These are games that feature movement on a tile-based grid system. With the player moving from one tile to another as a ‘step’ in a certain direction. Examples of ’tile-based’ games would be: Dungeon Master and Legend of Grimrock.
Released the same year as the game that preceded it (1991), Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon is another excellent first-person, party-based, TSR AD&D-licensed Role-Playing Game with atmospheric, level-grinding gameplay.
Continue reading Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon, PC
Westwood Studios‘ Eye of the Beholder is a bold attempt to replicate the thrills of Dungeon Master, with real time, first-person exploration and combat.
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
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!
Amberstar is a huge, sprawling Role-Playing Game that was first released by German developer Thalion in 1992. It’s a game that certainly does owe a debt or two to Richard Garriott‘s famous Ultima series, although Amberstar is unique (and good) enough to stand on its proverbial own two feet.
Chaos Strikes Back is to RPGs what The Empire Strikes Back is to movie sequels… It is simply one of the best – and toughest – real-time role-players ever made. Dungeon Master was incredible, but the sequel, Chaos Strikes Back, is just another dimension…
This is a very effective Japanese conversion of the great US, 16-bit classic, Dungeon Master, by FTL and Software Heaven.
The conversion was handled by JVC Interactive and was first released in Japan in 1992, before being translated and released in North America and Europe later.
When I first played Shining In The Darkness – a 1991 party-based Role-Playing Game for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis, developed by Climax Entertainment and published by Sega – I was ready to dismiss it, because of the unattractive, ‘cartoony’ graphics, the clunky interface, and the generic script. But after some determined play – admittedly: in an emulator, and using quicksaves – it became apparent that this was no ‘throwaway’ level-grinder. It was in fact something quite special…
Psygnosis‘ Hired Guns is an innovative, squad-based tactical action game where the player takes control of a team of four mercenaries (from a pool of twelve), each of which has their own viewpoint in the play area.
This is the one: Dungeon Master – the Atari ST original. One of the best games ever made, and among my favourite games of all time…
The King of Grabs 