Tag Archives: Level-Grinder

Gateway To Apshai, ColecoVision

Gateway To Apshai is sometimes described as a Roguelike RPG, but it doesn’t have randomly generated dungeons – they’re set, in number order, and there are a lot of them.

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Tower of Doom, Intellivision

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.

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Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin, Intellivision

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.

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Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain, 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.

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Dungeon Hack, PC

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!

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Lutter, Famicom Disk System

Lutter is an obscure-but-interesting combination of platform game and maze game, but with RPG elements – like levelling – also thrown into the mix.

You play the titular Lutter, a knight of the realm on a quest to rescue the princess from a maze-like castle of platforms, ladders, doors and monsters.

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Esper Dream, 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.

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Albion, PC

Blue Byte‘s 1996 PC release, Albion, is a classic science fiction role-playing game.

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Master of Magic, Commodore 64

Master of Magic is an archaic Role-Playing Game that is a throwback to the earliest days of home computing – except that it was released in 1985.

The game was programmed by Richard Darling (of Codemasters fame) with graphics by James Wilson. It was published at a budget price (£2.99) by Mastertronic on their M.A.D. label.

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Parasite Eve, PlayStation

Parasite Eve is a single-player, horror-themed action/adventure game developed and published by Square in 1998. The game is actually the sequel to the novel Parasite Eve, written by Hideaki Sena.

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