Oh do I remember and cherish this game. At the writing of this post, I'm 18 years old, and I have been playing Rogue since before I could remember. My earliest childhood memory is "Jason killed by a Jabberwocky on level (whatever it was)." Even before I was literate, I was able to understand the functions of the game, and when in doubt, I would ask my brother who was looking over my shoulder for help. People these days say such things as, "You've gotta come over later so you can check out Quake3 on my new nDivia card on my 19" monitor!". Ahh, to them, I say, "You've gotta see me play Rogue on my 236 IBM hooked up to my big screen TV(at the time, 25" was pretty friggen big). For the first time in many years, since I lost my monitor (. . .I was held prisoner in my home while I was robbed at the age of 13, they took just about everything. When asked "Who's computer is this?" I stated it was mine and they actually left it.) A few years later, I found my old 5 1/4" diskette and played it on my new 486! I never knew fastplay would go so fast. Several years later, without a 5 1/4 floppy drive, and without Rogue I played a similiar game called Nethack, boy did that bring back memories. . .it just wasn't the same though. This morning, when I woke up, one of the first things I did was search for Rogue, and within seconds I found it. Such memories this game brings back. I owe alot to this game. If it weren't for Rogue, I don't know if I would have ever been addicted to computers. Also because of this game, I was able to type and read("You faint from lack of food. -MORE-") by the age of 3. Can't say I've ever beaten the game, but maybe by the time I'm 30 and have kids of my own to teach this game to, I'll have won(or they will have. . .which would make me just as proud.) Just trying to say that this is THE best game I've ever played. I owe alot to the creators of this game. . .they should have a spot in some sort of gamers hall of fame.

North killed by a Bat on level 1.

When I searched for the word "Rogue" on the web, I really didn't expect to find so many sites, I just wanted to know a little bit more about the game I've always been adicted to. I was really surprised by the 42 websites that were found. So, I figured out that I could reach the original programmers, now I can thank them for making this game! I started playing Rogue in 1992, on my first IBM PC. Hey, I'm only 23, I didn't see the earlier versions of the game. I kept on thinking, 'Am I the only one that's sick enough to play a 1983-DOS-ASCII game?' Now I see that I'm not. So, this is for you, sick ones, who still play The Adventure Game.

Flávio Sabbagh Armony, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
2933 gold pieces. Killed by a phantom on level 17.

i cant believe this! this is actually better than anything ive ever played! i guess you could say i'm a new generation, after all i've never been around to see the kipper, nor have i ever actually played a game that included the words, "all your ___ are belong to us" heck i don't even know the first thing about "C"! and yet i've found Rogue, and all i hafta say is thank you, thank you so much for the hours of endless joy i've had with my little guy, running around the dungeon killing bats and quaffing wierd potions, i found this game when i read these stories at thirteen and a year later i am still playing it first thing before hwk, i guess i just love the simplicity of this game! i tried nethack but hated that stupid "d" following me around or the million and one commands i hafta do just to rename the ugly thing. so once again thanks and rogue is still going strong, i also play diablo but feel like nothing beats the death-dance my fingers make across a keyboard trying to lead a k align so i could get time to test my new wand out on him i recently had to do a project on the history of the computer and passed around a few Rogue games i had saved on disk and now a lot of my peers in business class love it as well! i think i may start a rogue class next year! i think ill call it the D chasers, i particularly liked naming my guy John Draker cuz it had the Eternal champ feel, i just loved it and dont think anything will replace the feeling i get when i descend into the icy-cold black dungeon where all i can see are a few highlighted features in the dim light of the mad hobgoblin (the h's looked like a pair og legs and a raised arm to me) after my head and me with my mace held high, or when the rattlesnakes bite me and i don't realize until running down a three corridors that i only have one hp left and that i threw out the antidote two steps back just to make room!, sorry for rambling on so long but i just wantd to let u kno that this is great, and i love it more than anything, i think i'd like to be buried with this disk in my hands the day i die.

Richard T.

I'm seventeen years old, a college student, and a rabid gamer. You name it, I've probably played it or atleast read about it. Just a few days ago I was browsing through one of my favorite gaming news sites when I noticed a graphic which looked incredibly familiar. I read the article, thinking the graphic was of Rogue, a game which I remembered little about except that it was one of the best games I ever played. The graphic was actually for Nethack, a more modern game, but I followed the trail of clues and finally managed to down load a copy of Rogue. As soon as I loaded it up the memories came flooding back. My father used to work for Mountain Bell, one of the 'Baby Bells' born out of the Bell anti-trust breakup. Back then the entire computer system was, of course, the old orange screen unix terminals. When we had off from school, my father would take my siblings and I to work with him. Then, to keep us out of his hair, he would stick us on one of those terminals and load up Rogue, teach us to play, then let us roam free through the Dungeons of Doom. I must have been as young as three or four when I first became entranced and passed an eight hour day doing nothing but playing Rogue. Several years later, he managed to bring home an old Tandy with the DOS version of the game on it. He and I would sit for hours on the weekends or after dinner watching each other play, trying to beat our records. Years later, I'm still gaming.... I worked ten or twelve hour days all summer so I could afford my own gaming computer. I now credit Rogue with getting me hooked on gaming, and to this day I have yet to find another game with such addictive game play. Or another game my father can still beat me at. He always seemed to get one level farther than I!!

