Before Christmas I visited a nifty local retro store and the shop owner, who recognizes me now, said he may have something I wanted. He reached under the counter and produced this:
Yes, the game was inside:
This is a handheld LCD Dungeons & Dragons LCD game from 1981. I’d been wanting this for many years but had never seen a copy for sale. I opened my wallet and handed over the $80 he was asking in light speed!
The game is complete in box with the instructions, which are well-written and remarkably long for a game like this:
It’s a maze game in which you must defeat a dragon or die trying. Gameplay takes place on a 10×10 grid of rooms and you can move around in any direction until you either kill the dragon or are slain.
As you can see your current location is shown, and via the ‘cursor’ and ‘move’ buttons you can head in either of the four directions. There are no walls or dead ends; each room has four exits and the maze wraps around. Some rooms contain pits (which end the game unless you have the grappling rope, as I do above), bats (which move you randomly) or the dragon (game over).
You’ll need the magic arrow (found randomly) to kill the dragon, and you get one shot only to try. The dragon icon above reveals that the dragon is in an adjacent room. I took a gamble and shot north and failed, and then I headed east and…
Game over!
It’s very difficult. 13% of the rooms are instant death, and with only one rope and one arrow the chance of success seems minor. I played about ten games and only found the arrow twice and only once did I encounter the dragon while I had it.
As a child I would have loved this game, carefully mapping it while playing to assist in victory. It’s only the second actual D&D electronic game (the other, a board game, we also own) and is probably the first actual ‘electronic RPG’ (of sorts). While it does have a score, that’s only if you win, and since it’s time-based I imagine luck plays too big a factor!
Note the text: Look for other exciting games in the Action Arcade Series! It turns out there was only one other – a Masters Of The Universe game that is identical in gameplay to this one with a different LCD. It’s apparently even rarer, especially in the original blister packaging.
I’m happy with my purchase, and this is now a gem in my collection. Now should I do a followup post about the electronic D&D board game from 1980?
