A History of Korean Gaming

神劍의 전설 (Sin'geom-ui Jeonseol) - APPLE ][ (October 1987)

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Nam Inhwan programmed Sin'geom-ui Jeonseol together with his friend U Hyeoncheol during his high school days. Whether or not it was the first Korean game released, publisher Aproman advertised it at least as the first game fully using the Korean script Han'geul.

Despite the high prestige it enjoys until today, the retro community knows surprisingly little about the game itself. It was initially planned as a series, and it certainly owed a lot to Richard Garriot's Ultima. The similarities go so far as Nam making himself the king of the fantasy kingdom, just like Garriot inserted himself into Britannia as Lord British.

Sin'geom-ui Jeonseol is even more confusing than the most obfuscate early Ultima episodes. There's a whole world to walk around towns to visit and people to talk to. Players can board ships and ride horses for hours without discovering so much as a hint towards any heroic quests or even monsters to fight. NPCs can be talked to via a parser, but without any outside hints there's no way of knowing what to ask them.

Nam later reappeared at the small developing studio Ecstasy Entertainment in the mid-90s and made a sequel, after all. In the new millenium, he co-founded Aeonsoft to create the popular free to play MMORPG Flyff.

우주전사둘리 (Uju Jeonsa Dooly) - APPLE ][ (April 1988)

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This is only the first of many games based on the popular Dooly cartoon series. Here, the baby dinosaur becomes an astronaut. Set in the far future of 2001, the story about two planets, a wealthy democratic one, and the surpressed world reigned by the evil dictator 'Dragon' is quite elaborate for this type of early arcade style game. Dooly has crashlanded on earth, and has to get back to the planet Kkanttappia.

Uju Jeonsa Dooly is a mixture of many different genres. In the first two stages, Dooly has to catch food and fuel falling from the sky to power is space ship. After that follows a Breakout clone level, before he finally takes off into space, where the minions of Dragon attack for a shooting sequence. Then awaits a puzzle game to get through a black hole, and finally a rush of several bosses.

Sadly, the game hasn't been preserved by now, and it is uncertain whether there are any working copies left. The screenshots are not in the best quality because of this.

제3차우주전쟁 (Je 3-cha Uju Jeonjaeng) - MSX (April 1988)

The title means "Space War 3", but rather than being the third part of a series, the number is to be read as in "World War III". Practically nothing is known about this game. It appeared in an Aprosoft magazine ad and a release list in the magazine MSX-wa Mannam, where it was referred to as an action game, but it is unknown whether or not it still exists.

꾀돌이 (Kkoedori) / Koedoli - MSX (October 1988)

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This puzzle platformer by Mickey Soft is easily the best Korean MSX1 game. Similar to Tecmo's Solomon's Key, levels are conquered by building and deleting blocks to find the key that opens the door to the next level. But here, blocks can only be built diagonally upwards to form stairs, and deleted blocks are turned into traps for the moving enemies. There are other extras, like an armor that protects from projectiles. Most of the game is pretty tricky and well designed, only a handful of levels are build purely to waste the player's time.

Kkoedori is not without flaws, though. Every few levels a password is shown, but a function to type them in is nowhere to be found. The harsh extra life limit with no continues makes it very hard to complete the game in a single run. The team also has to be criticized for stealing the background music. The tune heard during a level is the Korean title music to the 1980's anime series Magical Princess Minky Momo, while the ending is taken from Galaxy Express 999. Nonetheless a great game. Too bad Mickey Soft never resurfaced with new software.

미스 애플 (Miss Apple) - APPLE ][ (1989)

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Miss Apple was the winning program in a coding competition held by Aproman together with SKC Softland. In 80 stages, Miss Apple has to maneuver through a labyrinth to collect all the apples to reach the next maze.

On the surface the game seems like a Pac-Man clone, but it features a few interesting gameplay systems. Instead of ghosts, Miss Apple is hunted by quarter apples, and if she can trick them into bumping together, the resulting half Apple can be eaten to enable Miss Apple to go through walls for a short time.

This is another game that has not been preserved, yet.

미스 퍼즐 (Miss Puzzle) - Apple ][ (1989)

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A simple puzzle game for the Apple II, consisting of 6 stages.

Miss Puzzle (Apple II)

띠띠!빵빵! (Tti Tti! Ppang Ppang!) - MSX (1989)

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Programmed by Jang Sungmok, the platformer with the funny name was first announced in a 1988 advertisement by Best Soft, the publisher of Devil Zone, but when the game actually appeared the next year it was presented as an Aproman game, without any further reference to the former software house.

The game uses graphics from Choro Q and also shares similarities with Jump Bug, but it is still a very distinct game. The player car constantly drives at high speed and never brakes nor stops, the only ways to maneuver are changing direction and jump. The journey goes over rivers and skyscraper rooftops, an explanation what business a car with a propeller on top has got there is missing. Collision detection is very asinine, and after dying, the game likes to respawn the car just above another deadly gap.

There are three stages, each has its own enemy type in addition to the omnipresent skulls: Construction cars at the beginning, cuttlefish in the second stage, and finally helicopters. After all three stages, the sequence just repeats over and over again.

Tti Tti! Ppang Ppang! (MSX)

King's Valley / 왕의 계곡 (Wang-ui Gyegok) - IBM PC (1989)

This inofficial port to Konami's King's Valley 2 was one of the first commercial Korean IBM PC games. Like most other games developed for the system, it was presented in plain black and white with PC speaker sound, which just couldn't compete with the colorful and atmospheric original. The controls aren't quite as responsive, either. Due to the lack of color, there's only one type of mummy enemy as opposed to the different colored ones on the MSX2, which means that all mummies are able to climb ladders from the beginning.

The first two levels are similar to King's Valley 2, but after that they completely differ. However, if anyone just wanted more stages for the game, they would have been better be advised to get some edit data for the original instead.