Steve Abbott
Denver, CO

Greetings Rogueophiles!

Picking up my first new computer in 10 years opened up whole new worlds for me to conquer. I have a 1.33 GHz Tbird, 568 MB DDR-SDRAM, a GE Force 3... all the bells and whistles. Funny how the only thing I've done with all this power was set up Rogue! Seeing how my last computer would spit out the Rogue disk when I tried to play it, I feel that the $1,000+ I layed down for this new machine was well worth it.

I've just read over all these letters claiming that the game is beatable. Can this be true? I considered myself "El Jefe Grande" of the game, but level 22 is the deepest I've ever seen. Reading the winning adventures has given my life new purpose. There is a light at the end of the dungen! I can't write any more, Rogue is calling!

Daniel: Encountered a Troll on level 16 who, despite my best efforts to make friends, proceded to rob me not only of life, but also of my gold and dignity.

The first time I heard about Rogue was back in 1987, when I got my first computer. I never played then, it because none of my friends knew anything about it and I couldn't get it in the shops that sold C-64 games.

You may ask, "How did you know about it then?" Well, I read about it in an old computer magazine where it was praised as one of the best adventure games ever conceived. In spite of the then already dated graphics it contained a degree of playability that many games could only dream about. The article intrigued me and I tried to hunt the game down but I simply couldn't find it anywhere. Maybe I should add that I live in Denmark, and at that time many computer games simply didn't reach the Danish market.

After a long search I finally gave up and concentrated on other games. Years went by and in the spring of 1999 I got my first PC. One evening I was over at a friends house and I surfed a bit on the net. Then suddenly I stumbled across a site called The Abandonware Ring, which contained hundreds of links to abandonware sites. I realized that on these sites I could download all kinds of old games in all formats for free without worrying about any legal issues. Then it dawned upon me that there actually was the possibility of getting my hands on Rogue after all these years. And lo and behold, on the very first site I popped into there was Rogue in a PC-Dos version. I immediately downloaded it and started to play.

The amazing thing was : I wasn't a bit disappointed. Even though I was used to games like Panzer General, Quake, Diablo, Age of Empires, Might & Magic 6 and the like, this tiny, little (and very old) game was quite enjoyable. In fact I consider it as one of the best games I ever played, because its simplicity and straightforwardnes. Many games today hide behind georgeous 3D graphics and ultimate surround sound but fail to capture the essence of a really good game : It has to have long-time appeal, the thing that make you come back time and again looking after "just one more game". Rogue has retained that appeal after nearly two decades. And I in my opinion, that is what a really, really, really good game is all about.

Long live Rogue.

Hans Peter Bak, 26 year old student from Denmark.

Dear Sir,

I live in Argentina, and have 39 years old. Rogue was (and will be) the first Rolegame ever. Near 1988 a friend of Mine (Pablo Belardini) brought this version to me. At least 4 games more (one of them Nethack other Moria). We were (are) still adicts to Rolegames!!! (our wifes used to hate us!). I used to play the game in an old "Amqute" (8088 10Mb Hard disk, 704K Ram) and had great times.

Now I play Rogue in My Palm V, Btw they are "Irogue" and "Pocket Rogue" the more stable versions I found.

Kind Regards

Ruben Arias

I was always an avid PC gamer, and always looked for classics to play instead of the new games of the time. In 1996 a friend of mine at a Summer camp told me about Omega. As soon as I got home I downloaded and played it. I was entranced. I soon played other Rogue-like games. They were the ultimate in Computer Gaming experiences. It was roughly a week and a half ago that I decided to finally play the original. Rogue.

Rogue is not a game for the weak or impatient. It has taught me many valuable lessons about life (don't run up and attack the Fs, shoot them from far away!). And I don't care if my senior year of high school will be plagued by suffering grades, I am going to get that godforsaken amulet. I've already gotten to the 18th floor, now it's just a matter of practice. And luck.

I don't care that Diablo II is on my hard drive, I'm too busy playing Rogue instead.

