Retro open-world games

>>4200076
Would be great if the end game would be to make a chart -- didn't see one in the chart thread

Utlima is a classic example. I wouldn't say it was the absolutely first but it developed a world that was more than just a collection of identical towns and dungeons.

>>4200085
Dang that's true

>>4200076
Dragon Quest 1 is fully open, the whole point of the game is to traverse the world and getting to the towns without dying.

Later jrpgs have overworlds that are just segments that u need to complete first, before you have access to other parts of the world

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>>4200076
Romancing Saga 1-3 are good examples. FF VI second part is trully open. Dagguerfall is the obvious one. I think a lot of crpgs are better openworlds by today's standards.

>>4200280
>Dagguerfall is the obvious one
don't forget Arena. still, none of them are all that old.

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>>4200076
Open world may be pushing it but I was a big fan of The Great Escape on ZX Spectrum. You were basically able to roam the prison camp freely (as long as you weren't caught in restricted areas) and your only obligation was to be in the courtyard for roll call a couple of times a day. In between you had to search the camp grounds for items that will assist your breakout. If you left the joystick alone the computer would control your character, making sure you attended mealtimes, exercise etc but this would sap your will to escape, as would getting caught doing naughty stuff and being put in solitary. If your willpower got to zero you would lose control of your character altogether and become just another institutionalised prisoner.

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>>4200285
If you are looking for something old, try The Magic Candle

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>>4200320
The same team would later make Where Time Stood Still, an open world game where following a plane crash, the survivors appear to have been stranded in a prehistoric world. The premise is you have to lead your team through the deadly environment to safety. Each team member has their own quirks and abilities and losing a team member may affect your ability to survive.

>>4200320
Awesome.

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step aside kiddies

>>4200076
Ultima
Zelda
some early JRPGs

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>>4200076
I had to sped the video up by 2 to get more gameplay into 2 minutes.

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The Uncharted Waters games are open worlds. New Horizons is the best, and UWO (not retro) isn't bad for a free-to-play game.

>>4200076
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_world

>>4200376
> the overworlds of the first five Ultima games, released from 1981 to 1988, were not to scale.
What is that supposed to mean? There was a different scale for towns and overland and dungeons.

>>4200387
I was gonna suggest this one!

>>4200379
They are not in scale between the games

>>4200392
Ultima 1-3 don't really take place in the same world. 4 and 5 have the same scale of 256*256 tiles. 6 is 4096*4096 and after that they no longer use tile based movement.

>>4200387
This is extremely cool.

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>>4200076


Superman on 2600. also an early example of a sandbox game, and a proto- Metroidvania

>>4200387
What is this, Mother?

Pokemon

>>4200407
What game
>>4200387
What game

>>4200423
>>4200462
Mother/Earthbound Beginnings/Earthbound Zero

>>4200462
PlayStation 1 Phantasy Star

>>4200076
- Zelda (1) for NES
- Adventure for Atari 2600

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>Earthbound
>Pokemon
>Zelda
>Dragon Quest

>"earliest" examples

Why is there underage on this board? And Pokemon isn't fucking open-world.


Ultima is probably the earliest example I can think of. But to pitch something a little different, I'll also throw in Miracle Warriors, some of the Dragon Slayer games, and King's Field II and III (if you're looking for early 3D examples as well)

>>4200280
RS2 is not an open-world game. Locations don't become selectable until you speak to certain NPCs or trigger the appearance of new locations through plot advancements. RS1 also does this to a degree, but RS2 simply locks far too many locations behind sequential plot coupons to constitute a truly open world.

And I fail to see how anything exclusive to the Super Famicom is remotely early.

>>4200392
>>4200393
I'm not sure if that's what they meant by "to scale." The overworlds in early Ultima games use icons to represent towns and dungeons. Entering these icons transports the player to a new map. Later Ultima games had continuous maps where towns were, in their entirety, integrated into the overworld itself.

