In the late '80s a little known American software company called Faster Than Light developed and released a game for the Atari ST that created a genre which is still popular today.

Dungeon Master had the player creating and controlling a party of adventurers before entering a stunning set of dungeons in search of adventure. So what? You might think that people had produced role-playing adventure games before the late '80s. Not like this, they hadn't. The level design was fantastic, full of traps and puzzles that were always fair - the keen-eyed would spot the tiny button on the highly detailed wall that opened a door some way away whereas the less attentive would wander the same corridor for hours. The monsters were brilliant and cunning methods of dispatching them could be devised - Future Gamer well remember the purple worms that could be lured to a portcullis doorway and then hammered to death. The resulting slices of dead worm could then be picked up and eaten!

The magic system and game interface were also innovative and Dungeon Master soon became a 'must have' game. Curiously it took several years for an Amiga version of the game to appear and it, frankly, wasn't worth the wait. Dungeon Master II made its inevitable appearance a while later but somehow the beauty of the original had been lost. A plethora of clones borrowed the innovations first seen in Dungeon Master and even today this format is still popular for RPGs.