I remember the first computer my family ever had. It was an Apple IIc that my dad got with frequent flyer points. He had the choice between the computer and a trip to Hawaii. The Apple IIc was fun to play on. I didn’t have any games at the time but I used to type things into the prompt and the computer would say, “SYNTAX ERROR” quite often. The only gaming experience I had on the machine was when I borrowed my brother’s BASIC programming book and programmed a sample game called “Enemy.” It was a crosshair game where the player had to guess where his target is by typing in coordinates into the prompt. If you guessed wrong the little dot that you were trying to hit moved a bit and you had the chance to try again. I messed up some of the code, so when you hit the target it said something like, “Congra*&% $ou win!” But I was only 10 years old and I did my best.
Later, when I was about twelve, my Dad bought a UNIX based computer from a nice man in the neighborhood of Equestrian Estates. I don’t remember his name but the guy was a genius with computers and he retired at the age 30-ish. He was really nice and offered these computers for purchase to his neighbors for 100 dollars. I didn’t know how much the machine was worth but it had a nice monochrome monitor. The man even included a brief introduction of the early version of windows that was on the computer. (I can’t remember if it truly was called windows or not. All I remember is that I had to log into the computer via a prompt in the beginning and there were windows to tab through to navigate the interface.)
This computer came with a few games like mahjong and Othello but I was dying to try out new games. Then one day the man from the neighborhood called my parents and said that he was willing to let me come over and check out his super-computer towers. He must have heard from my parents that I enjoyed the computer. So I went over to his house and was blown away by how cool the architecture was. We lived in a semi-rural part of greater Chicago-Land and his house had wood beams that jutted out from the ceiling to form really interesting triangular shapes. When he took me to see his super-computers I was really impressed. They were the tall towers that you’d expect to see in an early 90’s movie. After telling me a bit about how he found his fortune in computers, he said, “Ok, do you want to have some new games.”
LARN Cavern Level 1
He handed me a bunch of 5.25 inch floppy disks filled with games on them and told me to have fun. After taking the disks home and installing the games I came across something quite special. It was a role-playing game called LARN. In this game you take control of your hero (that is represented on the screen by an ampersand “@” symbol). The game is about how you have to search the caverns of a land called LARN for a special potion in order to heal your daughter. The game is really fun. You level up your character by fighting monsters either by running into them and attacking, or by casting magic spells. The monsters are represented by letters that usually are the first letter of the monster name. So a ‘k’ is a “Kobold” and an ‘A’ is a “Giant Ant” – you get the picture. What makes the game fun is how you can interact with monsters and map objects in several ways. For example, you sit on a throne, you can pry gems from a throne or you can later in the game cast a spell called the sphere of annihilation and destroy a throne. Although doing the later is quite uncivilized. If you decide to pry gems from the throne you may attract the attention of a hostile ‘k’ or “Kobold King.” If you aren’t strong enough and lack the proper weapons and armor fighting the Kobold King can be disastrous and lead to your death.
Example of ANSI graphics used to create art
The spells that you get in the game are cool, and they look good on the ANSI graphics. For example, a lightning bolt looks like a tilde (~) inside a highlighted square. Magic missile is always a good spell to have.
Larn Town
The game has a town where you can visit the Weapons and Armor shop (called the DND store) and you can do things like go to school (at the College of Larn) or you can deposit your money in the bank and gain interest per time period.
Overall LARN is a great game that is semi-compatible with later versions of windows. It can crash for no reason sometimes but I recommend you try playing it anyway. Here’s a link to a downloadable version of LARN. I recommend that you try running the dos version of LARN in your DOS promt (command prompt in start/accessories). It seems to crash less often. The download is free and hope you try this old-school yet fun game! doing the later is quite uncivilized. If you decide to pry gems from the throne you may attract t