>>4200660
>some of the Dragon Slayer games
Which ones?
DS1 is a linear series of levels.
Xanadu allows you to roam more freely and you can clear some towers relatively late but you are normally restricted by your level in how deep you can go unless you use warp items.
Xanadu 2 is more open in those regards.
Romancia is relatively linear in the order you have to do things.
Sorcerian doesn't have a world to speak of though you have some liberty on which missions to take.
DraSle Family could be considered open world since you can switch between different characters to explore different parts.
Legend of Heroes is mostly linear.
Lord Monarch is out of question.

Would E.T count?

>>4200687
Sure! Will I put it on the chart? probably not

>>4200076
Those who have posted in this thread so far...

What criteria do you think a game should meet then if it were to be put on a chart?

Should heavy turn-based style RPGs not be included in the chart?

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>>4200076
There's Hunter from 1991. It was mission based, but each mission would take place in a pretty large world, where you could drive all sorts of vehicles, explore buildings, and interact with characters.

>>4200364
Would love to play an optimized/improved version of this game with similar graphics.

Metal fucking Max.

Original for the Famicom, remake for the SFC.

>>4200248
Dragon Quest 2 and 3 are quite open too for the majority of the game

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>>4201281
that's the beauty of the Alefgard games. Starting with 4, progression was much more tied to a linear story to the point that 7 is entirely on rails.

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1985 comin' through

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>>4200076
I knew that Link's Awakening started as a port of A Link To The Past, but I never noticed how similar the maps are until now.
>Castle (almost) in the center
>Mountain range to the north
>Water/Swamp to the south
>Desert, guarded by Armos, to the east
>Town to the west, with spooky woods directly above it

>>4201868
Nice, I never noticed either.

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Quarantine allowed you to explore a huge cyberpunk city. The different districts had to be played through in progression (you couldn't return to earlier districts after completing them), but they were still plotted out on one single world map.

>>4201868
Those circles make no sense, and as far as i'm concerned it didn't start as a port. Someone on his free time did a little experiment with no real endgoal and from there LA was born.

>>4200780
I think you should play them before making your mind, some of the game posted here are hardly OW. Also, i don't think turn-based games cannot be OW.

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>>4202514
Here's the full city map, by the way. I couldn't find it anywhere on the internet, so I stitched it together from the ingame maps.

>>4200076
Link's Awakening isn't open-world. Each are pretty much has 2 or 3 entry/exit points and there's one path through the overworld. An open world game lets you go pretty much anywhere you want from the start while LA (and most Zelda games) restricts your path via dungeon items.

The only Zelda games that can be considered open world are the first one and BotW.

>>4201868
What's similarity of maps got to do with it being or not being a port you idiot?

Terminator games grom Bethesda.

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>>4200376
Useless article obviously written by myopic Amerifats full of 90s games when the genre had already had some of its most astounding and groundbreaking titles by the mid 80s in certain other parts of the world..

>>4202885
>Kemo City
There must be a lot of cancer there.

Ultima 8, especially with the way you could move everything in the world.

>>4204476
Ultima 8 is the second worse ultima LOL

"I hate sandboxes" doesnt that beat the thread purpose?

>>4204486
The people that hate sand boxes hate U8

>>4200368
by far without a doubt the most under rated game on the snes/gen its fucking crazy how much time you can blow without giving a fuck about any of the protags stories

wanna go explore the whole fucking world go for it wanna make bank as trader go for it wanna be a pirate either for the lulz or the crown sure a mix of all three thats always fun you want to be the baddest richest mother fucker on the 7 seas with an armada unsinkable ships with the dueling skills of god himself doitfaggot
ya ya I just the same shit over and over again but its really not the case if you've never played this game give it a try

I fucking love new horizons

>>4201868
Never played LA, saw the map in OP and thought I was taking crazy pills. It was LttP, except it wasn't. good to know

>>4204476
Ultima 8 is rather linear. You have to follow the order Earth -> Air -> Water -> Fire -> Ether and can't really pass through certain passages otherwise.
You can't even touch things without being executed.
Even Serpent Isle and Ascension are less restricted and I wouldn't call them open world in the released form.

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>>4204473
actually it's an Escape from New York style prison city, hence all the walls that separate the districts. it's very likely that the devs chose the name to make it seem more dystopic and polluted.

one interesting thing about the game is that Ray Larabie (who designed the cars for GTA London and GTA2) made most of the graphics for it.

>>4201868
Link's Awakening's pixel art is just superb.

>>4202654
It didn't, really, but it also wasn't a one-man thing either. There's plenty of neat info on the history of its development here:
https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-The-Legend-of-Zelda-Spirit-Tracks/Iwata-Asks-Zelda-Handheld-History-/1-Like-an-Afterschool-Club/1-Like-an-Afterschool-Club-233712.html
>We weren’t particularly planning to make a Zelda game for the Game Boy, but we thought we’d try it out to see how it would work. So at first there was no official project. We’d do our regular work during normal work hours, and then work on it sort of like an afterschool club activity.
They do mention that they had the idea of simply porting ALTTP was tossed around but that doesn't seem to have ever been a driving force.

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>>4200076
Surprised nobody mentioned Wasteland yet.

Also, the Bard's Tale series and the lesser known Dragon Wars allowed for some open exploration.

>>4205797
Might and Magic seems like a better call as an open world dungeon crawler.

bumb because I'm interested in OP's chart

>>4200076
Akalabeth is from 1979.

>>4205739
Damn you Iwata making the oppressive Japanese work environment seem comfy.

>>4207548
That's really fucked up, but mostly dishonest.

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>>4200076
It's in no way one of the earliest open worlded games, but Arena is still a good example of an early open worlded game with lots of interaction and exploration. Plus, the world is fucking vast.

>>4200327
This kind of demonstrates how the creation of the RPG "genre" was influenced by Tolkien-style fantasy world maps.
So many early video game designs were basically just answers to the question "what can we do within these limitations?" Tennis games, text-based simulators, video poker and blackjack, space shooters, lunar lander games, etc. all have obvious origins in that sense. Fighting games became an "obvious" design once animation could be very fast and sprites could be large. The origins of platformers are more complex but still very well understood by most, thanks to the massive fame and popularity of games like Donkey Kong (side scrolling platformers were another "obvious" innovation over earlier single-screen games enabled by improved technology.)

But I think the refinement of adventure games etc. into the reified form instantly recognized by almost anyone as "RPGs" must have a stranger history. Certainly as time went on tech changes like popular internet access enabled further obvious steps like the birth of MMOs, but there the connection to their predecessors is more apparent than the connection between early CRPGs and their predecessors, the table-top role playing games.

>>4207573
I'd argue that before RPGs they were openworlds. Linear questing came after.

>>4207573
It doesn't seem that odd to me. TT RPGs were largely about dungeon crawling with miniatures.
Early CRPGs like dnd or dnd were top down dungeon exploring and first person view was a relative easy feat on computers compared to tables. Adding overland and towns shouldn't be surprising either.
The most unusual part is that in CRPGs you only controller a single character whereas in TT it was common to control a whole party or play together with other players.

>>4200368
Is it worth to play this when you could play the dos version?

>>4200076
Loads of 8-bit computer games were open world, perhaps even the majority of them. Games weren't so formulaic back then. People didn't know what worked so there was all sorts of crazy imaginative stuff.

this thread is interesting enough to warrant a bump

>>4200280
That pub looks comfy

>>4200076
and a bump again

>>4200320
>>4200334
Thanks m8. Interesting stuff.

>>4202885
Thanks. One of my favourite games.

>>4211912
it's a shame that the gameplay was so broken (poor vehicle handling, poor collision detection, glitching through walls and getting stuck/drowning, etc etc).

I really loved the atmosphere. I'm a big sucker for cyberpunk settings, so getting to cruise around these huge cityscapes with neon signs everywhere was pure porn for me. the textures for the buildings were well made and had a lot of detail, really a pleasure to the eyes.

