Tower of Doom is a Roguelike RPG with mazes that must be explored and monsters that must be defeated in order to escape the dungeon.
There are seven different quests, of increasing difficulty, and the player can choose to play as any one of ten different classes (Novice, Warrior, Archer, Knight, Trader, Barbarian, Waif, Friar, Warlock, and Warlord). The ultimate aim is to reach the stairs on each level, and to keep going down until you reach the exit.
Armor Battle is a multiplayer tank combat game for the Intellivision that was released in 1979.
An early, proto RPG based on the TSR AD&D universe, released for the Intellivision in 1983. It’s actually a sequel to the previous Intellivision AD&D game: Cloudy Mountain.
Treasure of Tarmin is one of my all-time favourite Intellivision games; it’s like an early prototype version of Dungeon Master, with crude graphics and minimal sound. That said: playing Treasure of Tarmin is a great experience if you learn how to play it properly. Reading the manual helps. As does configuring the controls correctly.
Continue reading Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin, Intellivision
This early, prototype RPG was initially released in 1982 under the title of “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” and was later re-named as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain to distinguish it from its sequel, Treasure of Tarmin.
Continue reading Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain, Intellivision
B-17 Bomber is a very early – but really rather excellent – WWII bomber simulation, released for the Intellivision in 1982.
Looking Glass Technologies are probably best known for their Ultima Underworld series of games, but this 1996 tactical shooter from them is also a retro-gaming classic.
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri is a first-person, futuristic ‘combat suit’ type action game with an interesting mix of styles.
SSI‘s Dungeon Hack is an RPG that generates random dungeons, or custom dungeons, and is one big real-time battle through a Forgotten Realms world, in the style of Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder. It’s a never-ending dungeon crawl that gets progressively harder, and even has its own high score table!
Known in its native Japan as Nazo no Murasame Jō, The Mysterious Murasame Castle is an action adventure released by Nintendo for the FDS in 1986.
It came not long after the first Zelda (also released on the Famicom Disk System) and uses many Zelda gameplay elements in its design, except with a ‘Feudal Japan’ style setting.
Continue reading The Mysterious Murasame Castle, Famicom Disk System
Esper Dream is a superb real-time, combat-based Role-Playing Game for the Famicom Disk System. It was developed by Konami and released in Japan in 1987.
Blue Byte‘s 1996 PC release, Albion, is a classic science fiction role-playing game.
