Category: Retro

Dungeons & Dragons LCD

February 10, 2019

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?

Commodore 64ing

December 17, 2018

A few months back I got one of these:

It’s the C64 Mini console, which is a Commodore 64 on-a-chip in a cute little case with a bunch of software built in.

It’s good but not great, slightly crippled by a poor joystick and input lag. It’s also disappointingly bare bones in terms of presentation, with the lack of instructions making many of the games – originally from the 80s – borderline unplayably difficult.

But none of this matters since it includes C64 BASIC, and this meant I could code again! And I did…

I started to see if I could manage without an actual keyboard. I did, but it was excruciatingly slow selecting letters from the virtual keyboard (on the right of the screen as shown above). But I had enough fun I went and bought a cheap usb keyboard to continue.

As you can see I’m working on a ‘villain generator’, the obvious first step towards the long-awaited next installment in the Mercenary King series. My program would generate an infinite amount of bad guys that could easily fit into any game!

It didn’t take long, and it worked! Here’s four examples of the infinite results:

Unfortunately the lcd monitor I use doesn’t photograph well so you can’t appreciate the dazzling colour, but I’m sure you’re amazed by my amazing graphics? One of them I (may have) borrowed, but the other I designed from scratch! Here’s the sketchbook:

And here’s the sprite data in case you want to use it in your game:

Amazingly and coincidentally (*), while I was working on this I received a postcard that had this code on the back:

Naturally I had to type it in to see what it did…

It was an animated Gudetama sprite! Unfortunately the postcard had no sender on it so I’ll never know who sent me this incredible demo ?

Anyway let me know if you need a villain for a game and I’ll let my C64 mini generate it for you…

(* I may have sent my brother code on a postcard in the past plus he loves Gude…)

Kings Bounty

October 2, 2018

I’ve been on a bit of a retro gaming bender recently, and have bought (and played!) several games for Game Gear, Genesis and NES. One of these was a favourite of my youth, King’s Bounty.

The game was originally released back in 1990 on PC and Mac but this is the Genesis version from 1991. It’s a turn-based strategy game where you control an ever-increasing army on a quest to find a magic item. It’s a classic, and led to the very popular Heroes Of Might And Magic series.

I loved this one half a life ago but hadn’t played it in years. A couple of weekends ago I hooked up the Genesis and gave my newly repurchased (for $15) cartridge a whirl.

I started with the Crusader, playing at the easiest setting. At first I stumbled around forgetting what to do or how to beat the clock but it didn’t take me that long for it to all start coming back…

Within an hour or so I was fiendishly addicted once again, and as the day went on I advanced through the quest until the fourth continent when I upgraded my army to flying units. If you know the game, you know this is the final step to victory.

And shortly thereafter I did indeed win! My very first game in maybe 25 years and I won handily. Although maybe just because I had used the easiest character at the easiest setting? Couldn’t I do better?

I had enjoyed it so much I immediately restarted on a higher difficulty with the mage, who many say is the hardest character.

This time I min-maxed like crazy and was laser-focused on victory. While the Crusader took me about five (real time) hours to win with, it was less than a single hour before I reached the victory screen with the mage. As you can see I took far fewer days and got a much higher score:

And yet, I could have done better! Three of the boss villains remained alive, and had I killed them before finding the treasure I could have squeezed out a few more points. However I’d spent an entire Sunday playing and ran out of time. But just in case you’d like to ‘load’ my save right before victory so you can kill those bosses yourself, here’s the password:

Let me know if you beat my score 🙂

Robot Claw