Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom (Intellivision)

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom (later known simply as "Tower of Doom" when licensing issues became a problem) is the third entry in the AD&D series for the Intellivision. The three games were revolutionary console RPGs and each broke new ground in a different way. The first entry, Cloudy Mountain a.k.a. Crown of Kings is more of an Action Adventure game. The second entry, the Treasure of Tarmin, introduces a first person perspective. Tower of Doom scraps that design in favor of hardcore dungeon crawling similar to glorious games like Nethack. One must give credit here, however, considering Tower of Doom was designed with limited resources (unlike Nethack) and release in 1989... which is fairly late considering the previous AD&D game (Tarmin) was released in 1983 (although writtin in 1981).

Tower of Doom, not to be confused with the Capcom beat-em-up, is a standard dungeon crawler. You can fight enemies with ranged attacks, or go into melee combat in first person. You choose one of 10 classes, I prefer Warlord, but others are fun as well, and journey into the dungeon. I've heard the levels are actually 256 floors deep, but I've only gone down 15 floors so far.

As you dive down, you find more items and stronger monsters. It's a dash to the next door in the dungeon, because your health will start to drain if you waste time. You can't save, so you're always going for a high score.

You can also find food, potions, magic spells, weapons, and treasure. Treasure ads to your score, and thankfully disapears once you use it. You can only hold 8 items, so inventory management becomes important, but not impossible. I haven't found any armor, so I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist, although you can find magical rings and treasure crowns, and ghostly spells; the game packs variety.

The dungeon floors are randomly generated on some levels, but the game has pre-existing adventures as well. Honestly, as a serious rougelike player, I prefer the randomly-generated levels.

It's an amazing game, and well worth purchasing Intellivision Lives! or even a real Intellivision to play this game. I don't own a better, faster paced, randomly generated dungeon crawler on the DS.

Beating Tower of Doom Catacombs 12

After a few days of attempts, I finally beat one of the levels in Tower of Doom for the Intellivision. Admittedly, 12 levels is not that bad. I lucked out hard with stair placement and pretty much zoomed out of the tower. Using Warlord was another major advantage (the Warlord starts at level 4 & with tons of gear)

Now I'm working on the deeper mazes, but it seems everytime I'm on a roll my health starts dropping mysteriously. Maybe I'm not eating enough food, but I didn't see any "starving" message. Maybe I'm being poisoned and I just don't know it; in any case these mysterious "health leech" deaths are beginning to become a serious pain. I just wish I knew what was killing me.

My "winning" game was played on the PS2, even though most of my Tower of Dooming takes place on Intellivision Lives! for the DS. Both versions are completely solid; the touchscreen doesn't offer much in terms of gameplay for this title.

The Catacombs are a randomly-generated series of dungeons. It's a little like playing Berzerk the RPG. Supposedly even stronger monsters exist in the later levels; I'm looking forward to giving them a medieval smackdown.

Intellivision Lives! DS Review

Most Intellivision games are terrible. However, there are enough exceptions to make this collection worthwhile for any retro gamer.

The stars of this collection are undoubtedly the AD&D games, relabeled as generic fantasy adventures, but with all the original art and gameplay.

Crown of Kings was the first. It's something in-between Adventure for the 2600 and The Legend of Zelda. It randomly-generates caves and the map to offer endless potential and replayability.



Tower of Doom is my other personal favorite, offering a selection of dungeons, many randomly-generated, and is quite simply an awesome dungeon crawler.

Frog Bog is a nice addition as well, and I've always thought it was better than Frogs & Flies for the Atari.

Other Intellivision classics like Astromash appear, but I'm sure they left a few of the favorites out. They certainly left out the extras--such as documentaries present in the PS2 version--out of this release. Every game, however, has an in-game instruction manual, and I've found the interface intuitive and easy-to-navigate.

It's definitely the collection to own, and although it'ss getting hard to find these days, scoring a copy is not impossible. I'd recommend getting this collection while you can, and maybe even supplimenting it with the Intellivision Lives! disc for the PS2 or PC. I picked the PS2 version up for $1.59 at gamestop this week, and that's a hell of a deal. The DS version is a little more expensive, but it's got the better game selection and the the touchpad function nicely with the overly-complex Intellivision controls.

Get both--Intellivision might not be the best, but it's good enough. The AD&D games are truly epic, and legitimize the purchase, everything else is just gravy.

Many of the games are sports titles, a few are basically unplayably slow by today's standards. Others are just a little dull. However, it does have over 60 games, and single-cart multiplayer modes on tons of titles. Outside the Dungeons and Dragons games, many simply lack the spark of classic Atari adventures like River Raid, Adventure, Pitfall, Super Breakout, Missile Command, Centipede, Pac-Man, Circus Atari, and Berzerk.

Still, every now and then you'll find a great gem like Space Spartans, Frog Bog, Tower of Doom, Crown of Kings, or Treasure of Tarmin. What's the harm in having some crappy titles rounding out the collection? The variety ensures that this will last you at least a year if you're just now getting into the Intellivision. I've only been playing the games a few years myself ever since I bought an Intellivision Plug-N-Play a few years ago. It required 4 AA batteries, and I promptly returned it, but not before playing Crown of Kings and getting hooked. However the game is unfortunately missing from the PS2 and PC collections, which makes getting both versions a must for everyone. The $1.49 price tag is worth it for the cool virtual arcade menu, documentary, programmer interviews, and ability to play on a large monitor.

I like to think of it as an expansion pack for the DS version, and a necessary one at that.