The "granddaddy" of dungeon hack RPGs, Rogue has a long history that dates back to the 1970's. It was first released as a test application for UNIX, and quickly captured the imagination of popularity among system administrators and computer science students. It was such a popular "test" that enterprising UNIX admins and users distributed it, expanded it, imitated it, and ported it to their home computers.
The game's original concept was unique and rich enough that decades later, it has an entire genre of computer games named after it, commonly called "Roguelike Games", and today still attracts a loyal following and lively community and newsgroups. What is so special about the game that it still attract gamers for over a decade? Many revolutionary features that have become the norm in today's RPGs.
Rogue is an ASCII-interfaced (i.e. all text or text-character based), turn-based, single player dungeon crawl. Its attraction lies neither in plot nor puzzles (both of which are paper-thin... you are a treasure hunter not unlike the Adventurer in Infocom's Zork), but in the seemingly endless combinations of features, a wide variety of monsters and loot, and randomly generated dungeon that guarantees infinite replayability.
In short, Rogue is to RPGs what Crowther's mainframe Adventure is to adventures: a revolutionary game that spawned a genre. It may not stand the test of time very well after all these years, but for those who want to get a sense of where today's blockbuster dungeon crawls the likes of Diablo descend from, Rogue is it. Two thumbs up!
Note: if you are interested in the rare commercial version of this game, check out Rogue (Epyx) also reviewed on this site.
Review By HOTUD
English 
Comments and reviews
Best game ever. It's so hard to beat, hands down...
I got the gauntlet of Yendor a few times, and once i got to level three on the way out
Is there a version that works on Windows 10 by any chance?
Regards
RRH
IF YOU LOAD THIS GAME ON A TEXT EDITOR YOU EXAMINE THE PROGRAM AND GET A GLIMPSE OF ITS INTER WORKINGS
Just discovered this classic gem 4 years ago. myself can see why it big deal being one of the early Dungeon Crawler games to exist on personal computers would inspired similar games later on used to created subgenre roguelike games that take after this game,
This game impressed the living crap out of me, being that I seen it for the first time this year, 2018. Very telling about the quality of what you see here. Just one question for the veterans out there: how to deal with the freaking Rattlesnakes? I mean, not only they drain your strength at each turn, they are fast and take more than one arrow shot to kill. Unfair at least!!
I've found the manual: https://docs.freebsd.org/44doc/usd/30.rogue/paper.pdf
If one downloads a sector editor and looks through the hexadecimal code, the hit points and strength are initialized just below the list of monsters. It's tricky but look for the hex (or ascii) sequence of the initialization parameters close together. Years ago it took me 6 months to find, but the game became easy to beat starting with 25000 hit points.
wish i knew the controls
Many, many a night playing this game in search of the Amulet of Yendor! Then back up all the dungeons to exit. Many monsters but i remember these as if it was yesterday. Level zapping Wraiths, Strength zapping Vampires and those titan dmg makers Yeti, Centaurs and Jabberwocks! And the dreaded thief Leprachauns! Kill them before they hit you and steal your enchanted armor off your back! Funny how Champion was the last title you get after ROGUE MASTER.
loved playing this game on my self built 8088 ibm clone 8m of speed with turbo lol
Time to eat my yummy Slime Mold
I became so obsessed with beating this game, I finally "cheated" to do it. Old timers will like this hack. The game lets you save, but erases the file when you re-load, right, so you have to start from beginning every time. Well: I used to save the game to a 3.25 floppy with the corner bit punched out, so file was write-protected! No erasing, mwhaa-haa-haaaa! Just save frequently; re-load a bunch: beat game in one-sitting.
I agree with you guys... played this game so much it was ridiculous. Still jump in to play occasionally just to remember the time ;)
I like Dungeon Hack now, just basically an updated, D&D Rogue.
God, I loved this game so much. So happy to find it after all these years!
No sh!t, Doc. I know I spent many moons playing Rogue, I mean, like days, weeks, months of my life trying to beat a game that seemed unbeatable - yet one heard rumors of such. Did it matter which hand I wore which ring? Was certain armor better at defeating certain creatures and not others? Does reading scrolls while quaffing potions make a difference? Do amulets ever do anything? But everytime I got caught waiting for my 2400 baud modem to download the newest utility from a local BBS, Rogue was my goto time killer game. Good times, good times.
This was the best game I played as a kid!
How many 1000's of hours we played Mick, and never came close to winning? ;)
No comment nor review for this game at the moment.