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| Not actually a real cover, though the illustrations are real |
It's not that crazy an idea, I already wrote about the first 10 years of Castlevania and Need for Speed, and I covered 20 years of James Bond games, so a couple of decades of D&D shouldn't be so bad. Unless they're all really long and complicated RPGs with a ton of stuff to study and memorise. That would really slow me down.
I have to admit, all my knowledge of D&D comes from Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and the Chris Pine movie. I've never played the tabletop RPG or watched a stream of other people playing it. I haven't even seen Stranger Things to be honest, or that Community episode. I'm sure that the game involves dice and possibly graph paper though, so I can kind of visualise it being played.
What I do know about is video games, as I've been writing about them for long enough that I'm a bit of an expert. Well, except for classic '80s-'90s CRPGs, I know bugger all about them as I've never had the patience to get anywhere in them. The '80s in general is a bit of a blind spot for me when it comes to games (outside of what I've seen in AVGN or Chrontendo videos), so I've only the vaguest idea of what the RPGs of the era were typically like.
Anyway, my plan is to play the Dungeons & Dragons titles in mostly chronological order, beginning with Cloudy Mountain and Treasure of Tarmin on the Intellivision. I'm skipping the Dungeons & Dragons Computer Fantasy Game LCD game, along with all the unlicenced PLATO games that were inspired by D&D. If I start adding games inspired by D&D to my list, I'll end up playing every RPG that's ever existed, and that'll make this take even longer.
1982 - ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (INTELLIVISION)
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| Developer: | Mattel Electronics | | | Release Date: | 1982 | | | Systems: | Intellivision |
First up it's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, by Mattel Electronics. It was later re-titled Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain, even though there clearly wasn't enough room to add it to the title screen.
I've heard that Cloudy Mountain wasn't actually the first video game to be based on Dungeons & Dragons. Partly because because the entire genre had been based on it from the start, but also because the game's not really based on anything at all. It got renamed to Adventure for the Intellivision Lives! compilation, which seems like a bit of a strange choice to me, seeing as there had already been a famous Adventure released two years earlier on the Atari 2600 (which is what the adventure genre is named after). Plus Adventure itself was inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure (which is what the other adventure genre is named after), so I think that name had been firmly claimed.
The game came out the same year that Ultima and Wizardry got their first sequels, so the RPG genre was also a thing at this point. Mostly on computers though.
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I usually skip the manual but I realise that these D&D games are going to require the proper preparation, so I already know that I'm the three tiny dots on the left and I'm on an expedition to the purple mountain on the right. My team is searching for the two halves of the Crown of Kings and they haven't prepared properly as they're only carrying three arrows each.
Their path is blocked by rivers, forests, walls and mountains, though I can get through the black mountains. They change colour when I get close to tell me what I can find there, with the blue mountains containing a boat to cross the river and the red ones containing an axe to cut through the forest. I don't know why someone took a boat to the mountains, the manual didn't say.
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That black creature on the left is shuffling around but it seems harmless. Unfortunately I'm pretty harmless right now as well as I just fired all three of my precious arrows. What happened was that the game thought it'd be hilarious to switch the controls when I got inside, so 'walk right' became 'fire an arrow right'.
Incidentally, I didn't get to pick my character's class or weapon. You're always a dude with a bow. Well, three dudes with bows I suppose, but the other two are waiting outside.
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Being in contact with it turned my dude from black, to blue, to red, and then to a cloud of smoke. He got killed so bad that he turned to dust. Alright next dude, you're up!
The second hero starts back at the cave entrance, but all the caves revealed by the first doomed explorer remain uncovered, so I know when I'm exploring somewhere new.
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The Intellivision controller features a number pad and extra buttons on the side, so it has about as many buttons in total as a modern Xbox or PlayStation controller. One of those buttons is supposed to be telling me how many arrows I'm carrying, but when I press it I just hear an error noise.
Hang on, is it making one click sound for every arrow I'm carrying? Well that's definitely a unique way of counting ammo. Most games just put the number on the screen somewhere, but I suppose most games didn't come out on a console with a kilobyte or two of RAM.
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The bad news is that the blue creature guarding it was too fast for me. I could've pressed the run button, but I'm barely capable of remembering what the "pick up" button is at this point. But hey, my pick up stat must be pretty high level right now if I can carry a whole boat with me.
Okay I'm back at the start of the cave with my final guy, so I need to be very careful as I make the long trip back to the boat. Fortunately the dungeons wrap around, so if I head the other direction then getting back might turn out to not be as much of a hike. I might even find the exit ladder on the way, and I'm going to need it if I ever want to get out of here. There's only one way out.
