"Deadly Towers"

In our first service, we reflect on Deadly Towers which was co-developed by Lenar and Tamtex for Irem. It was released in North America in September of 1987 by Broderbund Software. 

Our visiting Deacon is Jeff Gabor. 

The miNEStry founders, Archbishop Dracul and Father Avram, seek to inspire their 8-bit parishioners through methodical and ceremonial scrutiny of the library of games on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:17

Good evening and welcome to the ministry. I am Archbishop Dracul. And alongside me is father Avram. Our creed is to inspire our parishioners with reflections on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Tonight we are reflecting on Deadly Towers, which was co developed by Lenar and Tamtex for Irem. It was released in North America in September of 1987 by Broderbund software. This partnership between Irem and Broderbund was also responsible for publishing games like Spelunker and Guardian Legend. Tonight our visiting Deacon is Jeffrey Gabor. Welcome. Thank you very much for having me. You're most welcome. A testament to the creators Junichi Mizutari game and character design. Other works include the 1985 arcade port Tower of Druaga for the Famicom I have to say, I've played this game. And while I understand its influence to like dungeon crawlers everywhere. I found it to not hold up in the least that it is. It makes it kind of makes sense. It's a sloppy game. Given the frustration the frustration factor is really high on that game. So you know, I'm not I'm really not surprised. However, I don't think it was actually developed for a western audience. Keep that in mind. That's a good perspective. Wise point, Deacon Gabor. R. Nagasu. game design and programming. The Nagasu went on to create a 2d fighting game engine called Mujin. In 1999, for the PC. I had never heard of this when I found it. When I was doing my research on the creators i i was a little bit floored apparently, it's like a fighting. While it's a fighting game engine, as I said, but it's people can like create their own content. They can create their own characters even and like push them to the platform. And it kind of became like a not a cult classic. But that type of feel like among its followers, so you have all sorts of different fighters and characters in this fighting game. It's kind of an interesting thing. But I'd never heard of it before doing this research. Yeah, I saw I saw that support is was supported by Windows and Linux and it is it still around. I don't really know. I didn't download it or play it. I just kind of read about it. Our last creator of mentioned is Yoshinobu Kasukawa, the composer, Kasukawa was also the composer for the 1987 Zombie Hunter, and also potentially the composer for the 1989 major league, both of which were released for the Famicom. And it's interesting to note that from what I can gather, very little information I've been able to find out about major league is that it's based on the movie with the wacky sheen guy I forget his name, Charlie Sheen. Okay, fair enough. It also doesn't have a very good soundtrack. No The soundtrack is abhorrent? Maybe he maybe it was an uncredited work, which is why he's only potentially the composer. I could not find any confirmation that that was true. It was just kind of a big question mark. So very interesting stuff. So marketing. This game was released in 1987, which was pre internet and pre Nintendo Power even in the only piece of marketing we could find was a poster The poster looks very much like it belongs in a, you know, a video store or a toy store of some kind or another. It's a it's a broader bundle poster. So it actually advertises for five games. Lode Runner spelunker. Raid on bungling Bay, Deadly Towers and sqoon are all on this poster. I was at the game store today. And Good God sqoon Is, is they're asking $300 for it. It's crazy. Yeah, prices have definitely skyrocketed for games recently. And I mean, it's, it's it's a fun little shooter. It's charming. I just don't. I don't know. It's one of those things where like, do I really want to spend $300 on this game? Yeah, it is. It's very, it's a very interesting note that in spite of the lack of marketing, how much of an actual, you know, commercial success Deadly Towers was it's kind of uncanny. It seems like every player out there that had a Nintendo somehow managed to find this game in their collection, which is why it's one of the reasons why it's so cheap. Yeah, today is because it's just there's so many of them. Yeah, I feel like in that first year, first couple years, there weren't that many games to actually like pick and choose from. So when you saw the poster and saw what it looked like, it looked like it was going to be like a sequel or, you know, like Legend of Zelda. So I think people wanted to give it a chance. I certainly did. I saw that cover. And there were actually even at the time, it's important to put in, in reflection not only was there not really Nintendo Power or the internet, even like the rental industry wasn't really quite there yet for video games. There was a there was a handful of people that were maybe starting to build up and renting a game which was unique, but people just were end up like I guess I'm gonna buy it. That was your option. Yeah, and you're 100% Correct. Like the the video stores were the concept of even renting VHS tapes, nevermind, video games was still extremely new. first discuss the seven categories for which we execute judgment on Deadly Towers. Category One is the narrative. A reading from the Deadly Towers stories screen. This is an old old story from the stone and copper ages when there lived men and devils. As the coming of age ceremony approached, Prince Meyer grew nervous for the day would be a memorable time in which he would succeed to the throne of the kingdom of Willner. In his worrying about the kingdom of the future, he took himself over by the lake near the castle, to think suddenly, reflecting the moonlight, a shadow a rose from the lake. As the prince stared at it, it gradually turned into a man. Prince Meyer, light of virtue, the man's voice rose out, it is time for you to light up the darkness. Rubas the horrid devil of darkness is plotting to extend this power over your kingdom. He is viciously scheming to build a castle on the northern mountain, to ring magic bells, to lower monsters out at your defenses and to invade the kingdom in a single stroke. If you wish to be forever at peace in the kingdom of Willner you must journey to the northern mountain and burn down the seven bell towers in the devil's castle with the sacred flame. Prince Meyer, only you can accomplish this feat. Go to the mountain, burn down the seven powers defend the kingdom against the devil. With that, the shadow grew Mystere lost its shape, and finally disappeared, leaving the beautiful lake as though untouched. Could it be an Oracle, Prince Meyer murmured. He fell deep into thought for a moment but immediately regained his senses. He had remembered the legend of Khan. The legend said that at the time when God's image appears from the lake A great power will be given to a young man to defeat the devil of darkness and restore peace to the kingdom. hurrying back to the castle, the prince told the king of the strange event, the king, believing in the truth of the matter, excitedly ordered Prince Meyer to destroy Rubas. And all his dark ways. This is a reading from the Deadly Towers story screen. I think it's important to mention that for those