Classic ASCII game NetHack debuts version 5.0
New monsters! New magic items! An Arm port! And compliance with a dead C standard
ANTIQUES CODE SHOW Admirers of Roguelike games have a new distraction: Version 5.0 of NetHack dropped last weekend.
NetHack and its ilk trace their origins back to Rogue, a game for Unix systems launched in 1980 that took the DNA of very early text games like Star Trek and Colossal Cave Adventure and mashed that up with tropes from Dungeons & Dragons. The result was a game in which players roamed around a multi-level dungeon filled with monsters, treasure, and magic items – all represented with ASCII characters.
NetHack adopted that template and arguably improved it by adding more complex quests, more levels to play, and plenty of witty pop culture references.
The game’s developers have kept it alive since its 1987 debut, and in 2015 delivereda major upgrade in the...
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