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That wasn't even a monster I was trying to shoot, its just a skull. It's either here to make the graphics look less dull or to give me a landmark to help me navigate.
At least I got to show off my awesome ricocheting arrows. The arrows you're given have a tendency to bounce off walls, which is great if you want to hit an enemy around a corner, but bad if you're standing in front of that wall.
Okay, that's game over. I failed to make it out of the very first dungeon. Fortunately I have a cunning plan: I'm going to lower the difficulty a bit next time.
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You can see here how enemies will stray a bit and come after you, but they don't want to try too hard to chase you and I don't blame them. Okay, I'm going to leave this exit ladder alone for now and go look for something easier to reach.
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I could just shoot the snake, but my track record with the bow is just embarrassing right now, so I'll try a different approach: running away. Everywhere's connected, I haven't come across any dead ends, so if I keep going around in a circle I can sneak up behind the snake and get the axe that way.
In fact, the caves wrap around at the sides so if I just head upwards I'll eventually get behind him.
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Now I need to figure out what my route to the mountain should be. I can't go right, the path is blocked by impassable brown mountains. The top route is protected by a fence and a river... and is also blocked by brown mountains. I think I should probably go down.
Though I'll still need to pick up a key that'll get me through that fence at the bottom right, so I'm looking for mountains that glow purple when I get close.
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I'm kind of getting sick of all these dungeons now. Even mountain tile I cross puts me in another cave system and that's all there is in the game. It doesn't help that I don't even get any music to listen to. All I get is the sound of my enemies and the click of my arrow counter.
Okay, I have one dude left, so I can't afford another mistake. Well, I can get hit twice before he loses his spare hit points and turns red, so technically I can afford two mistakes, but I'll try to avoid that if possible.
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I'm lucky that you only get three bounces before the arrow disappears as that was coming right back for my face. That's what I get for being reckless and using my bow.
Alright, what I'm going to do is I'm going to slip past really carefully and get underneath him where there's more room. Then I'll be able to hit him with a carefully aimed shot as he's pacing around.
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The good news is that if you complete a cave and escape to the overworld you get your health restored, so there's still hope for my last surviving guy. Assuming that I can get this bloody key without being hit.
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You might have noticed that the cloudy mountain is grey this time instead of purple, that's because it demonstrates the difficulty mode. I put it down a bit when I started my second game because I wanted to see what was after the first cave.
I'm also starting to have hopes that I'll actually finish this. I don't know how wild the final dungeon is going to get, but I've been collecting arrows in every dungeon and I'm ready to make this someone else's problem.
Don't worry, I'm pretty sure I've got the hang of the bow now.
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I expected the fearsome warriors guarding the two crown pieces to be a little more of an obstacle. I suppose the game is just on easy mode.
Does this mean that I'm the king now? Am I at least rich enough to afford more than three arrows?
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It's not really a Dungeons & Dragons RPG, more like a tiny twin-stick Zelda. In fact this was apparently one of the games that inspired The Tower of Druaga, which itself went on to inspire Ys, Dragon Slayer, Zelda... the entire Japanese action RPG genre. So there is a bit of a connection there.
The game hasn't got music, but it manages to make exploring tense by how you can hear the monsters before you can see them. They can be hard to deal with, though on easy my most deadly opponents were my own arrows. The caves got repetitive fast, but I did appreciate how it painted them onto the screen as I stepped into the unknown, as it meant I always knew when I exploring somewhere new. There's no danger of getting stuck walking around in circles here as you know exactly where you've already been.
Overall I'd say the game is alright for 1982, but it goes straight to #1 in my rankings, as it's objectively the best and only D&D game that I've played so far.
1983 - ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: TREASURE OF TARMIN
(INTELLIVISION)
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| Developer: | APh Consulting | | | Release Date: | 1983 | | | Systems: | Intellivision, Aquarius |
Next it's... the exact same game? No hang on, I can see the difference: they've capitalised the word 'CARTRIDGE'.
It's got Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin written all over the box, cartridge, manual etc. so there's not really any ambiguity over what it really is. It's just a rare case of the title not actually making it to the title screen. The title's not on the Intellivision Lives! compilation either, as they call it by its original planned name of Minotaur. He's a tip if you ever have to rename your game and you can't think of a title: take the first half of the original title and swap it with the last half, then drop a couple of letters.
