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Rogue

aka: AGB_Rogue, ClassicRogue, Rogue: Exploring the Dungeons of Doom, Rogue: The Adventure Game

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/).

Related Games

Realms of Darkness
Released 1987 on Apple II, Commodore 64, 1989 on PC-98...
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D
Released 1998 on Nintendo 64, Windows
Rogue Clone
Released 1986 on Mainframe, DOS, 2008 on iPhone
Rogue Shooter
Released 2014 on Windows
Rogue Grinders
Released 2020 on iPad, iPhone, Android
Rogue Aces
Released 2018 on PS Vita, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Rogue Legacy
Released 2019 on iPad, iPhone
Space Rogue
Released 1989 on DOS, Linux, 2016 on Windows...
Rogue Galaxy
Released 2007 on PlayStation 2, 2014 on PlayStation 3, 2015 on PlayStation 4

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

Know about this game? Add your expertise to help preserve this entry in video game history!

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.