Alternate Reality (series)
video game series
Alternate Reality (AR) is an unfinished role-playing video game series. It was created by Philip Price, who formed a development company called Paradise Programming. Published by Datasoft, AR: The City was released in 1985 and AR: The Dungeon was released in 1987. Price was unable to complete the second game in the series, and The Dungeon was finished by Ken Jordan and Dan Pinal. Gary Gilbertson created the music for both games.
Concept
Aliens have captured the player from Earth, and the player finds themself in front of a gate with a slot-machine-like row of rotating numbers of statistics. Stepping through the gate freezes the numbers and turns the player into a new person, putting them into an "alternate reality", hence the name.
In 1988 Datasoft denied that the series would end after The Dungeon. The end of the series was to conclude with the player discovering everyone's true bodies on the ship cocooned and effectively frozen, and that the ship is really a "pleasure world" of some kind for the aliens, leading to the player's ultimate decision of what to do to the ship, to the aliens, or even whether to return to Earth. Only two games were finished and the series was never completed.
“Alternate Reality (series)” enters the record as video game series. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alternate, Reality and series can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Alternate Reality (series)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Alternate, Reality and series provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q438394. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985, 1987 and 1988.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Alternate Reality (series)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Alternate Reality (series) primary sources, Alternate Reality (series) archive and Alternate research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Alternate Reality (series)”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Alternate Reality (series)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.