What a week to discover Rogue
It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this. It’s an all-Rush mixtape. I just made it myself. Sorry the handwriting is a bit smudged. Who needs a tracklisting anyway? It’s A sweet C90! Crank it, and let it bounce off the peeling surfaces of your dorm room until there are thumps on the ceiling and angry notes pushed under the door.
And take this. It’s a mechanical keyboard. The perfect clicky, clacky, percussive companion to the adventure you are about to begin. And take this. Some slightly scratched Wayfarers I found in a cubby hole near the science block. All the better for dimming the horrors that lie ahead. Who cares that it’s midnight? You’ve seriously never worn Wayfarers at midnight before? And take this. It’s a six-pack of A&W root beer, warmed by the idling engine of a 1968 Ford Galaxie, and from back before A&W messed with the formula and the last notes switched from arctic Wintergreen to cloying caramel. And take this. Pop-Tarts. Frosted Strawberry. The all-Rush mixtape of the microwave.
Wrong game, but it doesn’t matter. Back near the start of console gaming there was a warning issued that it was dangerous to go alone. Back on PCs – before PCs, on mainframes, and shared terminals and PDPs and all that jazz – there was, what? An invitation. “Welcome to the Dungeons of Doom.”
Rogue has arrived on Steam – the original Rogue, more or less. The Rogue that all roguelikes are like. The Rogue that all roguelites are litely like. And it is initially an overwhelmingly nostalgic thing. Pull back the coffin lid. Yes, that’s Wintergreen wafting out. No caramel! Just the thin medicinal flavour of late-night sessions in the computer lab. And look at the screen! That’s the grainy void of the DOS days, when computers had dark backgrounds like this and word-processors picked out their tabulation strips in neat constellations of stars. Computers were mysterious back then. They were, well, a bit like Rogue. You moved from one dark area to another lead by bright points of light. You had to know the arcane commands to earn your progress. Speak friend and press enter.
