Akalabeth: World of Doom
| Industry | Video game publishing |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | United States |
| Products | Akalabeth: World of Doom |
Akalabeth: World of Doom () is a role-playing video game created in 1979 for the Apple II by Richard Garriott and released by California Pacific Computer Company in 1980. Initially developed as a personal project, it is widely acknowledged as one of the pioneering role-playing video games and served as the foundation for the commercially successful Ultima series that established Garriott’s reputation. Garriott was the sole programmer, with Keith Zabalaoui providing the cover artwork.
Gameplay
This title adapts traditional pen-and-paper role-playing elements into a digital environment. Players undertake missions from Lord British (Garriott’s in-game persona) to vanquish ten progressively tougher adversaries.
The gameplay primarily involves navigating a subterranean dungeon, supported by a straightforward overworld map displayed from a top-down perspective and supplemented with textual narration. Players can acquire essential items such as food, weaponry, shields, and magical amulets at the Adventure Shop, where character attributes are also managed.
Key features that anticipated the Ultima franchise include:
- First-person perspective for dungeon navigation
- Survival mechanics involving food consumption
- Overhead view of the world map
- Hotkey-driven command inputs
- Use of archaic Elizabethan English language
Development
Richard Garriott, then a high school student near Houston, Texas, programmed the game in Applesoft BASIC for the Apple II. It began as a school assignment during his junior year on a DEC PDP-11 and evolved over two years under the provisional title DND, incorporating feedback from friends and fellow Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts. Development accelerated after Garriott acquired an Apple II in 1979, although he did not anticipate commercial distribution.
The earliest versions featured overhead ASCII graphics; however, inspired by playing Escape, an Apple II maze game, Garriott transitioned to wire-frame first-person dungeon visuals—making it the first computer RPG to implement this graphical style. The game utilizes a "lucky number" to seed procedural generation of dungeons and player statistics, enabling players to revisit identical game worlds. Later releases within the Ultima Collection incorporated savegame functionality while preserving this system.
By version DND28B, Garriott showcased the game—now titled Akalabeth—to John Prosper Mayer at a Webster-area ComputerLand, who encouraged him to market it. Garriott sold copies for $20 packaged in Ziploc bags with photocopied instructions and cover art created by his mother. California Pacific Computer Company subsequently published it at $35 retail price with cover art by Denis Loubet. Garriott received $5 per unit sold, moving roughly 30,000 copies and earning around $150,000. This represented his highest financial return on investment; subsequent titles yielded lower profits. For promotional purposes, "Lord British" was credited as author, accompanied by a contest revealing Garriott’s identity.
Garriott’s primary influences were Dungeons & Dragons, which he played regularly, and the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, accessed via family connections. The title Akalabeth is derived from Tolkien’s Akallabêth section in The Silmarillion, although the game’s narrative is unrelated to that source. The final adversary is named "Balrog", referencing Tolkien's mythology but differing from later Ultima installments where the creature is called Balron.
While not officially designated as such, Akalabeth is frequently regarded as the inaugural entry in the seminal Ultima role-playing game franchise.
Release
According to most accounts, including those from Garriott and Origin Systems, Akalabeth was developed during the summer of 1979 following Garriott's high school graduation and was initially distributed in simple Ziploc bags. However, Maher contends that sales commenced in the summer of 1980 after Garriott completed his first year of college. The game saw broader distribution through California Pacific in 1980, bearing a copyright date from that year, and it reached the Softalk top 30 chart in October 1980.
Programmed in Applesoft BASIC, Akalabeth enabled players to alter the source code. This flexibility allowed customization such as modifying the effects of the magic amulet or tweaking character attributes beyond the standard random assignment. Subsequently, Origin Systems provided access to the source code via their FTP servers.
Included as Ultima 0 in the 1998 Ultima Collection, a fan-developed adaptation by Corey Roth introduced CGA color support and MIDI audio. This version operated on MS-DOS compatible platforms, marking the game's first authorized port beyond the Apple II system.
Reception
Richard Garriott estimated that approximately 30,000 copies were sold, with a profit of $5 per unit, totaling around $150,000 in revenue—"not a bad return for a hundred hours of work by a high school kid," according to him.
In a review for The Space Gamer, Steve Jackson commended Akalabeth for its visual presentation, coherent structure, and engaging gameplay. Conversely, Bruce Humphrey described it as a "poor cousin" to contemporaries like Wizardry in issue #65 of The Dragon. Similarly, Scorpia from Computer Gaming World remarked that while it "wasn't all that terrific," it was notable for pioneering three-dimensional dungeon graphics.
Original copies of Akalabeth are scarcer than many titles with lower sales figures. Jimmy Maher suggests Garriott's reported sales may be inflated since the game only briefly appeared on Softalk's top 30 list before being discontinued in 1982. Taking into account California Pacific's substantial royalty rates, Maher estimates that around 10,000 copies could have generated $150,000 for Garriott.