Difficulty: Easy (2/5) Final Rating: 21 Ranking at Time of Posting: 37/142 (26%) Tunnels of Doom is the subject of many fond remembrances by people who were 10 in 1982 and had a TI-99. I can see why. It offers innovative elements, good use of sound, and fun encounters, and its party-based combat screen might be the most tactical combat system we'd seen (in 1982) outside of Wizardry. It certainly deserved a look. A shot from the game's room/combat screen.

Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom (Capcom, 1993) ☑ Dynamite Cop/Dynamite Deka 2. Knights of Valour Super Heroes Plus/Sangoku Senki Super Heroes Plus (IGS, 2004) ☑ Knights of Valour: Ti Yong Zhong Yuan/Sangoku Senki: Ti Yong Zhong Yuan (IGS, 1999) ☑ Knights of Valour: The Seven. Developed by Sam Herald. 225548 downloads. Mario is one of the most recognized characters on the planet, which is why it is no wonder that Mario has been ported to almost every TI calculator out there. A fast paced, sidescrolling platform game, and one of the most popular games on the calculator. For the.Missing.

My three characters are facing a giant rat. GID, the leader/fighter, has 18 hit points damage against his 20 hit points total, so he's not doing so well. GET, my thief, is the active character, and he's targeting the giant rat with a crossbow. The + under his icon indicates he has a pretty good chance of hitting it.

When we defeat it, we have a treasure chest to look forward to, and the fountain in the middle of the room may provide healing. I don't know that I'd recommend it for a 2014 player. It involves learning an emulator that isn't necessary for many other games (the only other RPGs I can find for a TI-99 are Legends and Legends II), mastering a keyboard layout that makes no sense except on a native keyboard, and getting an RPG experience that isn't exactly going to draw your attention away from Dark Souls.

Fortunately, that's what I'm here for. The TI-99/4A keyboard. There were no separate arrow keys, so the game uses the ESDX cluster for movement and the FCTN combinations for 'proceed' and 'back.' Tunnels of Doom was one of dozens of programs (but the only RPG) written internally at Texas Instruments as a way to promote the computer.

Technically, Tunnels of Doom is the name for the overall game engine, and the idea was there would be multiple scenarios playable under that engine. The game shipped with two of them: Pennies and Prizes and Quest of the King. The former was a children's game that featured collecting treasure but no enemies. The latter is what people remember as the core game. In it, you lead a party of up to four characters in a quest to find both a kidnapped king and his magic Orb of Power. You have a limited number of turns to accomplish these tasks.

The player has a lot of control over the game's difficulty. You get to determine how many floors the game has (from up to 10), the overall game difficultly (easy, medium, hard), and how many characters to include in the party. A multi-character party can include fighters, thieves, and wizards, or you can adventure with a solo 'hero' who has the abilities of all classes. Fighters can use any weapons and armor, thieves have a trap-avoidance ability, and wizards can use scrolls. You have to repeatedly reference your characters' names in-game when assigning items and taking actions, so it's best not to name them things like 'Mxyzptlk.'

Character creation. The top level of the dungeon has a general store where you initially equip your characters from a pool of gold. Theoretically, you can return to it later to buy better equipment, but it's usually best not to waste the time. Buying stuff at the beginning of the game. Once you set the parameters, the dungeon levels are randomly-generated and seeded. They consist of a bunch of twisty corridors, which you explore in first-person view... Ending in rooms that you explore in third-person view.

In this, they are similar to what we'll later see in Ultima IV and V. The game gets a lot of praise for using color in an era in which the typical dungeon crawler used wireframe graphics, but to me the color doesn't really add to any substance. I rather prefer the bare-bones wireframes, and the bleak sense they convey, to traveling through pastel-colored dungeons. This room contained one of the objects of my quest. Rooms might contain any of the following: • Enemies to fight • Miscellaneous treasures • Treasure chests, which might contain armor, weapons, gold, scrolls, or maps of the level • Vaults to open • Secret doors leading to unmapped parts of the level • Fountains, which randomly increase or decrease attributes • 'Living statues,' which take money to identify unidentified magic items Donating money to a living statue to identify that 'unknown scroll.' In combat, this is one of the few games of the era in which you didn't just hit (F)ight and hope for the best.

Each character gets a movement action and an attack action each round. There are some tactics associated with maneuvering party members into melee range or staying in missile range, swapping magic items between characters, and conserving magic scrolls for when you really need them. It isn't anything earth-shattering, but it does anticipate the more complex iconographic combat systems we'd see in SSI games, including Wizard's Crown, Shard of Spring, and ultimately the Gold Box series.

