Ragnarok - So much style that it's wasted

Temple of the Roguelike journeyed back to the heady days of 1992 to <a href="http://www.roguetemple.com/reviews/ragnarok/" target="blank">review</a> commercial roguelike turned freeware <b><a href="http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/ragnarok.htm" target="blank">Ragnarok</a></b>.
<blockquote>Some features deserve special mention. Your character can wear up to eight rings one on each finger (thumbs don’t count). It is quite uncommon for a roguelike and creates potential for interesting decisions to be made. There is a way to increase amount of fingers up to *sixteen*! With all that jewelry one must look funny. There is morality system which discourages cannibalism, genocides and killing loyal norsemen. Unfortunately it rarely comes into play because one has really to focus on making evil acts for punishment to kick in.</blockquote>
Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.roguetemple.com/">Temple of the Roguelike</A>

 

I remember playing this in the mid 90s, it was a pretty neat game with a lot of strange options to manipulate your character. Had some great skills as well like creating golems and even a paper folding skill, if I recall, which I thought was interesting. I might have to try it again to refresh my memories.

 

So it is a roguelike where you can play a rap singer? Any possibility to wear a big and heavy gold chain as well?

 

Great roguelike. Lots of stuff. Awesome final fights.

 

Hopefully also stolen rims - are they alloy or chrome?

 

I like that their webpage icon is a glider.

 

Astoria (Theodor Lauppert's Homepage) is great. He's practically the sole source of information for a few rare titles. Sometimes when I feel like playing something out of the 90s, I just browse around: http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/

Most of the folks here would be more interested in his RPG page:

http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/rpg.htm

 

I played this game a lot back in the day. My strategy was to get a blessed scroll of identification. Then mop up after getting the blessed scroll of Transport. Though that would certainly backfire if you didn't think about the return trip.

You could mutate your character to have more fingers too. To allow even more rings... (-edit I see the review mentioned this. Never mind)

Never did finish it though.

I love these games where you do not necessarily win just because you fought well. Unlike modern games where your success is guaranteed by the simple fact that you started a new game.

 

This shit looks like the Oregon Trail.

 

Don't dis Oregon Trail.

 

http://www.gamingw.net/forums/index.php?topic=71364.0 There a roguelike featuring the wu tang clan.

 

Ragnarok, along with ADOM, were my favorite roguelikes back in the day (strangely, I never got into Angband and Nethack all that much, though I liked watching the Borg play Angband). The best parts about it were the game world (based on Norse mythology), monsters (varied and challenging), and skills (many interesting and creative ones). I remember printing out the spoiler guide for the game and reading it to sleep; the first few times I did it, I never did get much sleep.

 

Cool things you could do in the game:

* Use scrolls of extinction to wipe out entire monster types
* Fight alongside the Norse gods
* Get owned by Jurmondgand for 27,543 damage when you first step into his domain
* Be permanently polymorphed into a gas spore and explode
* Permanently polymorph yourself into a super monster and win the game in that form

EDIT: I just found the spoiler guide. Here are some excerpts about the monsters you face in the game. (Unlike today's games, old roguelikes like Ragnarok actually required you to know what you were doing.)

And of course, a game about Nordic Aryans is not complete without this: