I am currently 32 years old and was born and raised in the San Fernando
Valley, just a few miles from the now-defunct office of AR's publisher:
Datasoft (in Chatsworth).

Since learning BASIC programming in the fourth grade (that was the first
year that our school got an Apple ][), I had been hooked on computers and
programming and mucking about with computer games and such. However, my
parents never had the money to purchase a computer. By the time high school
came around, I had several other computer geek friends who had been talking
about a game they were all playing called "AR." They were mapping out areas
of a seemingly limitless dungeon, discovering new enemies and bizarre
encounters, carefully logging down clues to riddles, and showing up at
school to discuss their findings (I remembered similar activity with Zork a
few years earlier). I wanted to be a part of this, I wanted to explore
whatever this AR game was.

In about 1988 or '89, I got my first job and quickly saved up to purchase my
first computer, and Atari 800XL from a Federated store (some of you may
remember the ridiculous old Federated commercials with Shadoe Stevens as his
"Fred Rated" alter ego). If I remember correctly, there was a sale going on
in which you could buy an 800XL complete with a 5 1/4" disk drive (double
density!) and a 300 bps modem for the low, low price of US$199.99. I had
become an instant Atarian that day.

A friend from school made Xerox copies of his maps and manuals and copies of
AR: The Dungeon for me (yeah, there was an excellent copy protection scheme
on those AR disks... yeah, we figured out how to defeat it) and my journey
began. I made a good habit of always making a copy of my character disk (so
if I died, I wasn't actually punished in the game to slow down my progress),
and even went on to finish the map that my friend had started (he mapped out
the strange walls of the "Arena" but it was me who found the way to the
"Palace"). I did eventually go and play The City for a bit, but I never got
very far with it. The Dungeon was such an interesting place to explore, The
City just couldn't quite compare.

I also remember sometime back in college a friend of mine got a grandiose
idea to develop a new RPG. He was a Bard's Tale addict and I was the AR
addict. We were going to put together some fantastic new game that would
turn the RPG world on its ears and we would essentially start by taking the
best aspects of BT and AR and going from there. I think he wound up
figuring ou the 3-D renderer and I did some sketches of some of the artwork
we would need... but that's as far as we got. Something more important
started occupying our time (I'm guessing either girls or jobs or both).

Now I'm a professional game designer and still living near the old Datasoft
offices. AR was and still is a very influential game to me. The
open-endedness and freedom of moral choices that were introduced and
developed in AR (and in Ultima IV) are features of some of the best games to
come out in recent years (Knights of the Old Republic and Grand Theft Auto,
anybody?).

Well, I've waxed nostalgic enough for now...

Tony