Fighting two 'evil manes.' Characters level quite slowly as they accumulate experience, gaining 5 hit points for every new level, but rarely exceeding in character levels the number of levels in the dungeon. Characters don't 'die' in the game. If their wounds exceed their hit points, they'll become 'disabled.' At that point, they can be healed by fountains or by purchasing healing at the general store, or slowly by eating rations.

The dynamic makes it more likely that you'll lose the game because the quest times out than because of full-party death. The 'character status' window. The number of turns you have available to complete the quest is dependent on the number of dungeon levels and the difficulty. Each turn comprises 10 steps (including checking secret doors and listening at doors), so you don't want to waste time. The game is one of the first to feature an automap. I found a level map in one of the rooms, so the part that I've yet to explore is in blue. There are two gameplay elements in Tunnels of Doom that I've seen in no other games in my chronology.

The first is the ability to 'listen at doors' before you enter rooms. If there's a monster in the room, the action will produce the sound normally made by that monster in combat. Since it's hard to record notes about a sound, my scratchpad is filled with entries like: • 'Boop-dit-dit-dit-dit' = Lizard • High-pitched 'do-do-do' = Rat. The second element is a fun mechanism by which you open vaults, where you usually find your quest objects. The game tells you that the combination to the vault consists of, for instance, 'three digits between 1 and 4,' and you have to try various combinations (212, 321, etc.).

After each try, the game tells you whether you're high or low, and how many of the digits you got correctly. Through a process of deduction, you figure out the right combination. Every false try has a chance of damaging the character (though rogues usually, or always, evade this).

It's a fun little mini-game. I get why TI-99 owners from the early 1980s felt this was a gem, but today it's interesting solely as a curio. It only scores a 18 on my GIMLET, hurt by a lack of any story and NPCs (0 on both) and unimaginative enemies (1). It does best in the 'equipment' (3) and overall 'gameplay' (4) categories, the latter for its quick pace, user-defined level of difficulty, and lots of replayability. It gets a 2 everywhere else. [ Edit: in consideration of features I didn't experience, I increased the 'encounters and foes' and 'economy' ratings to 3, increasing the overall score to 21 overall.]. A fan named Ed Burns created a several years ago, in which he includes an with author Kevin Kenney.

Kenney indicates that he was the primary author on two other TI games, Hunt the Wumpus and A-Maze-ing (the latter two both adapted from other sources). Shortly after Tunnels of Doom, he was laid off as part of a large downsizing, although he worked under contract to create another Tunnels module that was never released. He says he drew from tabletop Dungeons & Dragons, Akalabeth, and Wizardry in his design for the game. Finally, he notes that the was a point of pride for TI at the time. In 1985 or 1986, a Chicago police officer named John Behnke created a Tunnels of Doom Editor that allowed users to create their own adventures using the Tunnels engine. According to Matt Barton's Dungeons & Desktops (extract available ), it is this editor, and the modules created with it--such as one set in a K-Mart and one set on the Enterprise--that 'most people remember' about the game, but I wasn't able to find many such remembrances online. I don't know how widely these fan modules were disseminated.

This seems like a surprisingly good game. I've never heard of it before, which is somewhat to be expected considering it's age, but it seems like it would have been a really fun game at the time.

I find myself fond of the graphics in this one. I disagree a bout the wireframe graphics being superior. I feel that the colors give it a little more joy to look. In fact, I find wireframe graphics somewhat hard to reconcile with. Despite Wizardry being one of my favorite franchises, I rarely revisit any game before Wizardry VI. You should really try it with a slightly bigger dungeon.

A 5 level dungeon doesn't take too long to play, but is a lot more fun. Really deep dungeons can be pretty challenging, even on easy. Here are some other points: (1) You only need to enter the first letter of your character's name, as long as they are all different.

Text completion in 1982! It really makes the game better. You can name a character Melchizedek if you want, but don't have a Methuselah too. (2) Don't forget to break in to rooms with the B key. This ensures that your whole party is in the room and ready to fight. Your screenshot shows the back row stuck in the hallway. (3) There are 2 more general stores if you have a big enough dungeon.

They are on floor 4 and floor 8. They have a few new items for sale, but everything is much more expensive. (4) The living statues get greedier the deeper you go. (5) The above to points mean that the economy is never really out of whack.

You never hit a stage with a ton of useless gold. (6) There are magic items that increase your weapon stats. Honing stones for weapons, repair for armour, and Reflex Draught for armour bonus. The items are completely random, so this makes for a big variation in difficulty between games.

3 or 4 honing stones make for a pretty easy game, but sometimes you don't get any. (7) There are monsters that decrease your weapon stats. It really increases the tension when you only have a little time left to find the king and the orb and a monster turns your trusty battle axe in to something with the attack power of a short sword. No time to go back to the store, so you'd best soldier on and hope to find a decent weapon in the next chest.