who haven't played the game, that if you let the title screen run, a scrolling text of the story will actually start showing up on the screen. And it's kind of like Star Wars style. And it's quite long. I would say it's long. It's probably one of the longest, most robust and intriguing stories for for the time, either. Even on the NES in the very beginning. We were used to like single screen sort of our TV games, that kind of was like a continuation from the Atari. I would say this is probably the longest story on the NES. I would bet some money on that Xi. i Yeah, I think I'm with you. I can't think of any others that are longer off the top of my head. Yeah, I mean, I'm reading like, I'm comparing it to the Legend of Zelda right again. I mean, I can sum it up and it's a quarter of the size. Yeah, many years ago, Prince darkness, Gannon stole one of the Triforce with power. Princess Zelda had one of the Triforce with wisdom, she divided it into eight units to hide it from Ganon. Before she was captured, go find eight units link to save her. Yeah, yeah, that's fastly vastly more terse. However, I think it sets the tone for the, for the game quite well. And I think that's why I kept going back to it all these years. I was intrigued. It was it was, it was mysterious, you know, and we'll go we'll get into more of that later. But like, so at this point, you see that, that awesome looking poster, you pick up the game? You turn it on? And you get that story? How pumped Are you? True, arguably, with one of the best songs on the soundtrack. And that song to me anyway, when I was a kid was creepy and dark as hell. Let us proceed to category two audio. I found the soundtrack in this game with the exception of the story screen to be painful, and repetitive. Now granted, I do want to say that it had some flavor. But I feel like every single room in the game in one shape or form or another was basically the same song with a different twist on it. And that that was just it gets really annoying really fast because of that there are a few decent tracks on it. I but for the most part, I agree. I also I think what killed it for me was the the implementation of the audio. So like I don't like let's say there's always been this issue where whenever you leave a room or a screen it the the audio stops. And then it started the audio starts over again. Like from the beginning of the track. So it got extremely repetitive. I did download a patch that claimed to fix this. And while yes, when you left the room and entered the next room it picked up up from where you were before, but there's still that pause in between rooms. So it'd be like ding ding ding ding ding and then Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding you know what I mean? It was it was it was disappointing because I do maybe we're able to work around that. But I guess that's that's something that I don't know why that is Legend of Zelda doesn't do that. It's like as the screen is loading the music is still going yeah, I will say I found it really speak catchy and we sat so like playing it years ago hearing it again. It has like vibes of nostalgia so it does get in your ear a little bit to least tickle you years later. I do agree with that it is absolutely catchy it's it there are a lot of Nintendo songs I believe that are just like they're not memorable at all. Like there are there exist a lot of Nintendo songs are like I don't know if I can really recall that song. But this song and maybe just by nature of it being super repetitive to like, there is that but this song like you can call no problem. It's so it does kind of stick with you. We should probably mentioned the sound effects. And I My biggest gripe with the sound effects was that whenever you pick something up, it sounds like you did something wrong. Mm hmm. Yeah, it sounds like a classic 80s Game Show. Buzzer you got something wrong? Yeah, yeah, well, like when you went go to a shop and buy an item and use the minute you buy it because I guess that was the wrong item. Basically, like the game just burps in your face, essentially. It's like, okay, maybe I wasn't supposed to pick that up. And then you realize, oh, wait, that's a good item. And then it gets confusing. They definitely didn't subscribe to the tropes of even arcade games like obviously, or anything I don't I don't know why they chose that sound, but it was a poor choice. Bla let us proceed to category three, which is gameplay. Reading from the Deadly Towers manual. Your objective is to reach the seven towers. Each tower has one bill which should be burned by the Holy Flame. The bills are at the top of the towers. After burning all the bills, you'll be able to open the entrance to the king of the devil's room. When you climb to the top of each tower, you have to fight the guardian of the bell. If you win, climb the ladder and get the belt. When you get the bell, go back to the underground and touch the Holy Flame. The bell will be thrown into the fire and the tower will burn. If you fall off a broken edge over a cliff, or if the hit points dwindled to zero, your quest is over. When you kill enemies, sometimes they leave money or hearts. The heart will give you hit points. Money helps you buy items. Don't forget to collect the circle hearts ease increase your maximum hit points up to two underneath nine and it can be picked up while wandering or can be bought at shops which are hidden in certain areas. Sometimes an invisible entrance will take you to a parallel world, there will be only one exit to the world where you came from. Search all areas of the castle carefully to find the parallel worlds. Same as the parallel worlds the entrances to the underground dungeons are invisible. Each dungeon consists of about 200 rooms for each room, and each room has enemies. If you rooms in the dungeon have a magical pattern on the floor, which may be the entrance to a shop the exit of the dungeon or makes a good map marker. secret rooms are hidden throughout the tower and Castle searched every area by walking around the entire screen in each area. When the game ends, write down the password displayed on the screen. To get a new password. You have to end the game by dying. When you wish to continue your game after you quit. Enter your password in the password entry screen to start to gain a reading from the Deadly Towers manual. I have Have no redeeming qualities to report about the gameplay of this Deadly Towers, none harsh words, and I have a laundry list of complaints. Well, then maybe I can speak to some of the pros than please do. I'll say it's easy to understand from the very start, what the controls are, what your weapons are, you may not know exactly where to go, but you have an immediate control over the character and how to you just navigate. There is an RPG aspect to the leveling, like you can level the you know, Prince Meier, that's fun to do, you get a little bit more powerful, you get a little bit better. So at least it entices you to keep playing because you feel like you can actually progress. And I will say it's super ambitious. The gameplay like with the parallel worlds that dungeons trying to find back to the real world. It's all these hidden things. It just makes it mysterious. And in that way, it's an intriguing game that it ends up being a little fun in that way. Do you have any any cons you would like to bring up in your experience with the gameplay? How much time do we have? Oh, boy. Well, then let it Let us allow Archbishop Dracul to to speak his