Dunzhin

Warrior of Ras: Volume I - Dunzhin is a fantasy role-playing video game developed by Med Systems Software. The game was released on the TRS-80 in 1982, then ported to the Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, and Commodore 64. A self-booting IBM PC port added digitized speech.

Dunzhin
Designer(s)Randall Don Masteller[1]
SeriesWarrior of Ras
Platform(s)TRS-80, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, IBM PC
Release1982: TRS-80, Apple, Atari, IBM PC
1983: C64
Genre(s)Role-playing
Mode(s)Single-player

Gameplay

The player explores a new, randomly generated dungeon for each adventure. The player encounters monsters and human enemies, and experience points are awarded based on the disparity between the character's and the monster's statistics. The players' primary goal is the recovery of a treasure hidden on the deepest level which is guarded by a particularly effective team of monsters.[2]

Development

The IBM PC port performs all disk access via IN/OUT instructions to the floppy controller instead of using the BIOS (this was done both to improve performance and as a copy protection). It also was not completely rewritten from the ground up, but instead contained the original Z80 code from the TRS-80 with an interpreter to convert it to x86 assembly language.

Reception

Dunzhin was reviewed in Dragon magazine #71 by John Warren. The reviewer noted that while this game was able to accept more complex commands than other games of its time, the extra typing involved slowed the game down.[2] Describing Warriors of Ras as "yet another Dungeons-and-Dragons style game series", The Commodore 64 Home Companion wrote that Dunzhin "is the first—and easiest—in the series".[3]

References
  1. Hague, James. "The Giant List of Classic Game Programmers".
  2. Warren, John (March 1983). "Dunzhin Cures Terminal Boredom". Dragon (71): 70–72.
  3. Beekman (1984). "Screenplay Software (HesWare)". The Commodore 64 Home Companion. p. 173. Retrieved August 19, 2016.
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