Ludography
Dunzhin cover

1982 · Role-playing

Dunzhin

RPG in the reign of "The Temple of Apshai".

Released
1982
Platforms
Apple IIAtari 8-bitCommodore 64Commodore C64/128/MAXMS-DOSTRS-80TRS-80 Model I
Genres
Role-playing
Developers
—
Publishers
—
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
Bird view / Isometric
Themes
Fantasy
Country
United States
Languages
English

About

Dunzhin (fully titled, but not shown on the box cover, as Warrior of Ras: Volume I - Dunzhin) is a fantasy role-playing video game developed by Med Systems Software. It was released on the TRS-80 in 1982, then ported to the Apple II, Atari 8-bit computers, and Commodore 64. An IBM PC port, as a self-booting disk, added digitized speech.

Keywords

  • roguelike

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Dunzhin is a game in which the player explores a new, randomly generated dungeon each time the game is played. The fighter player character encounters monsters and human enemies, and the character earns experience points based on the disparity comparing their statistics with those of the monster. The player is in search of a well-guarded treasure located on the deepest level of the dungeon.

Development

The IBM PC port performs all disk access via IN/OUT instructions to the floppy controller instead of using the BIOS (this was done both to improve performance and as a copy protection). It also was not completely rewritten from the ground up, but instead contained the original Z80 code from the TRS-80 with an interpreter to convert it to x86 assembly language.

Reception

Dunzhin was reviewed in Dragon magazine #71 by John Warren. The reviewer noted that while this game was able to accept more complex commands than other games of its time, the extra typing involved slowed the game down. Describing Warriors of Ras as "yet another Dungeons-and-Dragons style game series", The Commodore 64 Home Companion wrote that Dunzhin "is the first—and easiest—in the series".

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
MS-DOS31 December 1982North America
TRS-8031 December 1982North America
Apple II31 December 1982North America
Commodore C64/128/MAX31 December 1983North America
Atari 8-bit31 December 1983North America

Games like this

Collections1 collection

Platform libraries

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.