mind, please. Wow, do Deacon Gabor brings up some very excellent points that I actually agree with and kind of rescind my last comment. I will actually say though, the good definitely does not outweigh the bad. Like there are one of the things one of the most frustrating aspects of this game is that you get thrown back when you get hit. Now that might not seem like a big deal. But like in the very beginning of the game, you're incredibly weak. And being thrown back means that you could bump into something else, therefore throwing you back again, potentially throwing you into the previous room you were in. And because they spawn enemies at the entrances for some reason to these rooms. In a lot of instances, you could get thrown back yet again. And this is especially frustrating in the dungeons. I've had it happen to where I would enter a room there was a enemy spawned right where I walked in, I got hit I got sent back, got hit by the enemy there, but sit back down, hit by another one sent back out of the second room and literally had a chain reaction of going from room to room until I died. And I had nothing there was nothing I could possibly do not not to mention also in the castles, there's these little jagged edges to the walkway. Those are considered cliffs. And if you and you can fall off the castle and die. It's not uncommon for you to be walking and then all of a sudden, these little terrible features or entities just attack you with no warning, and they are going extremely fast. And your reaction time in the very beginning of the game is very slow. So you will most likely if you were anywhere near a cliff, you wouldn't go backwards, you would go down the cliff, you wouldn't go the opposite direction of where you got hit, which was a very bizarre choice. In my opinion. The combat mechanic only allows one sort to spawn on the screen I think at any given time. This period would how slow your sword is at the start of the game makes makes the start of the game unrealistically difficult almost the concept that are the best way to defeat an enemy was to get rid of against the enemy and expand the button the attack button. And what would happen is because the close proximity and symmetry of the enemy it would allow you to sort of do a turbo shot later in the game to us so called Power Up is called the parallel shot. And while on while it might make sense that it would be a power up for the bigger enemies that really aren't that many enemies that were the size of the two swords come in getting shot out. So most of them were too small which would end up having an effect of you get you hit it with one sword and you have to wait for The other sort that missed it to leave the screen before you could shoot again, making the the strategy of going up against a character and spamming the button, a moot point, it doesn't work at that point. So there was, there was a lot of a lot of things like that, that were really frustrating. The dungeons felt like an afterthought. They didn't feel as developed as, as the rest of the game. The dungeons entrances have no visual representation. So you're literally if you don't know where you're going, you can literally be walking and suddenly the screen goes doing unless you're in a dungeon. And you're like, oh, no, what is where am I? What is this? And? And probably the worst part about that? How do I get out? How do you get out because you can't exit the same way you enter? Well, I'm sure that there must be a map you get right. Well, there was only one map on in the man in the manual. And but somebody somebody somehow and I can't remember what year it was, somebody somehow mapped out every single dungeon. Now, that may not seem like a big deal. But given the repetitive nature of each room, and the fact that they actually loop the dungeons in certain points. So like, if let's say you go, if you go all the way to the right, it won't stop. It'll just loop back to all the way to the to the left most room on the other side. I have no idea how that person mapped out those dungeons with with the looping mechanic and I have no idea. It's daunting to me, like I, I'm, I'm like, I'm impressed. It's crazy. And then my last day, I'm sorry, I've been talking a lot to let you guys talk after this. But the last thing I want to say is that there are like mission critical items hidden in these parallel worlds or secret rooms in the towers. Now, yes, is it's you should go and find it right. But if you didn't know, like back then in the context of being back then if you didn't know that you needed that like the best armor in the game was in these parallel dimensions or secret rooms in a tower and you go up the tower, you kill the boss, you get the bell, and you leave the tower. And once you leave the walkway, and end up back in like the tower hubs, so to speak. The entrance is gone. Essentially soft blocking the game, making it impossible like literally and probably literally impossible to beat it without those items because you can't go back and get them. So, as for me, I I remember playing this game as a kid and being extremely frustrated with it. Because I didn't read the manual of course, and I didn't really get into the story. I just thought it was a cool Zelda like game as Deacon Gabor has mentioned, it was definitely a selling points, try and sell it as like a kind of Zelda clone based on the screenshots right. So I was kind of expecting that obviously, it wasn't that and I'd get really frustrated. That being said, coming back to it as an adult was a different experience for me. I really got into the story really got into reading the manual looking at all the hints in the manual. And as an adult appreciating these types of games now, from a modern perspective, looking back at these types of games and appreciating them for what they are, it was a totally different experience. Now that being said, this game is virtually unplayable without a walkthrough unless you have countless hours to walk over every inch of the screen as suggested by the manual. Unless you have countless hours to map out every single dungeon or you just have dumb luck to find stuff. uncannily. You're gonna have a really hard time with this game. It's it you need a walk through. And I used to walk through to play this game, and it was an enjoyable experience. Once I had that walkthrough. The game was still difficult. The game was still seemingly impossible in places. But at the end of the day, it was achievable. It was finishable, I beat this game. I think all three of us beat this game. In fact, when we played it for this for this reflection, and what was a turning point for me in regards to enjoyment, actually was when I realized that this was an early day roguelike. So the as, as you guys know, roguelike derives from the 1980, game, rogue, where you're basically doing the same thing, you kind of go and you build up stuff, and you die and you lose stuff. And there's some sort of like, meta character development right throughout so that you get better and better as you keep dying and playing. So as soon as I realized that, oh, wait, when I actually get that armor, when I actually get that sword, I get to keep it forever, that changed the face of the game for me, suddenly, dying didn't become as scary. And I would actually, my goal would be just to survive just long enough to get that next piece of armor. And then once I did, I felt safe, and actually die a couple of times, just so I could get the password in case the game crashed or something like that. And that was