This was apparently the second console RPG ever made, with the first being Dragonstomper on the Atari 2600. I don't know how true that is, I've never heard of either of them, but this is definitely a landmark video game for me personally, as it's the first time I've ever had a reason to type the words "Mattel Aquarius".
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The game almost got ported to the Atari 2600 as well, in fact the port was finished, but Mattel Electronics closed down before releasing it.
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So I'm going to do something I don't often do, I'm going to read... the manual.
I'm also going with easy difficulty instead of normal for a change, because I want to survive long enough to figure this out. Apparently it only takes an hour or less to finish a game on Easy, which is good because there are no saves.
Okay, I'm going to quickly Photoshop together a guide to what the HUD means:
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"E" is the compass direction I'm facing, "1" is my current floor and the ( is the bow that I have equipped in my right hand. Hey there's another giant bow in the sky! Oh, I think that's the moon.
Then from top to bottom there's my health, my defence and my attack. The numbers on the left show physical stats while the numbers on the right show spiritual stats. So my bow has 6 regular damage and 0 magical damage.
Like the first game there's no character creation, you just get right into it as a guy skilled in indoor archery. At least he's brought more than 3 arrows this time.
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The Intellivision has a keypad controller so there are a lot of buttons to press and none of them are picking up this circular item at my feet. I'm just getting a loud buzzing sound and it's making me sad. I need to check the manual again so I can understand what's going on here.
Aha, it's a marker telling me that this hallway is the perimeter of this dungeon floor. That's something I've never seen in a game before. To enter the labyrinth proper with all its items and monsters I need to go through a door and fortunately there just happens to be one one over on the right. Okay, what button here is 'open door'?
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The game takes place on a grid and you can tell by the stripes on the wall that the room is two tiles wide. I like how it has an extra frame of movement between tiles to give the impression of movement; it doesn't just flick between locations.
Hey there's a thing in here on the floor!
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There's a 'pick up' button, but it's not working because I already have an item in my main hand (the bow). So I have to swap my bow into my other hand (or into my backpack) in order to to have a hand free to grab the trash on the ground.
I still didn't know what it was, so I checked the manual again and it turns out that it's a helmet! I pressed the use button, it disappeared, and I got 2/0 armour. Man, I'm so good at video games. Oh wait, I need to swap my bow back into my hand before I go through the next door.
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I'll still go through the door, but then I'll take a left when I'm in there and see what's around the corner.
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Combat is turn-based, so now that it's attacked me all it can do is stand there and wait for me to make my move. I have a bow and a bunch of arrows, so I'll press the 'attack' button and see how that works out for me.
Oh cool, it was an instant kill, and the enemy evaporated into smoke just like they did in the first game. Very nice. I've got a lot more arrows in this than I did in the first game, though this still has the same way of indicating my ammo level with a series of clicks when I press the 'tell me how much ammo I have' button. Did I mention that the Intellivision has a lot of buttons?
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I found a another thing on the floor and the manual called it a 'money belt' so I figured I should try to open it. I wasn't expecting the bloody wall to open instead! Fortunately stumbling around swapping stuff between my hands didn't count as a move, so I had all the time I needed to get my bow into the correct hand.
Incidentally, you can see the attack number on the bottom right change when I change my weapon. Apparently a money belt does 0 damage when you throw it, so I'm not getting my hopes up that I'll find much in there when I get it open. If I ever get it open.
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It seems like he's going to stay put on his tile until I'm ready to deal with him, so I'm not too bothered about the threat. Plus I've collected a bunch of new weapons to use against him, like an axe and a dagger. It turns out that I have to pick up as many blades as I can, as the weapon degradation in this is crazy. I get to use them once before they disappear for good.
In fact I should probably just stick with my bow until I run out of ammo or enemies become too tough to one-shot with it. Though even my bow has a chance of breaking on me.
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Right now I'm properly engaging in the core gameplay mechanic: shuffling stuff between my hands and my backpack. I can't pick up items until my right hand is empty, so I have to swap that item into my left hand, or into an empty space in the backpack. Though I also have to rotate the backpack as it's only the slot on the right (at 3 o'clock) that gets swapped with my hand. It's bloody awkward is what it is.
Oh hang on, it turns out that this bag of flour I'm looking at counts as food, so I can just pick it up without any messing around with my inventory. Well, okay then. I also grabbed a gauntlet earlier so that's why my armour has gone up another point.