Sam Kaplan

I discovered Rogue when I was nine and my father was stationed at the Naval Postgraduate in Monterey, CA and working towards his Masters in Comp. Sci. I was instantly addicted and still have a copy on disk that I play from time to time. I think part of the appeal of rogue (even today) is analogous to the differences between reading a book and seeing a movie. Today's games and graphics leave nothing to the imagination. Rogue's enemies, on the other hand, are much more chilling because they spring to life in the player's mind, as opposed to the computer screen. To this day, I still have mental images of what some of these monsters look(ed ) like. Since Return of the Jedi was released at about the same time I discovered Rogue, some of my monster's are Star Wars characters. Hobgoblins are Gammorean guards. (Those big green guys that guard Jabba's palace.) Trolls look like the Rancor monster. (The big monster in the pit that almost ate Luke in Jabba's palace.) Away from movie influences, I always felt that a Jabberwock looked like a giant praying mantis. Anyway, I think its interesting in how different people envision the monsters.

For the record, I have never beaten the game. The best weapon I've ever had was a +2+6 two-handed sword of dragon slaying. The strongest I have ever been was 26. (I always thought of strength as a function of your arm girth. Arnold Schwarzenegger at his biggest had 21 inch arms. Hence, his strength would have been 21. Needless to say, I was one big dude walking around the dungeon, killing trolls in one hit!) One time, at the Naval Postgraduate School, I found a scroll that offered a 'boon of genocide'. I have never found anything like it since. I picked Umber Hulks as the monster I wanted wiped out. It didn't help me but I will never forget it.

Thanks for all the great memories and a great game!

Sincerely,

Chris Begley
cbegley@pacel.com

I'd like to begin by saying that the mere existence of this site makes me want to weep with joy. There are others! I'm not alone. *sniffle* It's magnificent! Okay now I'd love to say Rogue has this nostaglia thing going in my brain...but it doesn't. I still actively, obsessivly and loyaly play Rogue. We own a Tandy something or other and the game works perfectly. I sit there for hours on end getting my butt kicked by The Letter People. Thrilled by useful wands, and gawking at the annoying "wand of nothing"...well maybe I can just club the Troll to death with it. No? I'm dead? Okay. And the various ways of dying. Delightful. I'd have +11 armor, and like 4 polymorph wands...life was good...then I'd die from hunger. Hahahahahahahahahaha*sob* It's not fair! Oh and I once died from a fall. I had beaten a Troll for the first time and had like 2 hits or something. I was just going to rest but I moved one over. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH *splat* I'm a gooey mess on the dungeon floor. Oh and what the &%#@ does the wand of cancellion do? Anything useful? At all? I've never found a use for it. Course every once in a while I wished there was a weapon called machine gun. "You blow many gaping holes in the griffin" "You have defeated the griffin" "The Letter People declare you their Queen" And then I realize that weapon doesn't exist and if I try to hit the Griffin it'll simply laugh in that deranged voice I hear in my head and bash my little skull in. Okay it's very late and I'm starting to blabber..okay granted I've been blabbering this whole time. Oh look a potion! "That's not a potion! It's a xerroc" Rest in Peace Ricia killed by a xerroc.

-Ricia who was mugged by a Leperchaun and a Nymph on the way here.

I believe that there were classes at the University of Pennsylvania from 1984-1986, but I cannot say for sure. I was enrolled and did not attend very many of them, for I had discovered Rogue.

There is only one cure: To win. After a mere several thousand games, I conquered Rogue. My friends were in awe. No saves? Not possible! But it was. Victory at last. Few understand the thrill of victory. The worst agony of defeat was a loss on level 17 -- on the way back up (ouch!).

Now, many years later, I am a lawyer, married. Today, I have installed Rogue on the computer. Clients? Wife? Food? I'll be back with you, as soon as I win again. I think I have a meeting tomorrow, but can I really meet with a bunch of lawyers when 26 letters call to me? Come here, little Jabberwock. I'm turning you into a Kestral....

--JRM

sitting at my office computer in sheer boredom the day before thanksgiving, a word flashed across my brain that brought me back almost 16 years. "ROGUE". i typed it into the yahoo screen, and then stumbled upon your site. before i could read any of the testimonials, i had to play a quick game. it was like trying to ride a bike 16 years later. my skills were rusty....i think i died on level 6 killed by an H. the joy of seeing that little symbol move around those boxes!

my fondest memory of rogue was with my next door neighbor. he was the owner of a tandy computer, and his father purchased the game for him. i would spend countless hours in their basement, hacking my way through levels trying to find the amulet. any time i was feeling good about my chances or had advanced to a level beyond 15 or so....i would yell to my friend. he would come barreling down the stairs, we'd assess our chances and then i would proceed to have my life taken in ways i never could imagine. reading these stories brings back so many memories that i could write for pages. but in a "rogue-like" manner, i'll keep it simple and leave it up to your imagination. thank you for creating a game that i will most definitely teach my children when they are old enough to play.