a really enjoyable challenge for me. So, but that being said, all of the flaws that Archbishop Dracul has mentioned, I echo entirely, I don't understand how people have mapped out dungeons, in spite of the fact of it being looped, other than recognizing features and saying, Oh, this must be a loop because I already mapped it like up here. So I don't, I don't really know how, how people have done it. The other thing that was really, really aggravating to me was trying to figure out how to end the game. And what I mean by that is, I was playing through and there was a point where I actually had to jump back to one of my previous like two passwords ago, points, because I realized I had set myself up for failure, because I burnt down or grad didn't actually burn down the tower. But I but I had taken the bell from a tower that had something in it that I needed to complete the game. And there was no going back. Because as soon as you grab that bell, and you leave the tower, you're not going back in there, the game doesn't allow you to do that. That is such a major flaw that I echo what Archbishop Dracul has mentioned in there, I don't think there's anything left to be said. Other than that, for me, I was just gonna mention some more like, of the technical gameplay stuff that bothered me, like right from the beginning, the dungeons, you get thrown into a room, you're gonna get hit, like you mentioned, but also say you don't get hit, you're like, I'm gonna take this little dragon guy on. You're, you're sitting above it, and you assume like any other like slightly top down perspective, that your character can kind of walk behind things or has a little bit of room. It did that doesn't exist, like you barely get inside this collision box, and you go fly in. So that that three quarter down perspective doesn't really make sense. And it also the rules of that are all over the map, sometimes one character Oh, in the the, the idea that like your sword can sometimes pause the enemies, right? Like it's like, Okay, once I hit them, it'll stun them, and then they'll stay in place and I'll finish them off. No rhyme or reason. So half the time the characters don't actually get stung, and they just keep on walking, making it super difficult to manage the rooms when there's five or six of these enemies on the screen. And then inexplicably, you start so weak, and then the enemy's HP is so high. You mentioned like you run up to, you know, an enemy and you start spamming, it's like you are literally spamming like 20 swords into a little blobby circle die, just to get them dead. It's crazy. I do want to mention something that you said about without rhyme or reason they don't stop walking. There's certain enemies that are actually two parts. They have a head and a body. And if you hit them in the head, they don't stop walking. But if you hit them in the body they do. Is that is so as it's interesting. Yeah, it's not. It's not a great choice. But I discovered that as well. And I was like, What's going on here? And then I realized, Oh, I'm hitting them in the head. And then they keep going. So yeah, very interesting design choices that we're we're not. Yeah, and that like meeting even the The idea that you're not actually you climb at one point should you be so lucky get to the point where you're actually climbing the ladders, even though it's like a weird down perspective, all of a sudden that perspective shifts, very odd. But you can't shoot enemies while you're on. And they certainly come for you. Like there are these ghosts in the parallel worlds and the towers. They're flying all over the place. Soon as you're climbing up a, I don't know how many tiles up it is like 1215 tile ladders. You're completely vulnerable. Unless you get hit. Should you get hit all of a sudden, you can use your sword for that brief iframe moment. Which toe on the ladder? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Is a bug not a feature? For sure. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely an exploitable bug. And thank God for it. Right, I would have died without it. I was gonna say, a couple of things. Before we move on. One of those things was that I noticed. So just to just so people have an idea of how this, of how the progression of the levels go. You start off at the very base of the castle. And you have to walk climb your way up to different like, I think it's like seven or nine levels of the castle before you can actually enter what is called the cliff wall, which is essentially a hub for that leads to every single tower. Now, if you go into one of the one of the one of the caves that leads to the tower, before you get to the tower, you actually have to climb a section, which I'm not 100% sure what it's called. But it's it's it's diagonal stares in years, like sort of ascending towards the tower during that section of the game. That is arguably some of the best background graphics in the game. Why do I agree? Why do I and arguably some of the best music in the game now. And one of the things that I want to bring up about that section that I found incredibly interesting is that when I was a kid, I remember the labor of love it took just to get to that section of the game. Like how long how many times I've died, how like the frustration, the anger, just to get to that section of the game. Right? Nintendo of America had had very strict rules about things about about how in order to, to publish on their system, you have to abide by these very strict rules, one of which is you cannot use religious iconography. In the game in your game. I was climbing that section and notice there were crucifix shaped windows. Now you may not think that's a big deal. But the interesting thing is that it ducktales for instance, in the Transylvania level, in the Japanese version for the Famicom had crucifixes on the coffin that Nintendo of America made Capcom takeout? Which means either they didn't see it as a crucifix window, or they literally never got to that section of the game, because it was so difficult. It's a very interesting point. It's, it's up for interpretation. Lastly, I to use the walkthrough to talk about walkthroughs father even brought up but I found it very hard to find one that either that either was complete or wasn't broken. And I feel like it's a testament to how frustrating this game is to play. Yeah, the walkthrough is leave a little bit to be desired. I don't know if I also had to use a walkthrough I think it would have been very enjoyable. Should I have unlimited time and could map out each one of the dungeons I feel like getting the old graph paper out it would have been satisfying and fun. And back in the day when you only have so many games and you can spend a year playing the game would have been cool. Don't have that luxury right now. But one of those walkthroughs said that the parallel shot that you mentioned its flaws earlier was the best item in the game. So I was so excited to get it and start using it. I was like what is going it's worse. It is I would say I would literally say it is the worst powerup on the NES that I've I actually would have agreed with you until I revisited the fabled ghosts and goblins recently and picked up the torch. I don't know. I don't know, because the torch doesn't change the strategy. Right? It's you're still attacking with the parallel what you're still attacking? I mean, I guess you're attacking at literally is yeah, it's because you're you're attacking it literally the same frequency that you are at the beginning of