Vapourware The definitive, authoritative, and probably non-exhaustive list of non-(IBM) PC cRPGs

[rusty_shackleford]

You guys ever seen the WoX Macintosh portraits? ...I kinda like them.
Also seems to have higher graphical fidelity in general.

Think it has a much higher native resolution.

 

[Rincewind]

The caption of these screenshots on MobyGames is interesting:

"The game has a highter resolution than the DOS version, also with new character portraits. Some of these portraits are the port developers."

"Some objects and monster sprites have the original resolution however. When you approach them, they shrink down in size."

That shrinking down part makes the Mac port a bit questionable, no?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

SNES is officially the most Rusty cRPG approved platform with 100% approval rating. All 1/1 cRPGs on the platform are Rusty approved.

 

[flyingjohn]

May i recommend adding a note to differentiate apple ii from the apple ii gs entries.
Tower of Myraglen is a apple ii gs only game.
I know people can follow the crpgaddict link,but it would be nice still.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

May i recommend adding a note to differentiate apple ii from the apple ii gs entries.
Tower of Myraglen is a apple ii gs only game.
I know people can follow the crpgaddict link,but it would be nice still.

Sure, I actually don't know the difference between them as I never owned either.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Rules for List #1:

1. No cRPGs that have released for PC.
2. cRPGs exclusive to consoles will be listed under the appropriate console platform.
3. cRPGs available but not exclusive to consoles but not available on PC will be listed under the appropriate non-console platforms.
4. Acceptable platforms: No PC. Platform must have been released by 1995 or earlier.
5. The release year of the game does not matter. There are still games being made for these platforms in the style of the older games.
6. Being available on multiple platforms is fine, as long as it doesn't break rule #1.
7. A title being emulated on a platform does not count as a release for that platform.
8. It must be a cRPG.

"Amstrad CPC"
lol, frogs. I'll get to this eventually.

• Mindstone (1986) (Also available on ZX Spectrum.)
• Swords & Sorcery (1986) CA (Also available on ZX Spectrum)

Took a quick look at the Amstrad CPC, this is what I found:

Deffo cRPGs:

Black Land (1995) [Claims to be the biggest RPG made for an 8-bit platform. Came on two disks, which was rare. Exclusive to the Amstrad CPC.]
Faial - Chevalier du Levant (1986) [Mostly text-based, frogspeak only.]
Le Fer d'Amnukor (1986) [Frogspeak only. Also released on the Oric, the Thomson MO5 and the Thomson TO7.]
Fer & Flamme (1986) [Neat graphics for its age, frogspeak only, a two-disk adventure.]
Inquisitor: Shade of Swords (1987) [Uses a bizarre icon-driven interface. Frogspeak only. Exclusive to the Amstrad CPC.]
Le Maitre Absolu (1989) [Sequel to 'Le Maître des Âmes' (Disqualified), I'm uncertain whether this game was released on other platforms. Frogspeak only.]
Mandragore (1985) [Just pointing out it's also on the Amstrad, plus a few more obscure platforms.]
Omega: The Invisible Planet (1987) [Seems very similar to Mandragore. Only available in French and German. Unknown if other versions exist.]
The Shadows of Sergoth (2018) [Dungeon crawler, an Amiga-version is currently in development.]
Les Templiers d'Orven (1986) [Frogspeak only.]
The Sword of Truth (19??) [Very little info on this one, but it can't be anything else than a cRPG.]
Tyrann (1985) [Looks like a RPG alright. Frogspeak only.]
Le Voyage de Nephi (2021) [A very light dungeon crawler, based on a French comic.]
Warrior (1986) [An updated version of a game with the same name. Frogspeak only.]

Not sure if cRPGs, need checking out:

Aventures au Chateau (1985)
L'Anneau De Zengara (1987)
Haruspice (1992) [Unfinished prototype. Unknown how playable it is.]
Lords of Chaos (1990) [An oddity. It's a turn-based strategy game where you control a wizard who summons units to do battle for him. The thing is, the Wizard has stats, can gain levels and grow in power, which is needed to conquer the five available scenarios. 8-bit releases and 16-bit releases differ somewhat in gameplay. Also has hot-seat multiplayer mode.]
Le Manoir de Rochebrune (1985)
Metro 2018 (1985) [Unsure if RPG or '3rd-generation adventure game' as the game calls itself. Also unsure if related to the newer Metro-games.]
The Ring of Darkness (1985) [Unsure if RPG or graphic adventure with a parser.]
Shadowfire (1986) [Unsure if RPG with a bizarre icon-interface, or a batshit-crazy game like 'Frankie Goes to Hollywood', which is almost everything BUT a cRPG.]
Sortileges (1986) [Looks like EGA Trek, unsure if RPG.]
Space Base (1986) [Unsure if text-only RPG or a text-adventure with extra features.]
TheSaurus: Dungeon's Revenge (1986) [Unsure if RPG or graphic adventure. Frogspeak only.]
The Sword of Ianna (2020) [It's a side-scrolling platformer where you hack monsters to bits and solve simple puzzles. But it also has customizable weapons, hit points and level progression via XP, so... Action RPG?]
Turlogh le Rodeur (1988) [Very unorthodox game, involving visible dice rolls. Unsure if RPG. Frogspeak only.]
Zelda (1991) [Doesn't appear related to the Zelda-games, unsure what to make of this one.]