Brendan (& my old neighbor Neil)

Ahhh, what a trip down memory lane.... I was a student at Berkeley in the early 80's studying computer science as well as any classes I could trade punch-card registration forms with. I recall many evenings spent in the basement of Evans Hall (the math/computer building as I recall), waiting for a terminal to become free.

There were several occasions when there would be people taking turns reserving a rogue game in progress while the player caught some sleep on the vinyl couch nearby. Who knew, at the time, that those days playing rogue would create such favorable memories. Thanks for all the great work and inspiration that is the classic Rogue!

Sincerely
Hari Boukis

Once upon a time I was a kid whose parents both worked at the RAND Corporation, the thinktank in Santa Monica CA. My brother and I spent a lot of time there, especially during vacations when RAND's terminals often substituted for camp or daycare. We played Adventure. We played "Snake." And we played Rogue. We played Rogue a lot. And then Dad got a terminal for our house with one of those old modems where you stuck the actual phone receiver into the darn thing and then it was Rogue late into the night too.

It was the early 80's. MTV was just beginning and Oingo Boingo and Missing Persons were so rad. I had never had much use for the word "quaff" before that time -- and not so much since. And I can still see in my mind those rooms mapping themselves out on the screen.

It was a d--n good time. Thanks for helping make a latchkey childhood way more entertaining.

Rebecca Hensler

When I was but a young lad of three in 1987, my father bought an IBM desktop, a wonder for me and my brother. Most likely the first game that I ever played was Rogue, or Rogue3, Dungeons of Doom, as it was titled.

My father had brought this masterpiece home on the original type of floppy disk, which my father had taken from the computers of the Chase Manhatten Bank and I began to play it, even before I was literate, and could read what all of those entertaining messages said. For many a time, my brother, my father and I tried to beat this seemingly impossible game. We knew of the fabled 'save' feature, but had never really figured out how to restore...we didn't dwell on it, I suppose. Eventually we forgot about it, mostly because that computer was having techincal problems. We assumed we had lost it forever.

Again, one day, my father brought home a computer, which the nice people at Chase Manhatten decided to give to him, because it was a 'useless piece of crap that nobody wanted.' It had dos, and its very own copy of Rogue, which seemed to run wild through the networks of Chase. Again, with the fighting of various letters, zapping with pieces of wood and Zinc!! It was heaven, and the sole purpose of that little computer was to Play Rogue. We eventually had to get rid of it, but not before putting it on a yellow 3.5 floppie, where it stayed, and was transferred to another, newer computer, and so forth.

To my present computer, a now middle aged Pentium 266, many games have gone into, Simcity 2000, Magic Carpet 2, Doom, Quake, Half Life, Xwing. Mostly good games. Yet I still yearned for Rogue every now and then, which is The True Game, and yet I couldn't find it. Yesterday I found that little Yellow floppie, my heart filled with happiness. Alas! It doesn't work. Even after 'fixing the bad sectors' with scandisk, and eliminating a disabled virus (god knows how all of that crap happened), it still didn't work! I nearly cried. I began my internet search at 8:30, although I thought it was futile, that nobody nowadays would know what Rogue was.

At 8:35 I had found this little collection of Rogue Pages, and downloaded the dos versioun, although slightly different, it still helf the perfection that is Rogue. I transefered the score file, and still our "Alex, killed on level 17 by a Venus Flytrap" "Nick, killed by a troll on level 15", "Joe, Killed by a Wraith on level 16", and our most infamous "Maxx (my father's notorious pseudonym) Killed by and Ur-vile on level 18" remains. A legacy to this game. Over 12 years of Rogue, and we only made it to 18. But so what? Maybe I'll eventually get to that Dam' Amulet, in all of its Anc-Character Glory. But the fact that there's web pages nowadays on this marvel that fit on the original floppy disk, makes me overjoyed. I love it, and have started playing again, and don't regret missing the hours and hours of life I spent on rogue.

