Hello guys, I found thread, it's great! Here are images.
It is tough on the streets...
EPYX may be familiar name to those who grew up losing too many hours on ancestor of modern computer roleplaying game "Rogue", whose most direct lineage is seen in "Roguelikes" such as Nethak, Dungeon Soup, etc.
Here is eponymous Rogue,
CLICK PIC for great fun story from original manual.
Rogue (and to varying degrees, things like unto Rogue) sucks you into maladaptive, addiction-like cycle of repetitive behavior as you attempt to master arcane, opaque rules of system that is ultimately stacked against you even with optimal knowledge. You will live, die, live again for thousands of lives/hundreds of hours in ephemeral, ever-renewing ASCII dungeon and still have miniscule chance of completing game's nominal objective of "get amulet of yendor, exit". Should you succeed, game does not go out of its way to celebrate your success, it gives only barest bone narrative to explain the significance of task completed, gives arbitrary points, then dumps you into DOS. For most part, it is up to your brain to rationalize your use of solid weeks of life that could have been spent exploring, understanding, mastering "real world" as worthwhile victory.
Best prize of winning is that you are freed from grasp of compulsive behavior, assuming you do not want to retreat back into system whose rules you have exhaustively, comfortingly mastered and repeat same meaningless "quest" in a world forever being destroyed and recreated.
Break away from Samsara...
Anyways hello, I think lots of you guys are great! <3