Week 1

Colossal Cave Adventure
This game was cetrtainly different to anything else I had played before. I am a large fan of the fantasy genre, and as such, I am used to having a pre fabricated world laid before me. What I liked about this games was that to explore the environment, I found myself picturing it, making it my own world.
The down side of this is when my creativity is in full flow, I come across "End of the road messages" which destroys the illusion slightly. Not being able to know whats in the adjacent square is rather annoying, as i found myself running in the wrong direction half the time! I then became very aware Im just looking at text and alot of complex commands.
I think the game was designed this way because it was the first of its kind so it had nothing to live up to. There were no benchmark graphics to live up to. The graphical technology was no where near sophisticated enough to display the details and actions.
I think this game was so popular for two reasons. Firstly there was a whole land that could be explored and was not directly visable, unlike other arcade games that had a visable boundry. Secondly, the diverse controls. You couldnt just go left/right, you could go up/down, north/south, jump to locations etc.
I believe the diversity of the controls made up for its lack of graphics, giving a user that many commands allows them to fully immerse themselves into the game.
In terms of player experience, apart from the "old school" gamers, I dont see this game giving any benefits. I can see this game as an important foundation in the fantasy world genre, giving rise to games like Final Fantasy, but I dont see any advantages over its moden counterparts. The basic functions, mechanics and commands of the game have be refined, explored, and mapped to keys for easier user interaction.
NetHack
This game is a predecessor of linear dungeon adventure games, such Baldurs Gate or Gauntlet. What I liked about this game is being able to explore zones with obvious boundries. It allows one to fully explore a zone, and all its branches and corridoors, leading to a more adventurous experience. Also this game implements a level up system, leading to the feeling of progression and sucess.
The downsides of this game are the interactive items. When you walk into a room and see a character/symbol you dont know if its a dagger, or a goblin until you are on top of it.
The fact the game is designed as this, again, shows the restriction of graphical technology at the time. Gaming was still a fledgling idea then, with few developers with the skills or knowledge to produce detailed aesthetic games. The groups that did design games would undoubtedly be small without much funding.
The popularity of this game relied on the fact you had multiple explorable zones, with visual interactable objects. This was a large step in RPG development.
One element of gameplay in NetHack that is lacking nowadays is its top down view of exploration and its linear construction. Not everyone wants total immersive worlds to explore, after a long day, the last thing you want to be doing is checking every single rock of a massive field for a potion. I also think some games are better off in with 2D levels eg. Sonic. In my opinion, some of the best dungeon games have a top down view whilst exploring and fighting.