[3][5] The first computer-based dungeon crawl was pedit5, developed in 1975 by Rusty Rutherford on the PLATO interactive education system based in Urbana, Illinois.
[1] Computer games and series from the 1980s, such as Rogue, The Bard's Tale, Cosmic Soldier, Dungeon Master, Gauntlet, Madō Monogatari, Megami Tensei, Might and Magic, Legend of Zelda, Phantasy Star, Ultima, and Wizardry, helped set the standards of the genre.
[6] Some dungeon crawlers from this era also employed action role-playing game combat, such as Dragon Slayer,[7] and The Tower of Druaga.
This subgenre consists of RPGs where the player leads a party of adventurers in first-person perspective, typically in a grid-based environment.
Early games in this genre lack an automap feature, forcing players to draw their own maps in order to keep track of their progress.