Deadly Towers, because you have to let the flame burn out before you can throw another one. Yeah, it's still an attack. But like, but but the parallel shot literally takes your strategy of attacking out of the game. Yeah, no, I agree. I still I still contend that it may not be the worst, but it is definitely in the top five worst power ups on the NES. And it is very difficult to get so you're looking for a big reward. It's not that that being said the double shot is what you should go for. Right? Yes, that's that is a huge reward. Stay away from the parallel shot. When I when I was playing, and I got the double shot. I was like, oh my god, it's so much better. It's so it was infinitely better. Don't Don't make the mistake of like, alright, well, I picked I just happened to pick up the double shot first. Maybe leave burn that tower. Then pick up the parallel shot. Oh, no, I want to go get my double shot back. Nope, that towers gone. Yep. Yep. Leave leave that parallel shot in the bowels of hell yes, where it belongs. Bla let us proceed to category four, the graphics. Aside from the dungeons, I really liked the background graphics. I thought they were detailed and interesting, and very mysterious. I also thought that the addition of like the character in the jail the little goblin in the jail was a nice slice of life sort of thing. Which Which, by the way, you can kill him. But you'll lose all your money. And when I say we haven't discussed the fact that money the currency in the scheme is actually called letter. So I'll I should probably bring that up now. I found that so yeah, I found the backgrounds in the castle in the cliff wall in the towers to be quite decent. But I didn't find the enemies to be inspired at all. You fight things like blobs, and flames and wind your the sky and US suit of armor. Which doesn't look like the boxer at all. In fact, he he is modeled off of the Famicom box art, which was a little bit more anime themed. So that's why when you look at the cover, and you turn on the game, and you see this guy in this blue jumpsuit with horns, like oh, what what happened? And but we'll get to the box art presentation in the next section. But the graphics here I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not a huge fan. I think one of the things that that is that that I found most interesting. Were like the windows and like the, the the faces in the walls. You know there is it's just interesting, mysterious you know, I would say that the graphics for this game are are half inspired. I did not like the representation of Prince Meyer. It left much to be desired and it was a stark contrast to the rest of the universe. The dungeons were also uninspired and They all the rooms basically they just did palette changes and use the same graphics over and over with different palette changes and then either doors would be there or doors would not be there and then every once in a while you get like the same graphic on the floor where a map marker is which may or may not be a shop hidden in the center of the map marker or the exit but yeah, the the enemies were half of them were bland, like single color type of representations. And the other half like the humanoid type characters, I thought were pretty well done. There were some bosses that I thought were very were very astute as the stale stupid. And but then there were other there were others that were actually pretty cool. I really actually think that the best boss in the game is great wing visually. That's all I have to offer. Well, you don't like you don't like beat plant at least at least the the sprites were big, which was very unusual for the NES at the time. Like even even Prince Meyer was, I think two tiles high. I mean, his animation was only two frames, which is rough. But it is still that was pretty cool to see such large sprites and the bosses were huge. Unfortunately, I also feel like that same thing that your character is a little bit larger than normal and so are the enemies. How however, if for some reason when you get into the dungeons, the vast majority of the visual real estate is taken up by walls and you're left with a teeny tiny little play area to move around which of course then that's why we get the problem of knockback being walking into a room and instantly getting spawn killed. Just because it's like half the real estate is just used to decorate the walls. Very weird, huh? Yeah, and you know that being thrown back through the through the rooms of the dungeons, I'll say it again. It's so frustrating not only for the fact that you can't do anything about that anything to change your device. But it's almost like the game is teasing you because the music resets on every entrance to a room so it goes ding ding ding and then you die. So there is a little trick that I will mention in the hints and cheat section later remind me of it that you can use to help get out of that. Let us proceed to Category Five, box art and presentation. A reading from the back of the box. You are a young prince Meyers setting out to defend the ancient kingdom of Willner Rubas king of the devils has built a castle in the north is preparing to invade your kingdom. Rigging magic bells is calling out an army of the most terrifying creatures known or unknown to man. To defeat rubbish must journey to his palace and burn down his seven bell towers. On your quest. You will collect weapons and armor to defend yourself against rats and crawlers. That's snakes and slime demons dragons immortal you'll need every ounce of help you can get understatement of the year for you are all that stands between your people and the forces of darkness. game features include arcade action with role playing game depth, state of the art graphics and music. special password system allows players to continue a game in progress. A reading from the back of the box. Can I just mention really quick here that there are absolutely to my knowledge no rats in this game. No rats. Rubas is bringing his magic bells and calling out an area the most terrifying creatures known to man. Like slime balls, wind, flames. Spheres, just spheres. Yep, sphere spheres. Yep. spheres are of the devil. Blue and orange ones. And ones that stack those are the worst. But those are the ones that bear fruit father Avram? Correct. They provide the most letter and hearts I'm sorry. So the art the, the box art. So just to reiterate, my first experience with this game was going what was when I walked into the video store and looked at the wall of games that were available now back then what they would do is they would line the wall with the actual boxes of the games. From a collector's point of view these days. That's sacrilege, but that's beside the point. The in so you see, you get to actually, like, pick up the game, and look at the cover and read the back. That's why we included the reading from the back of the box. Because that was literally that was the cover art was literally the only marketing that really existed for this game. Now did they do a good job? I I had never heard of the game before this. And the concept of like burning towers to kill evil monsters and like, it sounded high adventure like awesome. And the cover art was the cover art really captured the, the essence of the story quite well. A lot of atmosphere and like hellish overtones. And it was just, it was very, very intriguing. Yeah, I'd like to say that the the cover art to me was very reminiscent of like, a more detailed Saturday morning cartoon. Like, these are the days