1257: Is Pac-Man the first roguelike or is Rogue the first Pac-like?
2Aw I screwed up my first line when recording this and said "or is Rogue the first Pac-Man" instead of "first Pac-like." Sheesh! Anyway, just a silly idea I had about how these two games, both of which came out in 1980--Pac-Man in Japanese arcades in July, Rogue in probably California university computer labs at some unspecified point in the year--feature a round player character chasing or being chased by undead monsters around a maze laden with a pattern of dots and scattered powerups.
And just to make the relationship more explicit, for the commercial version of Rogue in 1984, now with color graphics, they changed the "@" character symbol to a yellow smiley face "☺"--which obviously is just Pac-Man looking at us head-on, as if to say "Get it?" ^ _^ (Also, by 1984 Pac-Man had made tons of money, and at least one of the creators of Rogue still WANTED to make tons of money.)
So... Is Pac-Man the first roguelike, or is Rogue the first Pac-like? : D
My Pac-Man playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZO3OPzPjIzP4amjUBrQ5uiObNxySb7Jd
My roguelikes playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZO3OPzPjIzPN-BzgaKGOfcOMbKrwNHTT
My Angband playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZO3OPzPjIzPDGSovCSUGiEGwNrTKPb-C
0:00 - start
0:12 - Rogue 3.6.1
1:49 - Arcade Game Series: Pac-Man
5:12 - Epyx Rogue
7:06 - Angband 4.2.4
13:08 - stretch wrap!
13:16 - meant to say "1984" for the commercial release of Rogue, not "1980"
I downloaded Rogue 3.6.1 (said to be the first widely released version, in 1981), DOS version, from The Rogue Archive: https://britzl.github.io/roguearchive/
and ran it in DOSBox, which I downloaded from https://www.dosbox.com/
I bought Arcade Game Series: Pac-Man from Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/394160/ARCADE_GAME_SERIES_PACMAN/
I bought Rogue (Epyx 1985 DOS retail version) from Steam (automatically installs it in its own DOSBox set-up): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1443430/Rogue/
12/25/22
#angband #roguelike #dungeoncrawler #freegame #freegames #fantasy #fantasygame #fantasygames #videogame #videogames #pcgame #pcgames #dosbox #pcgaming #dos #dosgame #dosgames #mazegame #mazegames #pacman #1980 #videogame #videogames