>>4200327
Why haven't I heard of this game before? It seems to hit on so many of the things I like

>>4212005
Interesting indeed and it looks like archive.org has the series playable online in it's library:
https://archive.org/details/msdos_The_Magic_Candle_1989
https://archive.org/details/msdos_The_Magic_Candle_2_-_The_Four_and_Forty_1991
https://archive.org/details/msdos_The_Magic_Candle_3_1992

>>4208587
It's funny that a lot of old games had more functionality and content than today's open world games. The devs don't want to put the effort or time into constructing a living world so we always get shallow, empty worlds. Ultima, Quarantine, and a bunch of other devs from the past would have loved to have all this technology. Think of the worlds that would exist if we had devs that didn't care so much about the money. Toady should not be the last bastion of this game design.

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How has it taken this long for someone to post the correct answer?

>>4213286
I was thinking about it, but then I assumed that it wouldn't count because space game worlds scale oddly.

>>4213305
scale isnt the only thing that matters to a genre

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I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Sundog yet.

It allowed you to explore lots of planets, both on foot and with an exploration pod that you could detach from your spaceship. Most planets would have some pretty big cities, surrounded by smaller settlements. And all of it could be explored both on foot and with your pod.

It was originally released for Apple II in 1984, but in 1985, it got an improved release for Atari ST (pic related).

>>4200076
Zelda 1 was open, FF1 was open, Betrayal at Krondor was open, your momma was open, etc, etc.

Just watch Ahoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdV_2svrDVc

>>4200076
Link to the Past isn't open world.

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>>4200364
>>4200787
I see you both can use wikipedia.

I too, can use wikipedia.

>>4217736
Thats LA fuccboi

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>>4217739
Got em :)

>>4201591
>33. The shoals
for some reason i threw away that map that came with the gbc game. Almost gave up trying to find the final key/ the shoals. I knew I was looking for a pile of rocks on the map and searched the entire fucking world to find it. Even found the secret spring north west of arp tower before those 7 rocks.

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>>4200076
Unfortunately Daggertits is still missing a centaur, harpy, blob and spidergirl...

>>4217816
I found the spring using a thief, I imagine the shoals can be found much the same way.

>>4217752
>Hello boy, Pokka here.

>>4216096
>FF1
No, but FF does a good job making an illusion of openness.

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I always thought Tibia had a nice world for exploring. It can feel empty or boring or generic at times, but I liked that there was a lot to discover such as caves and dungeons which would not be indicated on the map until you came across them. There was also a sense of danger since you never know what lurked behind every corner, whether you were going to bump into an enemy twice your level and die and lose all your stuff. It was also fun to move around crates and interact with objects and worrying about if you have a rope and a light source and things like that.

>>4200462
Phantasy star

>>4218602
Tibia was good because it didn't mark locations, quests, anything. It was all up to the player to discover by themselves or from other players.

Before wikis became a thing, that is.

i always wanted a 16bit open world game set in the south sea. tons of islands, your ship as a floating and moving headquarters, recruiting yar har corsairs to your crew, just going around and trading resources, going on quests, maybe fucking exotic chicks

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Speaking of pirates, Pirates! definitely belongs here.

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>>4203271
muh spectrum had some pretty good stuff

>>4218862
Eeh not bad, but compared to that legacy of the wizard map...

>>4200320
That game looks really cool. I was looking for a reason to dust off my spectrum.

>>4200076
v inspiring thread

>>4200398
Shame it's a diarrhea filled ass with a buffalo-like tail of putrid shit spirraling out of it huh

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You want open world?

>>4220236
Why are worlds in old video games always shaped like donuts rather than spheres?

>>4200660
While Earthbound and Pokémon are definitely not open world, the first Zelda technically is. I think you can go just about anywhere on the world map, no?

ALTTP isn't open world though.

>>4220236
If this counts then Zork does, too, right?

>>4220715
I guess it's because going up or down on one of the edge screens and then coming from the right or left on one of the others (or vice versa) would just be confusing.

