My God, it's full of RPG screenshots

January 25, 2017 5:36 PM

Felipe Pepe is writing a book about the history of Computer Role-Playing Games. As a by-product, he's been taking high-quality screenshots of RPG games along the way. Along with screenshots taken by The CRPG addict (previously), there's now a large collection - over 16,000 screenshots of almost 400 CRPGs, from latest releases to PLATO games from the 70's. They are on Flickr and can be used freely. Albums include Fallout, Mass Effect, The Elder Scrolls, Ultima I, Dark Souls, Deus Ex, Diablo and many more. Thank you, Felipe and CRPG addict
posted by Wordshore (22 comments total)

(immediately goes to search for Wizard's Crown)

Yep, this checks out.

Also, love that he has weird VGA era curiosities like Gorky 17.

Definitely interested in seeing how all this translates into a book.
posted by selfnoise at 5:53 PM on January 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

This is serving to remind me of how many CRPGs I've started and never finished...
posted by nubs at 5:58 PM on January 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

Also, 104 screenshots of Descent to Undermountain? Is that a cry for help?
posted by selfnoise at 6:01 PM on January 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

The D is for Dungeons section is much shorter than I would have guessed.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:48 PM on January 25, 2017

Oh please
posted by euphorb at 7:10 PM on January 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

Wow. Based on the depth of his CRPG Addict posts, this is going to be a book you can read forever.
posted by ignignokt at 7:54 PM on January 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I downloaded the preview book. It is amazing if you played CRPGs, like, ever. The short piece at the beginning about how modern players hate Ultimate IV, not just because of the UI but because they don't read the manual or books that come with it and don't understand the self-improvement quest at the center is fascinating. And the book has really nice pieces on everything from Magic Candle to Pool of Radiance. Great find.
posted by blahblahblah at 8:06 PM on January 25, 2017 [5 favorites]

No Asheron's Call? tsk tsk
posted by humboldt32 at 8:13 PM on January 25, 2017

Silly question, but: how can we say the screenshots "can be used freely" when every one of them is from some developer's game? Can fair use apply to over 16K images from other sources just because the person who generated them is working on a book?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:29 PM on January 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Even worse than no Asheron's Call: no Neverwinter Nights MMO. (To be fair, pretty hard to play that now)
posted by McBearclaw at 8:47 PM on January 25, 2017

No Moria on the VAX mainframe?

Nice to see it on PLATO though.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:43 AM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

If you're in the market for a book about games, you can do a lot worse than MeFi's own JHarris' book @Play: Exploring Roguelike Games . I'm reading it now, and find it very interesting even though roguelikes are not my favourite thing.
posted by Harald74 at 1:19 AM on January 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Do they have any MMORPGs at all though? Came for the Everquest, left empty handed. Getting an urge to play Grandia II again though. And Dragon Age.
posted by Hazelsmrf at 3:23 AM on January 26, 2017

Nice, but no mention of my favourite obscure CRPG: The Spirit Engine II. It's great, and it's free. Everyone should play it.
posted by Alex404 at 4:36 AM on January 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

Something which interests me is the roads-not-taken, the games made when genre boundaries were less fixed. That makes it hard to define what to include, especially when talking about earlier, more obscure games. Cool to see that Julian Gollop's excellent Lords Of Chaos a near plot-free, 8/16-bit strategy game is included. Shame that Lords Of Midnight, the astounding 8-bit hybrid adventure/1st-person recruitment wargame isn't there (yet?).

Humph, I was trying not to do a "where's X?"-post. This is a fine collection of images and well worth a look. Colour me glad Lords Of Chaos is there and glad that a complete list is near-impossible to achieve.
posted by comealongpole at 6:41 AM on January 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

This collection is pretty delightful. I was excited to see an old-ish favorite Geneforge, as well as all the obscure mainframe games I've never seen before.

If anyone's curious about what games will be included in the book, this spreadsheet is linked on the main website detailing the planned games and what's been written so far. I've been thinking about contributing a chapter myself.
posted by hollowaytape at 9:38 AM on January 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

I've been following him for some time on Twitter and conversed with him a couple of times there. He really knows his stuff. His article on early JRPGs is awesome.
posted by JHarris at 1:26 PM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

(BTW, only because Harald74 linked to it on Amazon, if you want to buy a copy of @Play, it's also on itch.io, where you'll get it in multiple formats, and I get 40% more money from sales there.)
posted by JHarris at 1:30 PM on January 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Oh man, it has AUTODUEL!

I lost so many hours to that.
posted by DigDoug at 8:35 AM on January 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Oh man, it has AUTODUEL!

I lost so many hours to that.

I remember it being a very tough game for me; I would just start to gain a little ground with a character (win an amateur night in the arena, maybe one successful mission) and then I would get fragged. Start again.
posted by nubs at 8:52 AM on January 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the post; I may have volunteered to write a review!

Wow. Based on the depth of his CRPG Addict posts, this is going to be a book you can read forever.

The CRPG Addict is a different person, since Felipe mentions getting authorization to upload his pictures, no?
posted by ersatz at 11:50 PM on January 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yes, Felipe Pepe is someone different.
posted by JHarris at 4:12 PM on January 29, 2017