
The Secret Origin of the Action RPG - polm23
https://medium.com/@obskyr/the-secret-origin-of-the-action-rpg-254a180079dd
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wcarss
Diablo was far from the first ARPG, but given how influential it has been for
the genre, I was floored to learn that it was actually designed and
implemented as a turn-based game, and only turned into an Action RPG by
request of folks at the main Blizzard office.

The founder of Blizzard North (David Brevik) thought it was a dumb idea, and
only agreed to do it because it seemed like a large enough work item to
justify requesting an additional budget milestone from Blizzard, which his
office was hurting for sorely.

Brevik then got it working over the course of roughly an afternoon, by just
running the turn system automatically and responding to clicks a little
differently. It was only after seeing the action-oriented click-walk-attack-
click flow actually work for the first time that he realized: they'd struck
gold.

He told this story (and lots of others!) in a pretty excellent post mortem at
GDC[1] a few years ago.

1 -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc)

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jlawson
It must have been the original "time only moves when you do".

~~~
Shish2k
I’m pretty sure NetHack works that way (Perhaps the whole genre all the way
back to the original Rogue, but nethack is the one that I’ve personally
played)

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smabie
Yes, of course, that's how they all work. A real time game wouldn't work over
a tty.

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m463
I swear there was a real-time game I played over a tty long ago. An ascii
shooter, maybe star trek or similar?

At first I thought snake did it, but now I think that might have been move-
countermove.

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jmcgough
PC-88 and PC-98 software is super fascinating. Thousands of games, many with
mind-blowingly beautiful pixel art which was leaps and bounds better than
their American counterparts. Displays really needed to be better in Japan
because of the challenge of displaying elaborate Japanese characters.

As an aside, both were infamous for huge libraries of pornographic games
(eroge). Game companies like Enix, Square and Nihon Falcom made eroge for
those platforms before they found mainstream success.

Anyways, there's a ton of very cool and cutting edge gaming history, and the
sad thing is how inaccessible a lot of it is since most of it never saw
translations. For example, Yu-No was a groundbreaking visual novel that
influenced games like Steins;Gate (both had similar themes of parallel
worlds), but never got brought over because it was text heavy and
(unsurprisingly) laden with smut. Many japanese games and series that we now
consider classic first came about on PC-88/PC-98/MSX2 or had side games on
them.

One of my favorite twitter bots is PC-98 Bot, which posts screengrabs of PC-98
games: [https://twitter.com/PC98_bot](https://twitter.com/PC98_bot)

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corysama
Someone needs to feed that stream into a GAN and make
[https://thispc98gamedoesnotexist.com](https://thispc98gamedoesnotexist.com)

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dragontamer
The Tower of Druaga was an arcade game, release in June 1984, that has many
action-RPG elements. No "stat points", but lots of items, akin to Zelda.

With this "Dragon Slayer" game from September 1984 being pushed in this
article... I'd argue that Tower of Druaga has the realtime elements (being an
arcade game), as well as being released a few months earlier.

I don't know if Tower of Druaga is the earliest "action RPG" game, but... it
has to be one of the earlier ones. Just a few months predating Dragon Slayer.

\---------

Tower of Druaga as the nasty arcade game that was unbeatable if you forgot to
pickup items from earlier floors. Once you advance to the next level, you can
never return to an earlier level. If you have an "unbeatable" scenario, then I
guess try harder next time, thank you for your $0.25.

\--------

EDIT: With that being said, this "The Caverns of Freitag" game is 1982,
predating both Dragon Slayer and Tower of Druaga. So Caverns of Freitag sounds
like the earliest known Action RPG.

The article doesn't go into Freitag until a bit later. I guess I read the lead
and assumed it'd be about Dragon Slayer.

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jandrese
Caverns of Freitag was beaten by 2 years by Adventure on the Atari 2600.

It seems to me the definition of Action RPG is somewhat arbitrary and where
you draw the line determines who is first. The only hard requirements being
that it is not turn based and is role playing in some respect.

~~~
pvg
Leveling/character progression of some sort would probably be in most ARPG
definitions and that's in CoF and not in Adventure.

