Nethack

File:Dangerous cat.jpg

Some classes start with a kitten companion, who's more powerful then most early monsters you meet. But they'll turn on you if you let them get hungry...

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When you die, Nethack adds insult to injury by creating a humiliating tombstone that other players can find later in their own games at the site of your death, ensuring that future generations of obese neckbearded unix enthusiasts will always know of how you died an impoverished coward, penniless and huddled in hysterical tearful prayer as the owlbear descended upon you.

Nethack is one of the most old school of games, which inexplicably is also one of the most graphically superior games to date (Actual gameplay screenshot: @). You control a keyboard symbol, and navigate through keyboard symbols, killing keyboard symbols and picking up keyboard symbols as you go. The object is to summon the will to play it again after you have just been killed by what invariably turns out to be a kitten keyboard symbol. The other object of the game is to write an article about it for Wired Magazine that sounds exactly like every other article written about it, ever.

If you're posting on a Nethack-related message board about how you've found some "funny" message that you get when you try to put a bottle in another bottle or something similarly stupid, be sure to end your post with the acronym, DTTOE ("Dev Team Thinks of Everything"). Similarly, end all posts about your character being killed with the acronym YASD ("Yet Another Stupid Death"). Congratulations; you are now a fucking douchebag.

Nethack was a total ripoff of the game Rogue, which is even more oldsk00l and was released 100 years earlier but noone cares.

See Also

• Ragnarok
• Rogue

External Links

• Nethack homepage
• A "commercial for Nethack"
• Dudley's Dungeon, a "popular" Nethack "comic"

Nethack is part of a series on Gaming Visit the Gaming Portal for complete coverage.