Rogue was the first game I'd ever played. It remains to be the best, the most fun, entertaining, exciting, and original yet. Let it live forever

~joe
shoelessjoe@erols.com

This is more of a commemoration, than an actual Song, so I apologize in advance if the subject of this message fooled you... Anyway, Even though I wasn't technically a part of the early 80s'(I'm 16 today), my mother did take a BASIC computer programming course in college(I think). After getting an "A+", her teacher gave her a great copy of Rogue as a parting gift. My Mom was hooked, instantly(Her teacher was a real Rogue nut; apparently, he had hacked the program and altered it to start himself out with 999 hp, and he still lost). When I was old enough to understand that the big gray box on the desk was a computer, my Mom introduced me to Rogue at around age 7, and thus made it a large part of my childhood, as it was the first computer game I ever played(now I'm a full-blown, Java/C/Basic program writing geek). I remember the countless hours I spent trying in vain to get that elusive Amulet of Yendor; It became a lot like Ponce De Leon searching for the fountain of youth(Still haven't gotten past level 15 to this day). I remember times when the mysterious effects of the scrolls freaked me out while playing at night(you hear a growling noise right next to you...whoa!), and countless games in which I was doing just awsome, with 2 good rings, a load o' food, pumped weapons/armor, etc. only to have everything come crashing down when I use a wand of polymorph out of boredom on a bat and have it turn into a Dragon and kick my butt. I still play Rogue to this day, and I am still not very good(I can never remember what the heck the "laughing" scroll does...), but I want you to know that you have crafted an awsome game, and I commend you for it. Those "D"s are real killers.

Astantax@aol.com

When I was about five years old...maybe six...between 1980 and 1982, anyway...my father bought a computer. And there was a game on it--a wonderful game--an ADDICTIVE game--a game full of demonic killer Gs and irksome Ts and monstrous As. A game which had potions to identify, scrolls to read, dungeons to explore, and wands to zap. A game which...took over my young life, and turned me into a whacking great honking nerd, doomed to years of playing AD&D and making BBSes.

At some point in the late eighties, things changed. I got a life. I got a job with more responsibility attached than mowing lawns and shovelling driveways. I got contact lenses instead of glasses, and cut AD&D back to one game a week. And I stopped thinking boys were icky. My nights were filled with studying and socializing instead of manic H-killing, and I forgot about my eternal quest to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor.

Computers came and computers went. 1991 was ushered in Rogue-free. I went to university. Things were gray and boring. I studied and studied. I worked and worked. I played no AD&D at all, and had no life. And then...a friend of mine started reminiscing, one evening, over Plato and coffee, about the days he used to spend playing a game called Rogue. Memory stirred. We shared stories of humiliating defeats at the hands of Us. I never did like those ur-viles. And we got on the Net, frantically digging through FTP sites and newsgroups and primitive World Wide Web pages. We asked questions in the infant chat rooms at www.wbs.net. People thought we were nuts. At long last, we found someone who had it.

We spent the whole night hunched over my computer, tapping away at the keyboard...rooting for each other to die so that it could be our turn. We drank coffee, ate rubbishy ramen noodles, and took out our frustrations on ur-viles. It was heaven. It was bliss!

And years later, I still play Rogue. I go through Rogue phases. Sometimes, I'll only play one game a month. Others, I'll sit around for hours, playing game after game.

I've never found the Amulet of Yendor, though. I am beginning to doubt its existence. I have won several other Rogue-like games, including Angband and MAG...but Rogue has been impenetrable. The Dungeons of Doom have claimed my soul upon countless occasions. I have taken to calling my characters "Oh, $#!+! I was"...so that they appear as "Oh $#!+! I was killed by a griffin on level 21" on the Guildmaster's Hall of Fame.

Thank God for Rogue. It keeps a poor working girl happy.

--Rats
http://www.gorblimey.com/

Christine Colby
Madison, Wisconsin

Well one day, we were staying over at his house and his father brought out a very old looking machine, a tandy - commodore - or something I can't remember what it was, but it had a tiny mono screen and a keyboard that clipped onto the top and it looked like a briefcase when pakced up. Well we opened it up and started looking at some games my friend remembers playing when he was in the early eighties. There it was we discovered the treasure of Rogue. There were other games, like Zork and Sopwith but this is the one that caught our attention. There were many nights we stayed up taking turns, and betting who could make it farther. Never having the same adventure twice, and even with 5-6 people spending the night everyone was looking over our friends shoulders, waiting for their turn and fearing/hoping for the appearence of a "T" or "D" that meant death/and the next person's turn.

Eventually we had an idea, we got a 525" floppy disk out, copied it over to my best friends 486 and discovered something wonderful. Color! The blue potions, scrolls, staffs, and rings. That smiling yellow face, green floors, brown walls, and red food. And all those white baddies. There were more nights than I can count that we stayed up, plugging in the old mono briefcase computer in the same room as his 486 and both playing the night away.

Well, that was about 1992, and 7 years later we are both freshman going to Seattle Pacific University and studying Computer Science. Over Spring Break this year, my best friend did something I will never thank him enough for - he brought us Rogue from Salem, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. In the years past I changed, roleplayed less, studied more, made new friends, played new games, and almost forgot about Rogue. But one thing never changed, Rogue is the most interesting, ever-changing, always replayable, never boring, imaginitive game out there. I once found the Ankh but didn't know about going up stairs at the time. That is why Rogue holds my appeal, I have yet to meet a person to beat it, and someday I want to be that person. Though no one else may know what Rogue is around here, or understand how much this means to me, but I will know.

