Update 28 – Three years later

It’s been now a bit over 3 years since the CRPG Book was released as a PDF, back in February 2018.

In this time, the PDF had over 160,000 downloads, while the hardcover book sold out and raised £18,473 for charity.

I’m extremely happy with how things turned out, Bitmap Books even asked for a reprint of the hardcover version. However, I still want to do one last, big update to the book, fixing some mistakes and oversights that really annoy me.

Goals for the updated version:

• Add new games up to 2019 and a few older games that were missing, such as SpellForce
• Add the long-promised section explaining what’s an Amiga, a C64, a ZX Spectrum, etc
• Add an article on MUD & MMORPG history
• Add a section on important RPGs that were never released in English, especially those from France, Turkey, China & South Korea
• Update some old articles with new info, such as the Wasteland remaster and the Skyrim SE
• Fix some mistakes of the original release, ESPECIALLY the contributor’s credits, as I made a mess and a few people weren’t properly credited 😦

Don’t expect this to be finished in 2021, but some of them are already done and can be enjoyed now, as I either post them on twitter or publish them as stand-alone articles on Medium as they get done:

The article on MUDs & MMORPGs history

Last year I wrote an extensive article on something entirely absent from the CRPG Book: MUDs and MMORPGs. While they deserve an entire book about them, it’s important to see how their evolution influences single-player RPGs.

The article on Chinese RPGs

China produced over 200 PC RPGs in the 90s and early 00s, almost all of them never released abroad. The CRPG Book has Chinese Paladin, an extremely important title that got a fan-translation, but there’s MUCH more to examine here.

The article on Korean RPGs

While not as massive as the Chinese industry, Korea still produced over 80 PC RPGs in the 90s and early 00s, most of them never translated, including the popular War of Genesis series and several adaptations of manhwa and TV shows.

Podcast interview

This week I had a fun chat with Frank Cifaldi and Kelsey Lewin at the Video Game History Foundation about the CRPG Book, how to make old RPGs accessible and the goals in updating the book. You can hear it here.

Once again, a call for reviews

As I mentioned, there’s still a few games I would like to add to the book, so we’re in need of volunteers willing to write about games like Outward, Caves of Qud, Planet’s Edge, Nioh 1 & 2, etc. You can see the full list here.

That’s it, thanks everyone for reading and for the support during all these years 🙂