Rogue was one of the first computer games to rely on ASCII graphics, that is, text and simple lines arranged to form a very simple map of a dungeon in which a capital R might represent a deranged orc or a pile of treasure. Temple of Apshai is a descendent of Rogue, an even more difficult game that I never played in my youth.
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A web search for Temple of Apshai reveals a fact that I had forgotten-the manual actually listed text descriptions for each room in the dungeon, and you were expected to look them up and read them as your virtual representative entered each screen. Temple of Apshai in particular remained in my memory-it was a typical 1980s role-playing game, in that it had been invented by engineers, was brutally difficult, and featured primitive graphics. The other games that came with the PCjr were not so kind. I played Donald Duck’s Playground frequently because its bright, occasionally blurry graphics gave me a vague idea of what was going on. Building this playground was the point of the game. The only remaining stores sold playground equipment that Huey, Dewey and Louie could use at a horrible, pixilated playground outside of town. Each task earned a pittance that Donald could spend at one of the town’s few stores-in my bitter late 20s I like to think that Donald’s willingness to work for well below minimum wage had driven all the other local businesses to close. In Donald Duck’s Playground you took control of Donald, who worked a variety of menial jobs: catching fruit that flew from a conveyor belt, making change, or directing trains at a non-union switching board. The most elaborate game for the PCjr was Donald Duck’s Playground, a crude and pixilated semi-educational game that, I realized much later, was a horrible overture for a life of meaningless toil. The PCjr took me to wonderful, faraway worlds through the magic of actual cartridges and the old-fashioned 5 1/2 inch floppies whose faintly acrid vinyl smell I encounter, only rarely, in my dreams. This was the early 80s, and other children were outside purchasing neon-colored pants, or inside watching television programs that they now feel nostalgic about. When I was a very small child my family owned an IBM PCjr.
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