-Brad Webster

Although we discovered the Epyx pc version (which soon was corrupted and not to be replaced) during a winter break, my rogue days have been over for 12 years.

Discovering the palm pilot version of rogue this week has brought back many fond memories -- I can't wait to teach it to my daughter!

- Arn mac Clugh

Erin

I just wanted to thank you guys for rogue. Its been a big part of my life for a while now.

I guess I first started playing rogue around 1980 or so. Must have been when the game first appeared. Before that, I had played through alot of other UNIX games - adventure, zork, aardvark (anyone remember that great one?), snake (the first curses game), t4c (the first MUD) of course wumpus and trek. I had used a UNIX mainframe since I was at least 4, and games were a big part of it. I've seen all the early ones come and go. Rogue was a new game that took me through high school and beyond. I still remember waiting unitl the mysterious "buisness hours" ended at 5:30, so I could log in and play.

An interesting tidbit - we got our first terminal with a screen (HP2621!) at home right around when I found rogue. I still remember getting in trouble trying to play it on a printer-terminal because I used up too much paper...

My first programming experiences were by obtaining a source code for rogue and modifying it. I moved on to moria, larn, nethack, etc., but always played a quick game of rogue here and there. The simplicity was refreshing, and it was a great channeling point for thought. Now I'm 30, have a blazing PC with amazing graphics, and I still scam FTP sites for the old rogue-likes.

Just wanted to let you guys know you are appreciated.

Corey Thompson
(yes, there's a relation to Ken...)

I've been sort of an amateur Rogue addict since a friend showed it to me late eighties, early nineties. I've played it for hours on XT pc's, 286, 386 and even today on my brand new Pentium II 266. It still works. And I still look for my special two-handed sword that beats the trolls and brings me to the amulet of yendor on level 26. I've found the amulet once, after an awfull lot of saving and restoring. It wasn't easy and I don't know if I will the patience again, but I keep trying.

I was very pleased to read your story on internet. I've never tried to find anything on Rogue on the net before, but today I was in a cheating mood. Never thought of finding anything from the designers though...

It must be a wonderfull feeling to know that "your" game is played by so many people all over the world (even today), and that it sort of changed "the nature" of computer gaming. I know I would like that!

Thank you for your contribution, on the game as well on the net. It brought me hours of fun, and hours of lack of sleep. Today I'm a little more reponsible and I don't stay awake all night anymore, trying to beat the trolls on level 16.

Hans Teunis
The Netherlands

I was first introduced to Rogue around 1981-1982 when I attended (i.e., seriously goofed-off at) Cal-State University in Fullerton, California; it was on the school's UNIX system. I was instantly addicted and, along with a dozen other study-challenged students, we seriously slowed down the computer system's performance by playing Rogue all hours of the day...to the point where we were limited to playing during late evening/night hours only. On one system or another since then, I've been playing Rogue.

Seventeen years later, I _still_ haven't secured the Amulet! :S The deepest I've ever gotten was Level 20 before I wiped out by one of the nasties down there. (Note: Throwing or wielding food as a weapon is a poor offense and defense, but is the great, last act of defiance.) What I'd do for some good strategies to win...PLEASE SEND THEM!

Feel free to write!
Rich, WF7A
wf7a@hotmail.com

I began playing Rogue in at the University of Melbourne thanks to a friend of mine who was doing a PhD in Computer Science way back in 1985. (He was enrolled in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science was at that time had 2 lecturers. Now Computer Science has its own building!)

I originally played almost every day & night for 6 months on the Unix system until a friend came up with a MAC version called Scalliwag which I played for literally hours on end as well (the longest session was for 45 hours), and later I found Haque v7.0. I still have the Scalliwag version on my old MacPlus and even with Quake II, Diablo, Starcraft, etc. I often have a couple of games every month or so. BTW, I can touch type at about 50 words/minute and when people ask where I learnt to type, I tell them "By playing Rogue and Scalliwag for hours on end!"

Rogue was/is definitely more than a game, it was a 'sub-culture' for an entire generation of early computer buffs, and companies who make their money from Doom and Diablo-esque games owe a heck of lot to you guys. Most of their programmers probably played Rogue during University and developed their passion for such games then!

Murray

I was first introduced to Rogue in 1989. The guy who lived across the hall in my freshman dorm had a copy his brother gave him 2 years earlier. Within the first week of school, my entire freshman hall was addicted. Everyone wanted to play all the time. It got so bad that the guy who lived across the hall erased the game from his computer so no one could bug him.

