Moria (game)

"Moria" is an old Roguelike computer game, based on a story from The Lord of the Rings. The goal in the game is to reach the bottom of the maze of the Dwarven mines of Moria and kill the Balrog. Robert Alan Koeneke wrote the original version at the University of Oklahoma after he became hooked on the first roguelike game, Rogue, but could not run it on the VAX 11/780 computer running VMS to which he had access.
Version 1.0 was written in VMS Pascal and completed in the summer of 1983. From around 1985 the source code was widely distributed under a license that permitted sharing and modification but not commercial use. Koeneke's last release was Moria 4.7 in 1986 or 1987.
Moria inspired a number of derivative versions. Jim E. Wilson created Umoria, a modified version in the C programming language for Unix computers. Someone at the University of Washington developed a modified Pascal version named Imoria, then Steve Kertes ported it to C. At the University of Warwick, some modified the Umoria game into the Game of Angband. Moria is also a known inspiration for the computer game Diablo.
== External links ==
* Usenet article from February 21, 1996 in which Robert Alan Koeneke discusses the origins of the game.
* Steve Kertes' C port of IMoria 
* KMoria - port of Unix Moria 5.5.2 for the Palm OS
* The Moria Page
Category:Computer & video games