Rob Eberhardt

So I played this game, half-a-lifetime-ago, called Hack.  It was a ASCII-graphical game for DOS, where you explore a dungeon, seeking the Amulet of Yendor.  You could play as a Wizard, Barbarian, or various other character types, and would of course fight monsters, gather treasures, and have various adventures along the way.

The user-interface was obviously very simple (even at the time), but the gameplay was amazingly rich.  I loved it, and spent many days of my life "in the dungeon," but eventually moved on to flashier graphical games.

So flash-forward 15 years to last week, I see this User Friendly comic mentioning "NetHack," and then another random mention of the game got me curious and googling. 

Lo and behold, Hack is still alive and kicking! (great history writeup here)  15 years of development (and enrichment) has added a simple GUI (mostly easier on the eyes) and richer (but completely faithful) gameplay.  I'm not at all disappointed. 

I am tempted to say I want some sort of multi-player version, tho.  Especially considering a favorite game of mine: BattleZone, an early 80s arcade classic, which Activision did an amazing (groundbreaking) job resurrecting in ~1998 as a multiplayer FPS.  I'm still playing it 7 years later.

But for now, it's NetHack again.  It's nice when old friends visit.