>open world games
posts the most linear Zelda game

>>4220732
I mean the most recent Zelda game is the only true open world one

>>4200076
That map is not nearly empty enough to be "open world"

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>>4220867
>>4200076
Fixed.

>>4220882
Those vast sprawling empty areas of nothing.
Congrats you just turned LA into a modern game.

>>4220893
That's what I was going for.

>>4220893
what modern games are like that? that is more ocarina of time than any modern game I can
think of

>>4220893
>>4220971
desu, it's more like a 90's game with a separate overland map.

>>4220971
All 3D Zeldas had empty Hyrule Fields

>>4220971
Bethesda games.

>>4221001
fallout 3 and skyrim were like that for sure yeah but fallout 4 was pretty densely packed there was always something to do nearby. I think the technology has caught up though allowed for better open world games. Bethesda needs a new game engine though theirs are always horribly unoptimized

>>4221001
fallout new vegas isn't like that, the elder scrolls game aren't like that save for skyrim. so you only mean skyrim.

>>4221014
there's no problem with wide barren areas... a lot of the actual world is not populated with human technology. it's forgiving in a game set in a medieval time or a nuclear fallout to have a sparsely populated landscape.

>>4221017
New Vegas is still pretty fucking barren

>>4221017
new vegas shouldn't count as a real open world game. the invisible walls on the mountains force the player to pick certain paths when initially exploring. the first half of the game is like a hedge maze that leads to the Strip.

>>4204746
Play Links Awakening. It's Zelda, but there's a lot about it that makes it unique. It's definitely not Alttp on gameboy.

>>4221105
>the invisible walls on the mountains force the player to pick certain paths when initially exploring.

They don't "force" you to do anything. You can ignore encouraged routes and go anywhere from the very start of the game. On my first playthrough, I made a run straight through deathclaw valley and the nightkins' territory.

i don't like open world games desu. give me a well-designed and meaningful game world and i'm gold.

>>4221027
I'm not sure how its size compares to 3 but NV definitely seemed to be half the size in terms of overworld.

>>4220723
You can go anywhere but you can't finish some of the dungeons without first getting certain items from other dungeons

>>4207609
The D:OS version looks and sounds worse and is actually more awkward to control than the console ports.

>>4221235
the fact withstands that the NV world is like a hedged maze. you can't go over the mountains, even though you should realistically be able to. they look like they can be climbed, but do in fact have invisible walls.

so rather than being open, the world forces you to pass through certain bottlenecks when you travel through the landscape. this isn't the case in MW, Oblivion and F3.

>>4220139
this game is diarrhea coming out of my dick

>>4223881
>the fact withstands that the NV world is like a hedged maze

It is no such thing. I noticed the invisible walls right away during my first playthrough, but that wasn't enough to hinder me from taking a grand tour of the map before taking up any quests. I really had no idea what I was doing. Fallout 3 was the only other Fallout game I had played at the time.

>>4220723
>the first Zelda technically is

I think you missed the point.

>earliest examples
>earliest
Zelda really isn't that early.

>>4224004
>Zelda really isn't that early.
not him, but Zelda is older than at least half of the games mentioned in this thread. there's a lot of 90's stuff mentioned here, so a 1986 game should be fine.

>>4224021

So by virtue of a bunch of anons posting barely retro games, Zelda is thus one of the "earliest" examples of an open-world game even though dozens of other examples precede it?

It's a poor example. Moving on.

>>4224032
well, among the games that have been mentioned in the thread, Zelda certainly places among the earliest.

if you think the selection so far is skewed, you're free to suggest some titles that haven't been mentioned yet.

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>>4200076
>ctrl F no "darklands"

it's great for just relaxing & having a good time roaming the streets

what even is the fun about open world games

>>4224137
>empathis on exploration
>fascination for the unknown
>lots of places that can be discovered outside of the main story
>fleshed out game universe where all locations can be visited
>depending on how the dev handles it, the world can be a lot more "living" than in a non-open world game

>>4220882
Replace phone booths with shrines and thats a perfect 2D port of botw.