(8) After you find the quest items, the number of wandering monsters increases greatly. You've got to fight your way back to the surface.

(9) The pastel dungeon walls get darker and darker the deeper you go. It looks all light and cheerful on floors 1 and 2, slightly less so on floors 3 and 4. Things start to get gloomy and dank on floor 5. All of this adds up to a game that is remarkably fun. They got the play balance right. There is real tension in this game.

Experienced players will usually win on easy, but not always. Hard is well named. You can play a full game in and afternoon, but I find myself going back again and again. One other aspect this game has you may have missed. You don't HAVE to fight monsters, necessarily. You can attempt to negotiate with them by pressing the 'N' key at the start of combat.

If the monsters are willing to negotiate (animals and undead, naturally don't, some are more greedy than others, the monster stat screen tells you the percentage chance) then they'll demand a certain amount of money to leave the party alone. If they are in a random corridor they will disappear and not bother the party again. If they're in a room, they stay put and the party can't loot or use any items in the room. So it comes in handy to avoid fights against monsters that offer no useful gain (no treasure in room, no treasure on monster). I'm somewhat surprised you missed this feature, did you have a copy of the manual when you played?

Paul It wasn't a perfect game by any means (though I used to enjoy it). It didn't compare to something like Wizardry. But try and tell me that the Intro music wasn't fantastic for something from the early 80's. Greg Laswell Take A Bow Free Mp3 Download. That's the thing that stuck in my head the most.

There's a remake of Tunnels of Doom here: It doesn't try to be a 100% faithful remake. They upgraded the graphics, sound, and music to more modern standards. But the mechanics, items, and monsters are as I remember them. I recently have delved into the TI-99 and have identified several obscure CRPGs and adventures worth checking out since I love the really clunky old ones (like Dungeons of Death / Magdarr). As usual MOCAGH gives a good glimpse into many, but not all of these.

Among the notables are Wizard's Lair, Wizard's Revenge (which inspired another modern homebrew sequel), and a number of Tunnels of Doom expansion modules by 3rd party sw makers of the day. I also have (not up at MOCAGH) Catacombs and The Quest which may have been BBS-shared titles. Lastly I have Wizard's Dominion, an obscure 3D maze simple RPG title I picked up years before I had a TI-99, since it was also listed in a Compute's! Gazette ad as being available for the C64. I welcome all comments about the material in this blog, and I generally do not censor them. However, please follow these rules: 1.

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I only use either when spam gets out of control, so I appreciate your patience with both moderation tools. Read the explaining this blog and to understand the current playing order. I am following a list of CRPGs in chronological order derived from several sources, including Wikipedia, MobyGames, GameFAQs, and contributions from readers. I am going in chronological order on two sections of the list: a) all RPGs in the 1990s, and b) non-PC RPGs that I missed during my first four years of blogging when I played only games released for DOS. To appear on my play list, a game must be a a) single-player RPG released for a personal computer, and b) in a language that uses a Latin alphabet. My definition of 'RPG' requires the game to have three core criteria: 1) character leveling and development, 2) combats based at least partly on attribute-derived statistics, 3) inventories consisting of something other than just puzzle items.

If I reach a game on my playlist and it lacks one of these items, I may mark it as 'rejected' and skip it. I can reject independent and shareware RPGs if they are clearly amateur efforts with no innovations or accolades attached to them.

I cannot use cheats. I cannot look at FAQs or walkthroughs until I have finished playing. I don't have to win every game, but I must play for at least six hours. Highest Rated So Far: Longest Played: Highest Rankings by Category: (When multiple games tie, I've chosen the one with the highest overall rating) Game World: Characters: NPCs: Encounters: Magic/Combat: Equipment: Economy: Quests: G/S/I: Gameplay: Games of the Year: 1979: 1980: 1981: 1982: 1983: 1984: 1985: 1986: 1987: 1988: 1989: 1990: Chet's 'Must Play' List Play these games if you want to get a full sense of the history of computer RPGs (current through my current year). Dunjonquest: The Temple of Apshai (1979) Akalabeth: World of Doom (1979) Rogue: The Adventure Game (1980) Ultima (1981) Wizardry (1981) Moria (1983) Ultima III (1983) Questron (1984) The Bard's Tale (1985) Phantasie (1985) Ultima IV (1985) Wizard's Crown (1985) Might & Magic (1986) Starflight (1986) Dungeon Master (1987) Pool of Radiance (1988) Ultima V (1988) Wasteland (1988) NetHack 3.0 Series (1989) Hero's Quest (1989) Ultima VI (1990) Eye of the Beholder (1991) Fate: Gates of Dawn (1991; first act only).