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Trouble is that exploration requires walking around this random unmarked maze of identical hallways and identical doors and I can't tell if I'm going in circles or not. At least the other game made it obvious if I'd been somewhere already. I need an automap! I also need to get rid of these money belts somehow to make space for weapons.
I've completed entire RPGs, I'm sure I can figure out how to open a bloody money belt in this one. There may be a lot of buttons but the Intellivision controller is still finite. Aha! I have to drop the belt on the floor and then I 'open' it like a door! See, I'm learning. I got coins from one and a necklace from the other, both treasure items.
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But how do I use ladders anyway? When I press the 'use' button on them all I get is a loud buzzer (which is kind of irritating to be honest). Am I going to have to look this up? Oh duh! There's a 'Use ladder' button! Use the use ladder button to use ladders.
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Wait, hang on, how did I end up on floor 3? This is supposed to be floor 2. OH, I'm in a fight so it must be showing me the enemy health. With 3 HP he's getting one-shotted like the rest of them.
You can back out of fights if they look too tough, though hitting the retreat button gives the enemy a free attack, so you're still getting hit.
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I'm up to 23 health, so I'm in better shape than when I started, though my attack score has gone right down to zero. That's because I'm using a fireball spell which deals spiritual damage instead! I only switched because I felt like it, the dude's got 3 HP like the other one so anything I have will kill him.
Hey, he's using a fireball spell too! Oh crap I only have 2 spiritual health! I can't survive another magic attack.
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I think that I've been resurrected without my loot or my gear, so I can make a second attempt at floor 2. There's nothing in the manual about doing a corpse run to get your weapons back, so I think I need to start from scratch.
Okay, time to go search the floor and grab some replacement gear.
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I feel like I should probably be drawing a map, but I don't really want to. I just want to find a bow and some arrows so I can go down to the next floor. The are surprisingly few enemies on this level by the way. There's surprisingly little anything.
Where are all the potions and chalices and bags and lightning bolts and rings and spears and books and crossbows and scrolls? The manual has a list of great stuff that I'm just not finding. Though I suppose I did find a thing that made my health blue.
What I really want is the reusable book that lets you see through walls. And the one that lets you teleport.
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It seemed like the smart thing to do was to leave the ladder and go fight the monster, as the battles are only going to get tougher down there on the lower floor. Unfortunately he survived my dagger attack and I had nothing left to throw at him! All I could do was retreat, which gave him a free hit on me, so things are going badly.
Well my options just collapsed down to one: I'm heading down the ladder. Short level!
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What would I do with it anyway, poke his eye out? He's a skeleton. I'd have more luck trying to pull his arm off and then beating him over the skull with it, though that's the one thing that I don't have a button for.
The loot on this floor seems just as bad as the last one. I'm finding no weapons, so I'm going to escape down the next ladder and try my luck on a new floor.
Wait, crap, floor 4 was the one with the treasure on! I'm supposed to fight a Minotaur there and then collect the loot to beat the game! Damn damn damn. What do I do now, go down another 255 floors until it loops?
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At least I have finally escaped the hallways. The nightmare has ended. I can finally rest.
Though first I have to try out the Mattel Aquarius port. I can't miss out on a chance to get some screenshots from a new system I've never played before, even if that system is supposed to be kind of terrible.
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| Mattel Aquarius |
The graphics have changed, it's got a higher resolution, and there are words explaining what the numbers mean. Instead of going down to slay the Minotaur your hero is going after the Dragon King. Plus I found a re-useable magic scroll weapon in this version. Maybe it's the randomisation being nice to me for once, maybe the port has changed something, it's hard to tell.
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| Mattel Aquarius |
Is the game any good though? Honestly, I'm not sure. I mean I didn't enjoy it much, but I haven't played early '80s RPGs like Wizardry and Ultima, so I don't have the context. I've seen people call it the deepest game on the Intellivision and that seems plausible. All I know is that it feels pretty sophisticated for a console game that predates the NES, and it plays like a proper video game. But it's got nothing to do with Dungeons & Dragons really.
1983 was the end of the Mattel Electronics era of Dungeons & Dragons games, as the division lost so much money during the US console game crash that Mattel nearly went bankrupt. RPGs were mostly a computer game genre at this time however, and computers were thriving...
I'll just tell you what I'm doing next week: I'm covering all the Dungeons & Dragons video games released in the years 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987. If you're a fan you might already know what they are.
If you want to be notified about new posts, then you can follow me on sites like Bluesky, Mastodon, Discord etc. with the links on the right. RSS too. And if you want to leave a comment, then you should.
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