The object of the game is to delve into a dungeon to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, and perish with as much game points as possible. The player can start out with a different ability set, such as Wizard or Cave(wo)man. The player confronts various monsters: hobgoblins, leprechauns, acid blobs, bats, centaurs, chameleons, dragons, ghosts, imps, trolls, and has weapons, armor, potions, wands, rings and special items to aid in this, e.g. related to fire there is a scroll, a ring, a monster and a wand, and their interplay is to be discovered.
There is time pressure because you die if your food runs out, food is scattered around the dungeon. There is a limit to what you can carry, forcing you to leave valuable items behind. The gold and gems you carry when you die increases your score, but it is heavy too.
The player must enter Hell to recover the Amulet. Entering Hell for the uninitiated just means that "you burn to a crisp". (In NetHack, Hell is renamed.)
The player encounters special rooms such as shops, crypts, a
Pango is an action game released in 1983 for IBM PC/compatible computers. It is a clone of the arcade game Pengo and the gameplay is very similar. In the game, players controls Pango, a penguin like character, with the goal of clearing an ice maze of all the bees roaming around it within the one minute time limit. The maze consists of numerous ice blocks which Pango can either push around or destroy. The bees are constantly chasing the player throughout the maze and will cause Pango to lose a life if caught. The bees can be eliminated in two ways: they can either be squashed with ice blocks, or if they are near a wall that Pango is kicking the bee will become dazed allowing Pango a short time to squash it.
Dig Dug is a 1-2 player arcade game in which you have to use your shovel to dig your way through the earth. Stopping you from doing this are two monsters, called Pooka and Fygar, who will continually chase you around. The only weapon that you carry is an air pump, which you can use to inflate the monsters to the point where they explode (if you start to inflate them but stop doing so, the monsters will get turned back to their normal selves).
Your task in this arcade game is to guide a frog across a treacherous road and river, and to safety at the top of the screen. Both these sections are fraught with a variety of hazards, each of which will kill the frog and cost you a life if contact is made.
In a free literary adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Castle Elsinore offers the opportunity to explore the namesake castle from the play to collect as much treasure as possible and deposit it at the town hall of the nearby village. This is a simple text adventure, with most puzzles simply consisting of giving the right item to the right person. Two-word commands are entered to navigate through the world that contains lots of purely decorative rooms.
The pen-and-paper game Battleship gets another digital translation, which pits man against machine for a round of grid-based marine warfare. Both sides get five ships each - of varying sizes - and hide them within their respective game boards, invisible to the opponent. Each side then proceeds to fire in turn, by selecting a target grid position. When all the squares occupied by a ship are hit, it is sunk; the first player to destroy the entire enemy fleet will rule the waves.
As you begin a game of Sleuth a murder has just been committed. Your job is to mingle with the house guests and to search the contents of the house until you feel you have solved the crime. Every game of Sleuth is different so you must fully explore the house each time that you play. As your investigation proceeds the murderer will begin to grow suspicious and will most likely start plotting your demise. If you have not figured out who the murderer is by this point in the game, your chances of survival are slim.
In ScubaVenture you need to dive for treasures! Your goal is to earn as many points as possible by collecting rare fish and opening valuable treasure chests along the ocean floor. Each of the underwater caverns contains several locked treasure chests; keys for the chests can also be located somewhere in the cavern. By collecting the appropriate key and unlocking the matching chest you earn points, and if you can unlock all of the chests you move on to the next level. Collecting certain types of fish also earns points. Poisonous fish, seahorses, electric eels and sea weed can all be found in the caverns and will cause you to lose one of your three lives if you're not careful.
Bushido: The Way of The Warrior is a martial arts side view PC DOS game made in 1983. It could very well be considered the first of all later-day 2D fighting games.