that people are watching, you know, Transformers and he-man and, you know, that kind of thing. And it almost looked kind of like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'd love to be here, man, you know. So it had that kind of vibe to it. And that was definitely one of the poles for me to this box. What are your thoughts Deacon Gabor? Well, the art was actually really cool. And I was gonna say it even had like a Lord of the Rings type vibe, or Ralph Bakshi type animated movie where I felt like, you know, this is for adults. And this is like, this is really cool stuff. You know, that even though it was like more realistic type of painting. You know, we've seen those kinds of things go horribly wrong with like, say MegaMan, you know, those kinds of like box art where they're trying to like capture that kind of energy. This is really cool. Like, I think in terms of like, the way the box art is presented at, you can't do much better. It was really cool. No, and like the, the attention to detail is fantastic. If you look closely on the front of the box, in the mountains, you can see a castle with seven bell towers. It's really cool. I never noticed that before actually. Let us proceed to category six, which is the fun factor. We talked about the how we used walkthroughs to play the game, which from today's standards, us being arguably full grown adults, you know, so we don't have the luxury like Deacon Gabor said of just sitting around and, and trying to figure this thing out like we did when we were kids. So we did us a walkthrough. And I found that once you pick up the there's two things that that you picked up that like literally changed the game. Like it's almost like a light switch. One and those two things are the hyper armor and the HyperX gauntlet. When you get those two things, the game opens up like monumentally and actually becomes a pleasant experience, all things considered. Now, the downside of all of that is if you look at it from the context of being a 10 year old boy, throwing this game in and trying to make sense of it. It wasn't fun to like literally walk around every grid square in the game. Just so you can find a dungeon or a shop or things that should actually have should have had visual representation in my opinion. Yeah, that was going to be my fun factor. Review pretty much, pretty much almost verbatim. With the exception of saying with the walkthrough, I enjoyed it. However, at face value, and considering my experience as a child with this game, it was not fun. You need to know the secrets you need to know the secret handshake, really, in order to have fun. Quite honestly, though, with some small tweaks, it could have been fun. Could have been fun if they had done visual representation of stuff, gotten rid of the cliffs. And you know, didn't have looping dungeons with 200 rooms. I feel like the game could have been a lot of fun. And Father Avram actually started the process of picking apart the ROM and trying to figure out how to redaction how to make those little changes to make the game playable. I just thought I'd throw that in here. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's possible. They we'll get into it on the technical section next, but that's it. It's very complicated. Yeah, I will say I had fun playing it now, with the walkthrough, like I would actually recommend it. For people that are into older video games, like get the walk through it, you can actually have a good time with it. But I actually distinctly remember renting this game as a kid, I had a stomachache, and I got a game to rent over the weekend. And I'd rather I remember sitting with my stomach ache over playing the game. I didn't, I put it in two or three times. And that was it. I didn't. It was it was almost immediate deaths, it was not understanding what the purpose of anything is. And it was a bait and switch of what I thought I was gonna get, and then what was actually happening. So I had no fun and that my lasting memory is that I took it back immediately. And my mom was upset that I didn't actually play the game that she spent her money on to rent. It actually this is this is kind of totally anecdotal. But I do remember one of the flaws of renting games, especially games that had been out for a little while, unless the rental store was really on top of their stuff. You could rent games that you just had no manual for, like whatsoever. You would get sent home maybe sometimes if you were lucky with like a laminated copy of the manual. And I feel like that was only in like the most, like in the best of circumstances. Occasionally, you would actually get a xerox copy of the manual. Yeah, that was most common. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, renting was was a strange practice, not to mention, again, going back to the rental store, and I know we've written this horse to death, but like, the it wasn't like Blockbuster. During this time. If you a lot of people remember Blockbuster and how it's like, hey, you know what, I'm gonna go rent this tonight. And you could quite literally go there and rent it. That wasn't the case. During this time. You had to be extremely lucky to get the game you wanted because the most places only had one copy? Yep. Let's proceed to category seven, which is technical. Like I have no real cons. Aside from maybe the bug that Deacon board explained earlier, where when you're in the ladder, you can like shoot up and down but you have to get hit first, because I never knew that. Being young growing up playing recently we go up the ladder like what in the hell Why can't really shoot up or down. I don't know who made that decision. But that's a gameplay thing. Anyway, technically speaking, given the fact that throughout the castle, specifically the castle levels for some reason, you are inundated with enemies, more so I think than any other NES game. I can remember, even though it was just like, enemies were everywhere, which was usually what would trigger the slowdown in other games. So that for me is a pro. I also have almost no cons to the technical side of this because they actually did a lot of really impressive things. With this game on a technical level, first of all, the game is massive. I don't know if it's the largest NES game in regards to number of screens. Well, I'll just interject and say that the retrospective that the Retronauts did on this, they did like a five to seven minute video on YouTube. And they said that there is more screens in this game, then sell the first and second quest combined. It's crazy. Yeah. So the game is humongous. And, you know, so they do a fantastic job at cramming all of this stuff. However, on a technical level, what they did was they also sacrificed the amount of room obviously, that they were using for audio, because we all know that the composer was actually capable of composing a full length song, as we see in the story screen. However, it's just not that way throughout the game, right. So I think they probably ended up sacrificing audio in order to make space for their massive world, which is mostly irrelevant. But most of the world is totally irrelevant. I have a theory that the game originally like the game was originally just the castle, the cliff wall and the towers, I really think that dungeons were at on that very well could be. But still, like, it's still a very, it's a feat to really get all of that information. And he asked him. And other thing, one more thing that I'd like to mention in regards to the technical side of