Rogue
Description official descriptions
Rogue is a turn-based dungeon crawler in which the player controls an adventurer who must explore the dangerous Dungeon of Doom in order to retrieve the precious Amulet of Yendor and make it out alive. The player character starts on the upper-most level and slowly makes his way downwards.
The game uses ASCII characters to represent locations, items, monsters, and the protagonist himself. There are twenty-six different types of monsters, symbolized by their initial letters (e.g. L for Leprechaun). Monsters have different abilities and modes of attack. The dungeon and the items in it are randomly generated each time the player begins a new game. Each dungeon level contains a grid of three by three rooms and dead ends.
Levels get progressively more complex and maze-like, and monsters grow in strength the deeper the hero ventures into the dungeon. The player character can acquire better weapons and armor, gain experience points and level up. Should the protagonist perish in the dungeon, the player must restart the game anew.
Spellings
- ローグ - Japanese spelling
Groups +
Screenshots
Promos
Credits (DOS version)
19 People (5 developers, 14 thanks)
| Original Concept | |
| Adapted for the IBM PC by | |
| Significant design contributions by | |
| A Guide to Dungeons of Doom by | |
| Special Thanks |
|
| Public domain version of Rogue written by |
Reviews
Discussion
| Subject | User | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Rogue in AUUG Newsletter Sept. '82 (Australian Unix Users Group) | Andrew Fisher (708) | 2023-05-10 09:36:27 |
| Game Group: Rogue Variants? | PCGamer77 (3222) | 2021-06-07 21:29:12 |
| Amiga version of Rogue for PC | Ardor | 2009-03-02 01:22:46 |
| Game port listing needs to be removed? | LepricahnsGold (142514) | 2008-12-13 21:08:56 |
| Public Domain or Commercial? | Indra was here (20777) | 2007-11-06 16:50:58 |
Trivia
1001 Video Games
Rogue appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Academic paper
A sophisticated mainframe-Rogue-playing AI, the "Rog-o-matic" (A Belligerent Expert System), was the subject of an academic paper written by Michael Maudlin, Guy Jacobson, Andrew Appel and Leonard Hamey of Carnegie Mellon University and presented at the Fifth Biennial Conference of the Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence, London Ontario, May 16, 1984.
This paper can be read (and its behavior diagrams ogled) here.
Copy protection
The commercial Rogue versions didn't fare too well, as lots of pirated copies existed. The later DOS versions were copy protected (starting at the latest with V1.48 published by Epyx), in an interesting way. You could actually play a pirated copy, but if you did, you suffered six times the normal damage from monster attacks -- which quickly ended an already pretty hard game, it was hard to even get to level two. On the tombstone, you could then read the evocative message:
*REST IN PEACE
Software Pirate
killed by
Copy Protection Mafia*
Development
Rogue was first developed in 1980 on PLATO mainframes (first at Santa Cruz, then Berkeley), where it was extensively beta-tested by fellow Computing Science students. (Three months after moving to Berkeley, more compute cycles were used playing Rogue than running any other program.) The game's creators eventually calculated that their little diversion had used up approximately "a billion and a half dollars of compute time in Silicon Valley". Your taxpayer dollars at work!
Different versions
In keeping with the game's U.C. Berkeley roots, a public domain version of it was distributed with version 4.2 of the university's popular flavour of Unix -- the Berkeley Standard Distribution, or BSD. This ended up ensuring an enduring fondness for the game among a wide and international fanbase.
In 2006, Donnie Russell released a version called ClassicRogue, which features a graphical title screen optional mouse control, and sound effects.
When Epyx re-released the DOS version of Rogue in 1985, the main addition was a graphical title screen. The developer of this version, Jon Lane, one of the original developers of Rogue, didn't seem to have liked it: In the source code, the function to display that image is called "epyx_yuck"...
Programming
Written in a very early version of Lattice C (version 1.02, to be exact).
Information also contributed by FatherJack. [General Error](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,54276/), and [Pseudo_Intellectual](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,49363/).
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Related Sites +
-
A brief history of Rogue
The history of this seminal game written by one of its creators, Glenn R. Wichman. -
Donnie Russel's Webpage
Home Page of the author of the Rogue ports to Windows and Linux, <i>ClassicRogue</i> and <i>TileRogue</i>, as well as a port for the Gameboy Advanced called <i>AGB_Rogue</i>. -
Old CRPGs
Another page hosting old executables and source code for Rogue its derivatives. -
ROG-O-MATIC: A Belligerent Expert System
The paper that describes the ROG-O-MATIC expert system, an early AI experiment to let computers play Rogue. Quite successful, as it seems! -
Rogue @ Epyx Shrine
Screenshots of the various versions and an interview with Glenn Wichman, co-creator of the original "Rogue". -
Rogue: The Adventure Game
product page for the iPhone version -
The CRPG Addict: Rogue
Posts about the game at The CRPG Addict blog. -
The Dungeons of Doom
Featuring the history of rogue, a lot of tips and hints, and the sources for the original PC Rogue. -
The Roguelike Archive
Source code and executables for many systems of many different Rogue versions and other roguelike games. -
zRogue
<moby developer="Gevan Dutton">Gevan Dutton</moby>'s 1998 Z-code abuse port of Rogue can be played online through your web browser.
Identifiers +
- MobyGames ID: 1743
Contribute
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Kalirion.
Atari 8-bit added by JRK. GP32, GP2X added by 666gonzo666. PC-88 added by Infernos. Roku added by firefang9212. Windows added by Sciere. Macintosh added by Kabushi. Amiga, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC added by Martin Smith. Atari ST added by ZZip. Android, Mainframe added by Pseudo_Intellectual. Linux added by General Error. PC-98 added by vermilion1. Antstream added by lights out party. ZX Spectrum added by voidoid. TRS-80 CoCo added by L. Curtis Boyle.
Additional contributors: Trixter, Sciere, Alaka, Silverblade, Pseudo_Intellectual, General Error, JudgeDeadd, CalaisianMindthief, Rik Hideto.
Game added June 23rd, 2000. Last modified April 11th, 2023.