Longest-running fantasy videogame series

Pre-dating Ultima, King's Quest and JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth gaming canon by more than six years, the Dungeons & Dragons RPG franchise has been spawning videogames for approximately 38 years, from 1975 to June 2013. Inspired by the table-top RPG game that was conceived in 1974, the first Dungeons & Dragons videogame was the dungeon-crawler dnd, created by Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood for the PLATO System in 1975. This was closely followed by Don Daglow's Dungeon for the PDP-10, believed to have been released months later. As of July 2016, the most recent release from the franchise was Cryptic Studios' free-to-play MMORPG Neverwinter, originally launched for the PC in June 2013. Xbox One and PS4 versions followed in 2015 and 2016 respectively.

By contrast, Tokien's Middle-earth has been producing games from 1982 to 2014 (32 years), Ultima from 1981 to 2013 (32 years), and King's Quest from 1980 to 2016 (36 years), although the latter has suffered from large gaps in its production line.