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Akalabeth: World of Doom
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"Akalabeth" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Akallabth.
Akalabeth: World of Doom

Developer(s) Richard Garriott
Publisher(s)
California Pacific
Computer Co.
Designer(s) Richard Garriott
Platform(s) Apple II, DOS
Release date(s)
circa 1979
(limited release),
1980-1981 (California
Pacific release)
Genre(s)
Role-playing video
game
Mode(s) Single player
Media/distribution Floppy disk
Akalabeth: World of Doom(pron.: /klb/) is a role-playing video game that had
a limited release in 1979 and was then published by California Pacific Computer
Company for the Apple II in 1980. Richard Garriott designed the game as a hobbyist
project, which is now recognized as one of the earliest known examples of a role-
playing video game
[1]
and as a predecessor of the Ultima series of games that started
Garriott's career.
[2]

Contents
1 History
2 Gameplay and technology
3 Release date
4 Ports
5 Reception
6 References
7 External links
History
The game was made by then-teenaged Garriott in the BASIC programming language
for the Apple II while living with his parents and attending High School in the
Houston, Texas suburbs.
[2]
Begun first as a school project during his Junior year using
the school's mainframe system and Apple II computer, as well as another Apple II
bought for him by his father, the game continually evolved over several years under
the working title D&D with the help of his friends and regular Dungeons & Dragons
partners who acted as play-testers.
[2]
Development of the game began soon after his
initial encounter with Apple computers in the summer of 1979.
[3]
When the game
reached version D&D28b later that year (where "28b" refers to the revision), he
demoed the game - now renamed to Akalabeth - for his boss at Clear Lake City,
Texas-area ComputerLand, who suggested he sell the game to the store's clientele.
Garriott consented and briefly packaged and distributed the game inside Ziploc bags,
along with a cover drawn by his mother, within the store, selling less than a dozen
copies. His boss secretly sent the sixteenth copy to California Pacific Computer
Company, who proved interested enough to contact Garriott about purchasing the
rights and publishing the game. Garriott flew to California with his parents and signed
a contract with California Pacific to give them the publishing rights. He would receive
$5 for each copy of his game sold. The game ended up selling 30,000 copies, netting
Garriott $150,000.
[4]
California Pacific went bankrupt not long after the release of his
next game, Ultima.
[2]

In creating Akalabeth, Garriott was primarily inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, for
which he held weekly sessions in his parents' house while in High School;
[2]
and the
works of J. R. R. Tolkien, which he received from an in-law of his brother. The name
derives from Tolkien's Akallabth, part of The Silmarillion; though the game is not
based on Tolkien's story. Also, while not explicitly stated, Akalabeth is seen as the
first game of the Ultima series, a very popular and influential series of role-playing
video games. It was, therefore, included as part of the 1998 Ultima Collection where
it officially picked up the nickname Ultima 0. The version in the Collection added
CGA colors and MIDI. It ran on DOS, making it the first official port of the game to
any system other than the Apple II, though an unofficial, fan-made PC version had
circulated on the Internet since late 1995.
In the original game, the last monster on the need-to-kill list is called "Balrog",
exactly like the demonic monsters from The Lord of the Rings, and unlike the later
name for the monster in the Ultima games, Balron.
Gameplay and technology


The main overhead view of Akalabeth. The player is represented by a cross. There is a town
to the northwest and impassable mountains to the southeast.
Essentially, the game attempts to bring the gameplay of pen-and-paper role-playing
games to the computer platform.
[2]
The player receives quests from Lord British
(Garriott's alter-ego and nickname since High School) to kill a succession of ten
increasingly difficult monsters.
The majority of gameplay takes place in an underground dungeon, but there were also
a simple above-ground world map and text descriptions to fill out the rest of the
adventure. The player could visit the Adventure Shop to purchase food, weapons, a
shield and a magic amulet; the player's statistics can also be viewed here.
The game used concepts that would later become standard in the Ultima series,
including:
First-person gameplay in dungeons
Requiring food to survive
A top-down overhead world view
Hotkeys used for commands
The use of Elizabethan English
Garriott's earlier versions before D&D28b used an overhead view with ASCII
characters representing items and monsters. However, after playing Escape, an early
maze game for the Apple II, he instead decided to switch to a wire-frame, first-person
view for the underground dungeon portions of the game.
[2]



The first-person dungeon perspective of Akalabeth. Here the player is fighting a skeleton
near a ladder. The dark blue color indicates this is the second level of the dungeon.
While crude by modern standards, in 1980 Akalabeth's graphics and dungeon crawl
gameplay mechanics were considered quite advanced, and the game attracted a large
amount of attention. And, since Akalabeth was written in Applesoft BASIC, an
interpreted language, it was a simple matter for users to modify the source code to suit
their needs or desires. For example, the game's magic amulet, which occasionally did
unpredictable things like turn a player into a high-powered Lizard Man, could be set
to do so with every use, progressively increasing the player's strength to the point of
virtual indestructibility. One could also set the player's statistics (normally randomly
generated and fairly weak to start) to any level desired.
Release date
Most sources, including Garriott himself and Origin Systems, say that Akalabeth was
created in the summer of 1979 and sold that year in Ziploc bags. However, labels of
the first release are clearly marked " Richard Garriott 1980". The dates of 1980 and
1981 for the California Pacific releases are not disputed.
Ports
Remakes exist for
iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad in cooperation with the author Richard Garriott at
QuantumToast.com/Akalabeth
Java ME-platforms in mobile phones by dimjon.
Reception
The game was reviewed in 1982 in The Dragon #65 by Bruce Humphrey. Humphrey
concluded that "Akalabeth is a poor cousin in relation to Wizardry and some of the
other recent role-playing computer games."
[5]

References
1. ^ Barton, Matt: Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing
Games (A K Peters Ltd, Wellesley MA, 2008), pg. 1
2. ^
a

b

c

d

e

f

g
King, Brad; Borland, John M. (2003). Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of
Computer Game Culture from Geek to Chic. McGraw-Hill/Osborne. ISBN 0-07-
222888-1. Retrieved 2010-09-25.
3. ^ The Official Book of Ultima, by Shay Addams, Second Edition, page 7
4. ^ The Official Book of Ultima, by Shay Addams, Second Edition, page 8
5. ^ Humphrey, Bruce (September 1982). "Campaigns for the Keyboard". The Dragon
(65): 7374.
External links
Akalabeth at the Codex of Ultima Wisdom
Akalabeth: World of Doom at MobyGames
GameSpot: "The Ultima Legacy - D&D28b and the Apple II"
The Dot Eaters article on Gariott/British, Akalabeth, and his other Ultima games.
[hide]
v
t
e
Ultima series


Main series
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VII part 2
VIII
IX


Worlds of Ultima
The Savage Empire
Martian Dreams


Ultima Underworld
The Stygian Abyss
Labyrinth of Worlds


Other games
Akalabeth
Escape from Mt. Drash
Ultima Online
Ultima V: Lazarus
Lord of Ultima
Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar


Cancelled games
Ultima Worlds Online: Origin
Ultima X: Odyssey


Developers
Chuck Bueche
Dr. Cat
Richard Garriott
Warren Spector
David R. Watson


Other topics
Characters
o Avatar
o Lord British
Britannia Manor
Exult

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Categories:
1980 video games
Apple II games
California Pacific Computer Company games
DOS games
Role-playing video games
Ultima
Video games developed in the United States
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This page was last modified on 4 December 2012 at 22:36.
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