NOT a cRPG, despite being labelled as such:
Back to the Golden Age (1991) [Reason: Side-scrolling arcade-adventure]
Knightmare (1987) [Reason: Pseudo-isometric arcade-adventure. A different game from the Knightmare cRPG on the 16-bits, but based on the same IP.]

EDIT: Updated post with more titles.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Wow, they're still making CPC games? That's cool, I never even heard of the platform before this thread.

 

[Grauken]

Wow, they're still making CPC games? That's cool, I never even heard of the platform before this thread.

Most "famous" old computers have very active communities still making games

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Wow, they're still making CPC games? That's cool, I never even heard of the platform before this thread.

Most "famous" old computers have very active communities still making games

I had no idea it was famous, I kinda thought the frogs just used a commodore 64 like normal people.

 

[flyingjohn]

Rules for List #1:

1. No cRPGs that have released for PC.
2. cRPGs exclusive to consoles will be listed under the appropriate console platform.
3. cRPGs available but not exclusive to consoles but not available on PC will be listed under the appropriate non-console platforms.
4. Acceptable platforms: No PC. Platform must have been released by 1995 or earlier.
5. The release year of the game does not matter. There are still games being made for these platforms in the style of the older games.
6. Being available on multiple platforms is fine, as long as it doesn't break rule #1.
7. A title being emulated on a platform does not count as a release for that platform.
8. It must be a cRPG.

"Amstrad CPC"
lol, frogs. I'll get to this eventually.

• Mindstone (1986) (Also available on ZX Spectrum.)
• Swords & Sorcery (1986) CA (Also available on ZX Spectrum)

Took a quick look at the Amstrad CPC, this is what I found:

Deffo cRPGs:

Black Land (1995) [Claims to be the biggest RPG made for an 8-bit platform. Came on two disks, which was rare. Exclusive to the Amstrad CPC.]
Faial - Chevalier du Levant (1986) [Mostly text-based, frogspeak only.]
Le Fer d'Amnukor (1986) [Frogspeak only. Also released on the Oric, the Thomson MO5 and the Thomson TO7.]
Fer & Flamme (1986) [Neat graphics for its age, frogspeak only, a two-disk adventure.]
Inquisitor: Shade of Swords (1987) [Uses a bizarre icon-driven interface. Frogspeak only. Exclusive to the Amstrad CPC.]
Le Maitre Absolu (1989) [Sequel to 'Le Maître des Âmes' (Disqualified), I'm uncertain whether this game was released on other platforms. Frogspeak only.]
The Shadows of Sergoth (2018) [Dungeon crawler, an Amiga-version is currently in development.]
Le Voyage de Nephi (2021) [A very light dungeon crawler, based on a French comic.]

Not sure if cRPGs, need checking out:

Aventures au Chateau (1985)
Haruspice (1992) [Unfinished prototype. Unknown how playable it is.]
L'Anneau De Zengara (1987)
Le Manoir de Rochebrune (1985)

NOT a cRPG, despite being labelled as such:

Back to the Golden Age (1991) [Reason: Side-scrolling arcade-adventure]
Knightmare (1987) [Reason: Pseudo-isometric arcade-adventure. A different game from the Knightmare cRPG on the 16-bits, but based on the same IP.]

Does cpc power host downloads,or is it just info only?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Does cpc power host downloads,or is it just info only?

IIRC you have to jump through some hoops for the downloads (Captchas and such). It has tons of stuff if you know where to look.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Broke Apple IIGS out into its own section, Apple II is (I assume) a subset of games available on Apple IIGS therefore the games on "both" don't need repeating. Correct me if I'm wrong. There actually wasn't that many, maybe I missed some? I only checked games made after the GS's release date, of course.

