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.
Tag Archives: magic
Firelord, ZX Spectrum
Stephen Crow‘s fifth commercial game for the ZX Spectrum, released by Hewson Consultants in 1986.
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.
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.
Continue reading Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin, Intellivision
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!
Druid, Famicom Disk System
Another weird one: a conversion of a British game to the Japan-only Famicom Disk System…
Druid was originally created by Electralyte Software for Firebird Software on the Commodore 64, and was later converted to the FDS by Jaleco in 1988.
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.
Cotton 2: Magical Night Dreams, Sega Saturn
The second game in the infamous Cotton series, developed by Success and released into arcades first, then converted to the Sega Saturn in 1997.
Continue reading Cotton 2: Magical Night Dreams, Sega Saturn
Shinrei Jusatsushi Tarōmaru, Sega Saturn
Never officially released in English-speaking territories (but translated by fans as “Psychic Killer Taromaru“) this side-scrolling action game is one of the rarest Sega Saturn titles in existence.
Rare because publisher Time Warner Interactive only produced a very limited number of copies of the game in 1997, before pulling out of the games market altogether. So actual copies of Shinrei Jusatsushi Tarōmaru have changed hands for silly money over the decades.
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.
The King of Grabs 