RPG Classic Akalabeth Joins GOG as Free Download

[StewShearerOld]

RPG Classic Akalabeth Joins GOG as Free Download

GOG customers can now pick up Richard Garriott's debut role-playing game for free.

The holiday season can be a great time of the year for gamers. Between digital distributors launching huge sales and people just generally feeling more charitable, it's not uncommon to for video game fans to wind up with a stack of new titles when the New Year hits. That in mind, if you're interested in a retro classic to cap off your 2014 collection, you might want to swing over to GOG where, earlier this week, the site added a new free title to its catalog.

The new game is the RPG classic <a href=http://www.gog.com/game/akalabeth_world_of_doom>Akalabeth: World of Doom. Originally launched in 1980, Akalabeth was the first commercial release from famed game developer Richard Garriott. Often referred to as Ultima 0, it was one of the earliest PC role-playing games and served, in many ways, as a testing ground for the mechanics that would later appear in the mainline Ultima series. The game itself tasks the player with a quest to prove themselves to the ever-demanding Lord British.

Akalabeth is the fourth game by Garriott to be released as a free product at GOG. The site also offers <a href=http://www.gog.com/game/ultima_4>Ultima IV, <a href=http://www.gog.com/game/worlds_of_ultima_the_savage_empire>Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire and <a href=http://www.gog.com/game/ultima_worlds_of_adventure_2_martian_dreams>Ultima Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams as free downloads for registered customers. Give them a try if you're somehow entering 2015 without any new games to play. I can't speak personally for Akalabeth (yet), but I can say that <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/130880-Good-Old-Reviews-Ultima-IV>Ultima IV is still worth investing time in.

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Source: <a href=http://www.gog.com/news/free_release_akalabeth>GOG


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[Fat Hippo]

"You are being attacked by a giant rat"

What a fucking surprise. It is now 2014, 34 years after the release of this game, and really not much has changed. I wouldn't be surprised if my great-grandkids will still be killing giant rats. Sure, they'll be jacked into the newfangled cybernet by way of their fancy brain-implants, but in the end, they will just be killing shinier giant rats.

 

[kat-pottz]

what monster is the 8th picture supposed to be?

 

[A.K.B.]

I'd like to believe that somewhere it exists...
Around this ever reaching blue globe....
Somewhere....
someone....
within the confines of our home named earth......
An IDIOT whom would have a whale at this game...
Only to think that the textures aren't loading ~

 

[Micah Weil]

what monster is the 8th picture supposed to be?

It's either a thief or a wraith. I can't remember; it's been a decade or two since I tried to make that game work...

 

[Robert Kalmar]

"You are being attacked by a giant rat"

What a fucking surprise. It is now 2014, 34 years after the release of this game, and really not much has changed. I wouldn't be surprised if my great-grandkids will still be killing giant rats. Sure, they'll be jacked into the newfangled cybernet by way of their fancy brain-implants, but in the end, they will just be killing shinier giant rats.

Yeah, the only think that changed is that you don't need pen and paper to draw your own map. I hath started my quest without one and i hath starved to death in a dungeon. Our great grandkids probably can't play this game, because there aren't any tree on Mars.

 

[Reed Spacer]

I was nine years old when that came out.

My birth preceeded that of Pong.

I witnessed the wondrous birth of the arcade and the days when every game was a new one, and its sad death and seeing every game being the same.

I saw pinball machine become glorious work of art before dying out.

But through those years I'd also seen the computer go from a glorified calculator to the beautiful monsters they are today.

I lived in a world with no internet.

But I had a front seat as the age of the computer game was born.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

"You are being attacked by a giant rat"

What a fucking surprise. It is now 2014, 34 years after the release of this game, and really not much has changed. I wouldn't be surprised if my great-grandkids will still be killing giant rats. Sure, they'll be jacked into the newfangled cybernet by way of their fancy brain-implants, but in the end, they will just be killing shinier giant rats.

To be fair, rats of the dire nature were a mainstay of low-level D&D gaming so really its been more than 34 years of vermin extermination as an RPG staple...

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

I was nine years old when that came out.

My birth preceeded that of Pong.

I witnessed the wondrous birth of the arcade and the days when every game was a new one, and its sad death and seeing every game being the same.

I saw pinball machine become glorious work of art before dying out.

But through those years I'd also seen the computer go from a glorified calculator to the beautiful monsters they are today.

I lived in a world with no internet.

But I had a front seat as the age of the computer game was born.

Man, and I thought I was an old gamer at the ripe old age of 31...

 

[Reed Spacer]

I was nine years old when that came out.

My birth preceeded that of Pong.

I witnessed the wondrous birth of the arcade and the days when every game was a new one, and its sad death and seeing every game being the same.

I saw pinball machine become glorious work of art before dying out.

But through those years I'd also seen the computer go from a glorified calculator to the beautiful monsters they are today.

I lived in a world with no internet.

But I had a front seat as the age of the computer game was born.

Man, and I thought I was an old gamer at the ripe old age of 31...

There's always someone older.

I'm pretty much as old as the history of video games as a whole.

 

[Basement Cat]

OMG!!! I lived for this game back in the day!!!

It's Christmas in....December?

How timely!

 

[sXeth]

The graphics look like they were done with an etch a sketch

They sort of were, though a graphing calculator would be more apt. Coding graphics back then was making equations to draw lines for you.The Spoony Experiment had a good interview with Garriott about making this one and the earlier ultimas.

 

[Micah Weil]

what monster is the 8th picture supposed to be?

It's either a thief or a wraith. I can't remember; it's been a decade or two since I tried to make that game work...

It's a Thief. Just click the picture to see the full thing.

I think it depends on how deep into the dungeon you're in. Ugh...gonna have to dig out my Ultima Collection disk again. ><

 

[Alcamonic]

I was nine years old when that came out.

My birth preceeded that of Pong.

I witnessed the wondrous birth of the arcade and the days when every game was a new one, and its sad death and seeing every game being the same.

I saw pinball machine become glorious work of art before dying out.

But through those years I'd also seen the computer go from a glorified calculator to the beautiful monsters they are today.

I lived in a world with no internet.

But I had a front seat as the age of the computer game was born.

Heresy!

No human could possibly be that old and possess the ability to use the internet and modern digital devices!

 

[Reed Spacer]

I was nine years old when that came out.

My birth preceeded that of Pong.

I witnessed the wondrous birth of the arcade and the days when every game was a new one, and its sad death and seeing every game being the same.

I saw pinball machine become glorious work of art before dying out.

But through those years I'd also seen the computer go from a glorified calculator to the beautiful monsters they are today.

I lived in a world with no internet.

But I had a front seat as the age of the computer game was born.

Heresy!

No human could possibly be that old and possess the ability to use the internet and modern digital devices!

Given the fact that today's devices appear to have been designed with the belief that the users are idiots, it's not hard to keep up.

It's almost insulting. I used to build computers.

 

[Ratty]

what monster is the 8th picture supposed to be?

It's either a thief or a wraith. I can't remember; it's been a decade or two since I tried to make that game work...

It's a Thief. Just click the picture to see the full thing.

I think it depends on how deep into the dungeon you're in. Ugh...gonna have to dig out my Ultima Collection disk again. ><

Or just make a gog account and download Akalabeth. If you don't have a Gog account you should get one. Gog treats their customers with much more respect than steam does, no DRM, fair pricing globally. And Gog has both the original and 1998 re-release versions of Akalabeth there, the re-release version coming as an extra. And hey I don't know if the Worlds of Ultima side games were on the Ultima collection or not, but they're free on Gog to!

captcha: no-brainer, a gog account is a no-brainer indeed captcha.