things. And I would like to say to like, it's almost not a thing for any game to not have any bugs. But we really only mentioned that one. And I know there's one other one that has to do with like palate changes or something, but I've never seen it. So there's not really many bugs to note in this game. But the really cool thing that they did. And the thing that's really impressive, if you know anything about NES, architecture hardware, is that the NES could only handle I think, I think it's eight sprites, I think it's eight, seven, or eight sprites per scanline. So on the same vertical, sorry, same horizontal line across the screen, there can only be eight, eight by eight tiles, that display on the screen. If there's more than that, then suddenly, it becomes random as to which one is going to display on the screen. Thus, we have so many Nintendo games. With the sprite flicker, it's there's so many games that are plagued by the sprite flicker. This game has sprite flickering, too, because you can't just get away with not having sprite flickering. But their solution to the problem. I'm really surprised it did not get implemented in like other games that are, at least not many I haven't, I haven't found any others. But their solution to this problem was was was pretty unique. If you if you run into a situation where there's where you reach this limit, or you cross over this limit of number of sprites on screen, rather than just leaving it up to the hardware to figure out like which one to display or whatever. Which usually meant there was just the one of the like, one on the far right, or the far left just wouldn't display at all. And then one of the solutions that they ended up developing at some point was to just randomly display seven of them every frame. This takes a whole other to a whole whole other level, technically, where they actually decide to interlace it, pixel row by pixel row. So basically, if you have like, one more sprite on the screen, then you should, then two of those sprites are suddenly going to become kind of transparent. And if you look at it, it's almost like they it's like looking through a screen like every other pixel row is drawn. And it's that way for for both sprites. And that to me was amazing. I'm not sure I've ever seen that in another Nintendo game. That's pretty cool. I will say that i i took notice of like some of the sprite flicker and stuff, but I didn't notice the detail in that. That's pretty awesome. Do you have any technical issues with the game? Deacon Gabor? I mean, the only other ones I took really note of was the fact that you basically have no iframes and that you get hit and you lose control of your character. And then so that just puts you into a perpetual state of dying. And then I mentioned the hitboxes being a little off. And then there's the one thing is like you look, you're so slow, right walking around the world, especially at the beginning, and you get an item. That's the boots. Boots. Is that what it's called? I think it's something Yeah, let's let's call hyper boots. So you're like, Okay, great. I'm gonna run faster. You only speed up if you were walking in a diagonal motion. Yeah, that was weird. I can't help but think that's a technical bug. Like, it makes it it makes no it at least gameplay. If it's a gameplay choice, then it makes no sense. I don't understand why you would do that. And then otherwise, it feels like a bug. Yeah, it's supposed to be helping you get up the stairs faster. But you're saying it only helps you get up the stairs faster if you're walking up them diagonally. That's right. I didn't notice that when I was playing. That's really interesting. Yeah, very odd. Like is he you are so slow that you're looking forward to moving faster throughout the entire world. But that never really happens. Hmm. When I realized I was like, something's off. I was like, I'm moving fast sometimes, but not all the time. And it's, and I realized that yeah, it's only the the cardinal directions aren't affected. Let us proclaim the Henson treats of agar. A reading from the Deadly Towers manual. Collecting circle Hearts is the only way to increase your maximum hit points. Once you fire your sword, you cannot fire the next sword until the first sword disappears from the screen. If you were not wearing the gloves to increase your sword speed, you might not be able to fight quickly enough. enemy attacks are more powerful, and exits are more difficult to find in the parallel worlds. But you may find useful items in these worlds. To find your way around the dungeons and to keep from getting lost. Carefully map the dungeons and write down the locations of magical drawings and monsters. Burning a bell will allow you to recover hit points, but you can also keep it and burn it later. After you get the bell from the tower the enemies in the tower and outside the tower may become more powerful. When you get a bell at the top of the tower and return to underground, the entrance to the tower will disappear. A reading from the Deadly Towers manual. The concept that they that they just said of like you can hold on to your bells. Oh my god. I was playing the other night I think. I think Deacon Gabor you were watching. And I yeah, this was guy, I had four bells and I walked up the turn one because I needed to refill my hitpoints now keep in mind I was only going to burn one because because of the two because of two really poor gameplay decisions. One being being thrown back to being the enemy sprite will ambush you from off screen and give you no chance to react. I got ambushed by the wind and thrown into the fire. Now you may say what's the big deal you are going to touch the fire anyway. Well, when the game when the game when you throw a bell into the fire that game i i believe and father Avram would be able to attest to this more than I would. But when you throw the belt into the game, I believe the game literally pauses and they play music and effects and then the game starts again. So what ended up happening was since you get thrown back when you get hit, the wind threw me back and I kept moving back into the flame therefore burning every last one on myself with no way of of stopping it. That's devastating. But hilarious. Yeah. So in regards to hints and cheats that there's actually so the reading from the manual that all excerpts little little footnotes that are collected throughout the manual compiled into one reading. So they do give you they they tried they really did try to give you as much information as they could which is actually I gotta say this. Again, not very Popular in early Nintendo history, like they didn't really give you a whole lot of information and manuals, not like not like this. So that was cool. But they, they there is another cheat, Nintendo Power. Issue three has a very, very small excerpt about Deadly Towers in their hints section called classified information, where if you basically start a, a game, and then die, that brings up the password screen, and then you substitute the first two letters of that password with E F, or F E, then you get all the hyper armor and the best sword in the game. However, you also get the dreaded parallel shot. And so it might make your life easier in regards to survivability in regards to getting hit. But it is not, I do not recommend this cheat, especially in a like a I'm just starting the game, give me all the hyper armor and the parallel shot like I almost feel like that's going to be more frustrating to try to play the game that way. The