Probably going to go through and attempt to add subgenre notes/classify the ones that are "-like" games, as quite a few are ultima-likes, wiz-likes, etc...

 

[rusty_shackleford]

While I really thought it was going to be Amiga, I think I'm surprised to say that Macintosh might be the best non-PC cRPG platform. I know I still have a lot of games to add and examine to see if they're worth of a prestigious '#', but Macintosh really surprised me.

 

[Rincewind]

While I really thought it was going to be Amiga, I think I'm surprised to say that Macintosh might be the best non-PC cRPG platform. I know I still have a lot of games to add and examine to see if they're worth of a prestigious '#', but Macintosh really surprised me.

Definitely, if you're lumping Apple II(gs) & Mac into one category. I was quite surprised at the number of C64 ports as well.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

For a solid 40 maybe 50 percent of these games, the only person with a single video for them is this dude
https://www.youtube.com/user/petsasjim1/videos
He has over 20,000 videos. Crazy.


...Which one of you is it?

 

[Jarpie]

While I really thought it was going to be Amiga, I think I'm surprised to say that Macintosh might be the best non-PC cRPG platform. I know I still have a lot of games to add and examine to see if they're worth of a prestigious '#', but Macintosh really surprised me.

Might have something to do with Amiga not being very successful in the USA, and being big in the UK, who afaik has never been much into crpgs, those few crpgs which came for Amiga were made in the USA or in the continental europe, and ported to DOS anyway, like Ambermoon and Amberstar.

 

[Grauken]

Ambermoon wasn't ported at the time

 

[Fluent]

Hey rusty. Don't forget the 3 Ishar games for Mac. Dungeon crawling series that is quite good. Maybe later I'll boot up my Mac and see what else I have installed. Some months back I took the time to download and install pretty much every RPG I could find for it. My Mac is from 2002 but can run OS 9 so it's backwards compatible with the older games from the 80s and 90s. Good lists so far, thanks for your work!

 

[Grauken]

Ishar might look good, the gameplay itself is subpar

 

[Jarpie]

Ambermoon wasn't ported at the time

It wasn't originally translated into english either, only later they released the english version too.

 

[Rincewind]

Might have something to do with Amiga not being very successful in the USA, and being big in the UK, who afaik has never been much into crpgs, those few crpgs which came for Amiga were made in the USA or in the continental europe, and ported to DOS anyway, like Ambermoon and Amberstar.

Correction, the Amiga (and the C64 before that) was extremely popular in whole Europe, not just in the UK. So it doesn't matter too much what UK people supposedly liked or disliked. I guess in general the Amiga attracted a lot of action game developers, many from the demoscene, as technically speaking developing RPGs was relatively uninteresting from a graphics programmer's perspective. Maybe that's one of the reasons. And probably the fact that D&D originated from the USA.

 

[Jarpie]

Might have something to do with Amiga not being very successful in the USA, and being big in the UK, who afaik has never been much into crpgs, those few crpgs which came for Amiga were made in the USA or in the continental europe, and ported to DOS anyway, like Ambermoon and Amberstar.

Correction, the Amiga (and the C64 before that) was extremely popular in whole Europe, not just in the UK. So it doesn't matter too much what UK people supposedly liked or disliked. I guess in general the Amiga attracted a lot of action game developers, many from the demoscene, as technically speaking developing RPGs was relatively uninteresting from a graphics programmer's perspective. Maybe that's one of the reasons. And probably the fact that D&D originated from the USA.

Oh, I know that Amiga was very popular in the continental europe and eastern europe, it was also pretty popular in Finland too, but not quite as popular as C64 was. One of the last crpgs made for Amiga was Evil's Doom and it was made by Croatian team.

 

[Kev Inkline]

I don't quite think rule 1 should be so strict, I mean games that have been originally published on some other platform than PC and are superior on that platform compared to their PC port should make it into the list, imo.

A prime example of such game is Faery Tale Adventure (Amiga), whose superb music is completely lacking on the MS-DOS port, but because of the rule 1 won't be listed.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I don't quite think rule 1 should be so strict, I mean games that have been originally published on some other platform than PC and are superior on that platform compared to their PC port should make it into the list, imo.

A prime example of such game is Faery Tale Adventure (Amiga), whose superb music is completely lacking on the MS-DOS port, but because of the rule 1 won't be listed.

this thread will eventually get a companion thread for discussing the best(oh boy I can't wait for the nerd wars) platform to play games on, it was originally my intent to do them side-by-side in the op because I know a lot of PC ports were kinda shit but I didn't really recognize how much effort the first part would be

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Most of time answer is going to be Amiga.