Starting off with two rather excellent computer games from the old days, when computer games had good ideas: Alternate Reality, Whistler's Brother.
Alternate Reality was a computer game that came out for the 8-bit Atari computers in 1985 (later translated to C-64, Apple II, Atari ST, Mac, Amiga & PC). At the time it was State-of-the-Art. 4-channel music (with karakoke-lyrics at some locations), more colors than ever seen in another game... And it still is one of, if not the best attempts on bringing a roleplaying game onto a computer. I've rescued an faq written by Robert Hagenström... it's still out there: The Original Alternate Reality Homepage, but just in case...there's a copy here... and I hope I'm not trespassing any copyrights. AR F.A.Q.
The game was made by Philip Price & Gary Gilbertson... And there's been some "rumours" about a new, updated release... there's even a site... but apart from it having been updated with the current year... Screenshots have disappeared... Still... with a wish for it to come true... alternatereality.com ...and I do wish I'd been clever enough to 'steal' the screenshots while they were there... *sigh*