PixlBit

One of the first video RPGs ever made was Temple of Apshai. Released in 1979 by Epyx, it predates even the 80s gold standards of Wizardry and Ultima.

Temple of Apshai, being so old, plays as a sort of hybrid between computer games and pen-and-paper RPGs, a RPG amphibian if you will. You roll your character with all the usual RPG attributes and equipment (you can make your character as powerful as you want within the limits of the stats and equipment), then you go exploring an overhead view dungeon, the Temple of Apshai, in search of treasure, while fighting monsters, avoiding traps, and seeking out hidden doors.

The hybrid part comes from the fact that the on-screen presentation of this game is very abstract. The dungeons don't look like anything in particular. Both the dungeons and treasures are assigned room numbers. How this works is that you look up the room number in the instruction book and it gives you a description of the room, including clues as to where to find hidden doors and what monsters might appear, kind of like the DM in a pen-and-paper RPG. The treasures, likewise, are described in the manual according to their number.

 

When you died, your fate would be randomly determined by who finds your remains. If a cleric or mage finds your remains, you're returned to the inn with all your stats and equipment attack. If Olias, a dwarf thief finds you, you are resurrected, but with reduction in stats and all treasures and money gone. If a monster finds you... well, you're lunch.

At the time, it was a megahit, selling 30,000 copies. Back then, 30,000 copies constituted a blockbuster, given the small install base for home computers. Epyx later released two additional spinoffs, collectively called Dunjonquest. The Upper Reaches of Apshai was an easier version of the game, though with less valuable treasures. The Curse of Ra, by contrast, was a harder set of dungeons with more dangerous monsters and traps, themed around Ancient Egypt. In 1985, Epyx did a graphically enhanced remake of the series packaged as the Temple of Apshai Trilogy, which included all three games. This is the version I played. It was otherwise just as abstract as the original. My copy of the game, for the Atari 8-bit computer line, was a pirated copy given to me by my uncle from a "warez" site, so I didn't have the instruction manual and missed out on the descriptions of the dungeons and treasures. There was also a prequel game called Gateway to Apshai, which was more of an action game styled along The Legend of Zelda, although it was nowhere near the same level as Zelda.

Despite the fact that I missed out on much of this game by not having a paper manual, I played it a fair bit. There's no real win state to it, and no point to it other than collecting treasures and getting money, kind of like an afternoon D&D session. It represented a transition from pen-and-paper to the computer world, much like coelacanths and amphibians represented a transition for vertebrates from the sea to land. It was just kind of an interesting piece of old software and one of the early mainstays of RPGs.