was pedit5 in 1974), but it was the first I ever discovered.  For anyone wondering what the heck a dungeon crawl is, it's a kind of hack and slash computer RPG marked by random labyrinthine levels and lots of treasure to be found.  I discovered Moria back in the early 90's when I had my first laptop (a Powerbook 520c).  I remember downloading Mora to my Mac via some sort of FTP through the text only Unix shell account I used for Internet.  I remember being a little disappointed that there were no graphics, only ascii art.  It was only when I started to play this remarkable game that it became a fast favorite.  Years later a desire to once again surf the net via Unix shell led me to open an account on the venerable SDF Public Access UNIX System.  On a hunch I typed "moria" into the command line, and to my happy surprise found it was there.  It was this re-discovery of Moria that started the base idea for Deeds.  Why not make an animated movie or series that takes place in a simple game?  I didn't go as simple on the visuals as Moria (that might be a little too high art), but it was a giant in the inspiration department.  There are a lot of versions of Moria and other great dungeon crawls available for free on the net.  If you crave some deep retro fun check them out.


Agnband - This is probably my favorite crawl.

Moria - The one this blog is about.

Rogue - For C64 on Gamebase64


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