rogue and hack: The emu scored an excellent hit

I lied. I said I was done with everything in bsd-games, but I knew when I typed it that I still had Hack on deck. I apologize. 😳

But I wanted to put Rogue and Hack in the same post because honestly, I don’t see much difference between the two. And they’re both quite excellent games … even if they are indistinguishable at first glance

 

Which one is Rogue and which one is Hack? You puzzle it out. And if you need a hint, check the links.

The Internet tells me that Hack postdates Rogue by a few years, that Hack adds a few gameplay innovations, and that Hack went on to evolve into NetHack. And the Internet is always right. 🙄

Be that as it may, Rogue and Hack give me flashbacks to the days of 286 machines, when something like this was worthy of spending most of a weekend with. If I remember right, I got quite speedy with the key commands. I think I may have even installed this on my first hard drive, a 30Mb Western Digital that weighed about 38 lbs. …

The sad part is, I’d trip over myself to get past either of these now, if it meant I could get a shot at playing Crawl. Rogue and Hack were tremendous innovations and loads of fun, but they had their eccentricities. (Why can my adventurer only see one square in front of him?! Am I a myopic adventurer?! 👿 )

Games like Crawl and Gearhead 2 and Cataclysm and the thousands of roguelike spinoffs took the idea, and wove it into something new … and sometimes better. Rogue and Hack are good for a little nostalgia, but there are dozens of variations of either of those titles that are brilliant ideas in their own right.

I would be in error not to mention either of these though, since they are available in quite a few distros and represent a legacy. And don’t think the irony is lost, of me taking sides with games that date back a dozen years, over games that date back dozens more. Text-based gamers can afford to be picky. 😉