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subsubzero
So many great action role playing games,

for NES all I played was Zelda, I felt like snes really turned out alot of
great titles, Lagoon, Wanders from Ys III, Secret of Mana, possibly
Equinox(maybe more puzzle than rpg) but all great.

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scns
If anyone reading this has not played Secret of Mana try it out, you are in
for a treat. IMO the best game on SNES with a good story, playable for three
players at the same time and AMAZING music:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3oxjanw72w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3oxjanw72w)

If you don't have time to play but love music check out the soundtrack:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFN0GLAMJ3k&list=PL30CA55009...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFN0GLAMJ3k&list=PL30CA5500906F0A4B)
according to wikipedia it has "inspired several orchestral concerts"

The sequel Seiken Densetsu III is great too, got playable for non japanese
through fan translations. You can choose your party of three from six
characters. Found a nice video intro
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSTwjVnlNss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSTwjVnlNss)

The Sountrack contains some gems too
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hymtc5BBPQ8&list=PL4649F0DBF...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hymtc5BBPQ8&list=PL4649F0DBF0FC09E3)

edit Originals are rereleased in Collection of Mana:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnhkGt09NQI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnhkGt09NQI)
Both have been remade for the Switch, have not played them.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AR5So5gdSI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AR5So5gdSI)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6blpWJVwDTo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6blpWJVwDTo)
tide

(Disclaimer: just a fan)

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pier25
Anyone here remembers "The Maze of Galious" from the MSX era?

It was released in 1987 by Konami and it was a masterpiece.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xczSIuB2J68](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xczSIuB2J68)

~~~
pankajdoharey
How about 1982 Indiana Jones Raiders of the lost ark, could that be considered
an Action RPG?

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skuthus
Anyone interested in an Action/rougelike from yesteryear should check out Cave
Noire for the original Gameboy. Surprisingly comprehensive rougelike for the
time.

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armadsen
This was an interesting, fun story. The I was pleased that it took place in
Beep. I visited Beep last time I was in Tokyo and was just amazed. It’s tiny,
but packed with Japanese PCs, many of them running games you can play, along
with software, and more. Well worth a visit.

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keyle
This recent video by Games Developer Toolkit also had in depth information
about the genre.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJiwn8iXqOI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJiwn8iXqOI)

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dep_b
Gateway to Apshai was also early in 1983, though I think it didn't have a
level up mechanism. Same pathfinding tricks were required to survive harder
monsters.

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tus88
Errr....try starting with Rogue and Roguelikes.

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auntienomen
They aren't counting turn-based RPGs as 'action RPGs'.

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samsaga2
It's a silly thing to do. Diablo copies a lot from roguelikes. In fact, it is
considered the first commercial roguelike.

"Diablo by Blizzard is considered by many to be a commercial roguelike, a
roguelike that was graphical and real-time. Developers Brevik and Schaefer had
in mind a graphic version of the "old Unix-based games". Eight months into
development, the decision was made to make the game real-time as opposed to
turn-based. Diablo is by all accounts a Roguelike, but with graphics and real-
time gameplay."

[http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=D...](http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Diablo)

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zeroonetwothree
Zelda is definitely not an ARPG

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kbenson
Why don't you think it qualifies? You have an inventory, you have money and
buy items, you advance your character (not through experience points, but
through finding secrets and beating major enemies).

What specifically do you think it's missing?

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henryfjordan
You don't really make choices in most Zelda game. All the character
advancement is coupled to story progression (you get an item in the 1st
dungeon that lets you access the 2nd dungeon and so on). I think that reduces
the "role playing" that goes on and makes Zelda more of an Action/Adventure
series.

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merb
not true for botw

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duskwuff
It's not even true for many of the "classic" Zelda games like Link to the Past
or Ocarina of Time. Sure, there's a series of mandatory quests with associated
items -- but there's also a bunch of side quests to pick up optional items,
like extra heart containers, additional bottles, and various tools (like the
Cape of Byrna in LttP or the masks in OoT).

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brootstrap
Hmm i thought dark souls was the best and only ARPG.

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JimiofEden
The best, debatable (I'd say yes,) but definitely not the only one.

