Hellfire Warrior

Hellfire Warrior was a computer-based RPG released circa 1982 by Automated Simulations. The version I had was for the Atari 800, and loaded from a cassette tape. I came across the manual recently when going through my crap in the garage.

Hellfire warrior was a dungeon crawl with a set map, rather than a game like Telengard, which was randomly generated. The upside was that there was a story and a point of success. The downside... Like most RPGs, once you've beaten it, it is all over.

In Hellfire Warrior, you created your own character with six attributes with 3d6 scores; strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, intuition (c.f. wisdom, luck, or power), and ego (c.f. charisma). You can have the system create a character for you (the "innkeeper"), or bring a character in from another game such as the previous game in the series, The Temple of Apshai, you can enter them manually. You can even add magic items, though the manual warns "do not... make the mistake of giving your character an exaggerated degree of magical protection: many dunjon dwellers are dangerously attracted to large quantities of magic." This may be true, but it sounds like "don't throw me in the briar patch, Brer-Fox! Anything but that!" :-)

I remember this game being fun when I was twelve. A bit like the old Atari 2600 dungeon game with the bouncy smiley face, except more RPG to it. The goal was to save the princess, but I seem to remember the end being a let down. I could post more about this game if anyone is interested.