I was a little late to the computer-role-game-playing party growing up. I remember looking up at Wizardry boxes: the dragon emblem wrapped around a diamond and Werdna's glaring red eyes from beneath the outlined fringes of his hooded cloak. Or taking in Infocom's amazing artwork that sat only a row below, like the white, plastic facemask thing they had for Suspended that stared at everyone looking at it. Yeah, that was a little creepy.

During the “golden era” of CRPGs in the eighties through the early nineties, you couldn't spring a trap without at least hitting a dozen developers working in the genre. A lot of names stand out, but I whittled the list down to only a few here from the 1980's to keep it manageable. This was a period of time where a lot of the big ideas that we see in CRPGs -- and video-game RPGs in general -- had first emerged. Titles big and small unleashed themselves upon unsuspecting desktops each year with the kind of product rush that filled innumerable hours with bold adventurers, hidden treasures, and countless quests.

Not everyone had survived the carnage that a changing generation of hardware and market direction brings. Some disappeared for reasons beyond their control, though, the legacy of what they had left behind still persists in every party composed, character skill learned, or dungeon crawled today.

Growing up, CRPGs always held a special fascination for me when it came to gaming. In trying to dig a little into the past, it's been an interesting trip that was part memory and part history as I dusted off old magazines and tried to find what I could on the 'net. Despite the monster power of Google, though, some pages are simply lost to the void or still exist only as hardcopy in someone's collection.

Another reason the eighties rocked? Badass box art.

One or two are lumped in here for the sheer body of work that they had brought to the genre, another for giving gifted developers a chance to share the spotlight, and still a few more for their revolutionary ideas. But I included all of them because of the countless hours, pencils, and graph paper that I had gone through in trying not to get lost within their worlds.

If you don't find a developer or publisher in this list that you think should be here, please feel free to drop me a line or a comment with your own pick. This isn't meant to be a comprehensive listing, or an all-in-one approach to the genre. I know that there are a lot more to their stories outside of what I've written here and there are many things that we'll never get an explanation for that just seemed to “happen.” If anyone looking at this has any new insights, personal stories, or simply want to chime in on any corrections, please do.

But this list is also an effort to shed a little more light on their lasting contributions and a few of the games that can still provide endless hours of retro dungeon raiding. Not only because they're a lot of fun but because it's amazing to see just how CRPGs -- and video-game RPGs in general -- have changed so much over the years.

So buckle on your favorite melee weapon, fasten your hauberk, ready your spells, and check your lockpicks! Let's see what the dusty ruins of the past have to tell us about the future, dear travelers.

Head over to page two for SSI: The Midas Touch