Akalabeth: World of Doom () is a role-playing video game created in 1979 for the Apple II by Richard Garriott, and published by California Pacific Computer Company in 1980. Garriott designed the game as a hobbyist project, which is now recognized as one of the earliest known examples of a role-playing video game and as a predecessor of the Ultima series of games that started Garriott's career. Garriott is the sole author of the game, with the exception of title artwork by Keith Zabalaoui.
Gameplay
thumb|left|The main overhead view of Akalabeth. The player is represented by a cross. There is a town to the northwest and impassable mountains to the southeast. (The colors are from the DOS port of the game for the [[Ultima Collection.)]]
The game attempts to bring the gameplay of pen-and-paper role-playing games to the computer platform. Begun first as a school project during his junior year using the school's mainframe system DEC PDP-11, the game continually evolved over two years under the working title DND with the help of his friends and regular Dungeons & Dragons partners who acted as play-testers. Final development of the game began soon after his initial encounter with Apple computers in the summer of 1979, on an Apple II bought for him by his father and, later, on an Apple II Plus, but Garriott did not expect that the public would see his work.
In creating Akalabeth, Garriott was primarily inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, for which he held weekly sessions in his parents' house while in high school,
Akalabeth was written in Applesoft BASIC, allowing users to modify the source code. For example, the game's magic amulet, which occasionally did unpredictable things like turn a player into a high-powered Lizard Man, or a weak Toad, could be set for "Lizard Man" with every use, progressively increasing the player's strength to the point of virtual indestructibility. One could also set the player's statistics (normally randomly generated and fairly weak to start) to any level desired. Also later Origin Systems offered the source code on their FTP servers.
Akalabeth is included in the 1998 Ultima Collection where it officially picked up the nickname Ultima 0. The version, programmed for free by Corey Roth, an Ultima fan, in the Collection added CGA colors and MIDI.
Steve Jackson reviewed Akalabeth in The Space Gamer No. 36. Jackson commented that "On the whole, I recommend Akalabeth highly. The graphics are better than I've seen on any similar game; the program is varied and fairly logical. And it's fun". Scorpia of Computer Gaming World, a fan of Ultima, agreed in 1991 and 1993: "Bluntly, it wasn't all that terrific." She did, however, note that the game was the first to offer 3-D perspective dungeon graphics.
Copies of the original Akalabeth are much rarer than those of other games that sold fewer than 30,000 copies. Jimmy Maher from the Digital Antiquarian homepage believes that Garriott is mistaken on the figure, as the game only appeared near the bottom of the Softalks monthly list of the top 30 best-selling Apple II programs twice before being discontinued in 1982; by contrast Sierra On-Lines The Wizard and the Princess, which often appeared near the top of the list, sold 25,000 copies by mid-1982. Given California Pacific's high royalty rates, he suggests that 10,000 copies might have been enough for Garriott to earn $150,000.