other thing that I was going to mention that, as I mentioned earlier, is that there are a couple of places. Namely, the places I'm thinking of are the two mini bosses in the castle. If you try to enter back through the room, like from from from the entrance that they're blocking, you're gonna get hit right, and normally, you would get pushed back into the other room. However, whenever you're doing a room transition, you can actually get out of that loop. Sometimes I don't know if it's 100%. But you can sometimes sometimes get out of that, that transition by by pushing diagonally in the direction you want to go as you enter the room. So because the hit mechanic in, in the game is based on the direction you are facing, not the direction that you got hit from. So so if you can change your direction real fast, then it I think it ends up it either I think throws you to like the left or the right. And then you know, either way you don't get through, you don't get thrown back into the other room. So that is something to keep in mind. I think one thing that we need to make sure people know if they're going to play this game. And we kind of mentioned it a little a little earlier is the absolute best way to get letter is to go into the dungeon and find was called a blob tower. I don't know if that's the official name of it. But that's what everybody calls it. Because they are, for the most part, very easy to kill, and are very lucrative, they leave a lot of goodies behind for you. The only downside to that is that you're going into a dungeon. And if you die, which probably nine out of 10 times you do when you go into a dungeon, you're going to lose your money anyway. So I think if you it's kind of this catch 22 Well, you need the money in the beginning of the game to get the basic armor from the dungeons. So it's at least a good starting hint. At some point the letter kind of loses its value as you gain hyper armor. But there are still some valuable items that you can buy from the shops. So towards the end of the game specifically, you might want to go and load up on items before you had to the last boss. I vaguely remember being a kid and somehow finding a password. I don't remember where I found it. Or maybe it was a fever dream I don't know but I remember getting a password where I had everything and all the bells were burned and I had to do is go and beat the boss and I couldn't do it because it didn't have the blue necklace. It's very unfortunate. Anyways, do you have any passwords or stories anecdotes you want to share with us Deacon Gabor about hints and cheats for Deadly Towers. I got nothing. Just find a walkthrough and enjoy it that Our now, brethren, let us offer each other the body of price. So the game price then in 1988 was $35. And according to the CPI inflation calculator $35 in 1988 is worth $92.88 today. That's pretty crazy. Yeah, that's that's some inflation right there. So what does the price of Deadly Towers look like today to actually achieve a require a physical copy, a loose copy this is all. By the way, I should mention all these prices are according to price charting.com. A loose copy is roughly $7.32 The box only is$20.50. Manual only is $8.63. Complete. That means, you know inbox with the manual and the loose copy $40.50. And then a brand new sealed copy is$294.66. I started collecting complete copies of games within the past few years. And $40 For a complete game is nothing. It's literally nothing comparatively. Yeah. Yeah, this game is definitely on the low end of price points for collecting NES games. Especially given the last few years on how much it's risen like this a $7 game is unheard of. Yeah, it's probably fair to mention that price charting.com a basis its prices I believe totally on online sales. So like if you can't you can't expect to go into a retro video game store and get even a loose copy of this for $7.32 it's going to cost you a little bit more than that. Yeah, I was at one today and I saw a couple of copies of deadly tellers and they were $8 Oh really bad right? That's actually not bad. Because I I was expecting more along the lines of 10 or 12 but nope. Very cool. Let us now execute judgment upon Deadly Towers to decide which of the seven cardinal sins it has committed. Father Avram it in regards to narrative What is your final judgment? In regards to narrative Deadly Towers has committed no fault? Deacon Gabor in regards to narrative What is your final judgment? In regards to narrative? Deadly Towers has committed no fault in regards to narrative and the presence of this assembling Deadly Towers has been spared? Father Avram in regards to audio What is your final judgment? In regards to audio Deadly Towers has committed a most heinous cardinal sin. Deacon Gabor, in regards to audio What is your final in regards to audio Deadly Towers has committed a most judgment heinous cardinal sin. In regards to audio and the presence of this assembly, Deadly Towers as committed a loathsome cardinal sin deserving of hellfire and damnation. Father Avram in regards to gameplay. What is your final judgment? In regards to gameplay, Deadly Towers has committed a most heinous cardinal sin, Deacon Gabor, in regards to gameplay. What is your final judgment? In regards to gameplay Deadly Towers has committed a most heinous cardinal sin in regards to gameplay, and in the presence of this assembly Deadly Towers has committed a loathsome cardinal sin deserving of hellfire and damnation once again. Father Avram in regards to graphics, what is your final judgment? In regards to graphics, Deadly Towers has committed a most heinous cardinal sin, Deacon Gabor in regards to graphics, what is your final judgment? In regards to graphics, Deadly Towers has committed no fault in regards to graphics and in the presence of this assembly Deadly Towers has been spared father Avram in regards to the box art What is your final judgment in regards to box art in presentation Deadly Towers has committed no fault Deacon Gabor in regards to box art and presentation what is your final judgement? In regards to box home presentation Deadly Towers has committed no fault in regards to box art and presentation and in the presence of this assembly Deadly Towers has been spared. Father Avram from in regards to fun factor What is your final judgment in regards to fun factor. Deadly Towers has committed a most heinous cardinal sin Deacon Gabor in regards to fun factor What is your final judgment in regards to fun factor Deadly Towers has committed no fault in regards to fun factor and in the presence of this assembly Deadly Towers has committed a loathsome cardinal sin deserving of hellfire and damnation. Father Avram in regards to technical What is your final judgment? In regards to technical Deadly Towers has committed no fault. Deacon Gabor in regards to technical What is your final judgment in regards to technical, Deadly Towers has committed a most heinous cardinal sin in regards to technical and in the presence of this assembly Deadly Towers has committed a loathsome cardinal sin deserving of hellfire and damnation. Deadly Towers By the authority vested in me I execute judgment upon you having committed four cardinal sins in the categories of audio gameplay, font factor and technical for which there can be no forgiveness, no mercy, no redemption, we exile you to the bowels of hell. This concludes this evening service. Remember our liturgy does not simply come to an end. Those assembled are set forth to bring the fruits of the ministry to the world.