Seven years later, in 1996, I got my first PC and began exploring the internet. I don't know what made me think of it, but I began searching for Rogue. I finally came across someone in a chat room who told me about EPYX. I tracked down the new owner of the company and somehow got them to send me a copy on a 5.25" floppy.

Since that time I have been playing it consistantly and still haven't won. I found the ahnk 3 times, but have never gotton out of the dungeon alive. Has anyone ever won this game? I enjoy the game more than anything out there today and will continue to play. For some reason, I hope I never win. Thank you for creating such an enjoyable program. Too bad they aren't all like that nowadays.

Run Smoke

I found your page through an Infoseek search; what memories I have of sitting up all night in the Terminal Ward at Reed, Roguing away the hours when I should have been studying! I'm sorry to say that Rogue was so attractive that I ended up without a college degree. Well, to be fair, it wasn't *all* Rogue. If I'd had any sense I would have figured out that there was money to be made playing with computers, but, well, it was 1984 and we were just beginning to understand that, eventually, *everyone* would have an enormously powerful tan box on the desk, and it would need *stuff* to make it fun to use.

Now I'm a mom of a kindergartner, and one day I'll introduce him to Rogue--but probably not until after he actually graduates from college. Maybe after grad school; I don't know.

Anyhow, thanks for the great memories; diploma or no, college wouldn't have been nearly as much fun without marathon Rogue sessions!

--Monica

Finding Rogue on the web brings back fond memories of playing it in my friend's basement during the summers of my youth. I must have been about ten or so, which sets these memories in about the mid-80s. We would play for hours as we ate Pop-Ice after Pop-Ice. His basement was cool and a little damp, and I can still remember the whole experience very well.

Mike

Thanks for being a part of the team that developed the best of all computer games, Rogue. Sometime in the early 80s, Rogue found it's way onto the University of Texas Astronomy Department's VAX. I was a systems programmer at the time, and became hopelessly addicted to the game. My wife and I would eat supper at the Texas Chili Parlor on Friday nights, then retire to the Astronomy Department's computer lab to play Rogue all night. The game was removed from the VAX when it was discovered that 80% of the system resources were being used by the game. Astronomers trying to do stellar interiors were waiting endlessly because everybody else was doing battle with a "U" (Umber Hulk) deep in the dungeon.

After suffering through years of withdrawal, I found a copy of the game for an Atari 520/1040 computer. I immediately purchased an Atari 520, and continue to play the game to this day. I just finished a game a few minutes ago (killed on level 19 by a Griffin).

I should point out that even after thousands of games, I have NEVER found that #%&$#%^$#$% amulet. The VAX game usually ended soon after the first Umber Hulk showed up, and my Atari game ends soon after a Griffin shows up. Maybe someday......

Anyway, thats my story. Thanks again for a GREAT game. I hope my Atari never quits!

tom montemayor

We also ported the Termlib library from V7 to V6. (There was this neat program called "vi" that we wanted on V6.) I remember getting addicted to "snake". Well Rogue was not far behind. We had Rogue 3.6 on the system and the battle was on. I remember dialing up (300 baud) and playing many late evening games. A black screen with green characters reminds me of those fun days.

I once "rogue"d a system to death. I had noticed that once in a while in 3.6 the game would start up with more strength (18 instead of 16?). Trying to beat the game, I figured I would play games that only started with that advantage. Repeating starting up and exiting until the higher strength came up became a big pain, since its probability was pretty low. So I wrote a "getgame" program. It would fork off a rogue process after playing with pipes and file descriptors so I could have code scan the rogue output (piped input to "getgame"), parsing the incoming terminal escapes sequenced output for the strength string. I remember forcing the TERM (TERMCAP?) environment variable to specifically define my simple virtual terminal so I *knew* what escape sequences I would have to interpret. Once it found a game, it signaled it with a hang-up so rogue would save itself.

Anyway I originally forgot to "wait()" for the process to die, so my program would create a rogue process and scan the output. Not finding the Str(18) in the appropriate place it would start up another rogue program. It would repeatedly fire up rogue processes until it found a strength of 18. Or... until it used all the system memory, filled up the swap space and panicked the system, crashing it much to my embarrassment (for my programming and playing blunder) and the annoyance of the researchers.

The only thing that saved my @$$ was it hit a bug in our kernel that my boss thought he had fixed. He had added specific code so the system wouldn't panic in this situation (Remember this was the old V6). He wanted me to keep my program around in that fashion so he could fix the problem and retest the fix. PPPhheeeewwwww.

