Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

The Good
It was the first computer game that I ever saw that attempted to graphically render the D&D game. There may have been others out there that I was unaware of, but for me, it was ground-breaking.

Where to start? Character creation like D&D. Random numbers for wisdom, strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence. Pick a class, pick evil good or neutral. Buy armor for the front three guys and go down in the dungeon to kill monsters and gather treasure!

It doesn't get any better than that! (well it does, but it didn't in 1985). So over the course of weeks or months you built your characters up (and sometimes they would change from good to evil - forcing you to start over with a new priest or mage). But eventually you would get to the final showdown with Werdna! ...and he would kill everyone in the party. After several tries though, you could kill him. And that was the coolest thing in the world!

The Bad
Characters changed alignment occasionally when they leveled up, and sometimes you would have to start a new character up in the needed alignment to match the rest of the party.

Another thing I disliked was having to type out the exact text of the spell I needed my mage or priest to cast. In excitement or in the wee hours of the morning, I occasionally misspelled a word, so no spell was cast. A bummer when one of the other characters desperately needed healed, or I needed to cast a massive damaging spell.

The Bottom Line
D&D without the dice or graph paper.