Crown of Arthain (1980) by Dan & Marilyn Meller for Micro Lab was a CRPG for the Apple II. One or two players take on the role of rival brothers exiled from their father's kingdom. But on his deathbed, he decrees if either one find his crown, they shall inherit the throne! (a rogue prince thread)
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Crown of Arthain tasked players to scour the land for treasures and the means to enter their father's kingdom held by an Elf and Dwarf somewhere on their side of the map. But players also needed gold and Crown took on an arcade-like mantle with its key mashing combat.
While exploring the hex map, players will also face combat with various monsters for experience to beef up their defense and attack. A separate combat screen showing you on the left and the monster on the right (with life bars!) pops in as you shield yourself, hack away, or try to run for dear life.
According to the manual, the designers hoped that Crown would be the "two player adventure game" that brought would-be adventurers together in friendly competition as opposed to another solo dungeon crawl.
It was a goal also shared by games such as The Missing Ring (1983), also on the Apple II, in which up to five players could take turns controlling five members of an adventuring party.
And in true CRPG fashion, Crown's manual included a considerable backstory adding color to its gameplay since there wasn't much exposition during the combat heavy adventure. It also noted that each player could even set their own difficulty (affecting monster attack speed). Or go solo.
Death wasn't an end (unless you died inside the mountain!) as there was always another heir to continue the fight (one who was hopefully not as morally questionable as the prince they replaced!). But in competition with a friend, that delay could cost you the crown and the kingdom!
One interesting note concerning PC games in this early time was that a few of them had software guarantees that often sounded like personal promises. When it came to Crown, in case your floppy disk met a bad end, the devs offered to replace it with very generous terms. How nice!