My "getgame" later evolved into more intelligence for looking for specific types of magic (rings, weapons) or monsters in the first room. It didn't try to move the character any. But since it understood the terminal escape sequences it made the screen layout in memory (24x80) and looked for a room, then based on my command line arguments (ring count, armor count, monster count (lots of fun!!!), ...) it would stop searching and save the game. Believe it or not this was before I had heard of Rogomatic and probably mostly before Rogomatic.

I've beaten 3.6, 5.2 and 5.3. (And I didn't even use the arrow bug in 3.6! :-)).

I had a few strategies, one of which was "published" in a rogue newsletter a long while back. It was a strategy on how to kill Leprechauns and not lose gold but I don't think this is the forum for that.

Feel free to write me and happy rogueing...

Mike
mlaman@home.com

I started playing Rogue back in 1984 in Oberlin College, Oberlin Ohio. Many nights were spent in the computer lab on the VAX 750 staring at the green monochrome monitor trying to get that amulet. I was very happy to fine a DOS version on the web about two years ago, I've now introduced Rogue to a whole new generation. I still have never found the amulet but I still enjoy a few rounds of hacking and running down through the levels.

Dan Widmann
SF, CA

I still get a charge out of the names -- quaggas, emus, leprechauns, plaid potions...signs of a fertile mind.

paul

John Finley
NYC

josh agarrado

Vincent Nunes
Brooklyn, NY
vinman13@juno.com

And then,just last night,I decide to find rogue again.I downloaded a version that would work on my Amiga 1200,and found the sources.I'm now in the process of making a Graphical front-end for the Amiga version of Rogue.A game with such great gameplay deserves to be played on anything but an ascii screen.... :)

Chris

Later a friend of mine bought an Atari 1040 and a copy of rogue. I would then blow weekends away playing Rogue with nifty "icon" sized letters and stuff.

When I got out of highschool, I bought myself a PC. First game? Rogue.

I still have my copy kicking around. Heck, I even tried most of the other rogue-like games and I keep coming back.... It's kinda like Adventure for the 2600, but WAY cooler....

Now, if only Diablo had 27+ levels, Xerox's and other such rogue-like things. =)

-Bob

rogue was such a phenomenal game, it gave the player a certain level of creative control. i just loved to name my potions and scrolls - i'm remembering a potion that i would call "mango tango yummy yummy," because it supposedly tasted like mango. my favorite thing to find was rings. i would usually use identifying scrolls to figure out what powers the ring had, but sometimes i would just recklessly put the ring on. sorry was i, the times i ended up stumbling around in total darkness because of a cursed ring. i remember feeling "refreshed" after quaffing certain potions, other potions made one "suddenly weak." wands were unusual finds. i remember the time i found a wand that would shoot lightning bolts, lighting up unlit rooms. once i got overzealous with just such a wand and KILLED myself (!@#$%!!) by having a bolt boomerang back at me. an accidental suicide, if you will.

i was a sensitive kid, and i could NEVER put my own name as the player. i couldn't handle to see my real name on that tombstone after my miserable defeat at the game's end! i would always make up names silly names: "Welcome 'doofus,' to the Dungeons of Doom!"

when i first started playing, i would get killed by "C's" a lot. i was very into mythology, so centaurs -relatively - did not scare me. as i progressed, there were other letters that would literally terrify me - the dreaded "W" or the fierce "T's." i would get so nervous seeing them flaunt their upper-case countenances ... i can't tell you how many times i would lose a game to a damned troll! one could never be too cocky though, rogue was an ego-checker. just when you thought you were the head guildmaster, you'd start a new game and get taken out by a hobgoblin or something. go figure. one of the coolest things in rogue was going into some room and finding it wall-to-wall with letters/monsters. then you'd have to kill off every one, one at a time, to get inside. naturally, it would be loaded with treasure!

i am proud to say i did ONCE discover the amulet of yendor. it was an ankh, delightful to see in its uniqueness.

i feel we roguesters were p.c. pioneers, a real genre of people. we had common interests: dungeons and dragons, choose-your-own-adventure novels, chess, ramen noodles with tamari. we knew (and STILL know!) star wars lines by heart "i have never seen a more wretched hive of scum and villainy..." we connected on early bbs's, we were friends. rogue was an archetypal 80's experience. one time i went out with someone and we laughed and laughed reminiscing over rogue. we spent all night trying to remember the monster's names (A is for aquator, B is for bat...). it was a part of our lives!

at any rate, this rogue player turned on to the grateful dead (i'll bet phil played rogue) and eventually became a deeply religious jew. there is life after the dungeons of doom, complete with more memory and better graphics. still, my heart yearns for the simpler days when fun was a smiley face hero on a brown and orange screen.

Yitzchok & Pnina