Game Review: Dark Tower (Commodore 64, Melbourne House)

Dark Tower may not have appeared to be too advanced a platform game for its time on the Commodore 64, especially as the likes of Impossible Mission were being released at the time with more screens, addictive playability, and some superb speech.  However, Robert Henderson came up with a game which he would later convert to the Commodore 16 and Plus/4, and indeed the VIC-20, albeit with a slightly different name and publisher.  In effect, you are Prince Harry, where the guardian of the Dark Tower has turned you into a mutant.  You will need to collect all the jewels from the dark tower and then deliver them to the guardian.  This of course means you will need to avoid all the defence systems and creatures that lurk in the tower, and means that it is a platform game where you need to collect objects and avoid colliding with anything you should not.

As the game loads, there is a very nice screen which shows you as Prince Harry being zapped and turned into a mutant in four stages.  This also is the title screen of the game as well, which was a pleasing piece of music from David Dunn in the background, which also becomes the in-game music during play – although you can press the Q key to turn the tune off, and T to turn it back on if you wish.  You can press up on the joystick to start the game fresh, or down to start at the last screen that you visited, which can be very handy when practicing to get past certain screens, and if you wish to do so with the five lives that you are given at the start.

Perilous Platforms

When you start the game, the very first screen gives you an indicator of what you are in for.  You can jump to other platforms, but need to time the jump so as not to collide with the creatures and lose a life.  You can climb up ladders and escape out of the opening screen, and this may be useful to start on the one above.  You can see gaps to be jumped, ropes to climb, where if you hit the top you will fall, and jewels to collect.  One handy thing to know is that if you collect some of the jewels from the screen, and exit into another screen, those jewels are yours – albeit this does mean that if you are accumulating bonuses for screens completed entirely without losing a life, this bonus resets back – but it is the chance that you take.  If you lose a life before exiting, the jewels collected are reset.

It’s Your Letters, It’s Your Letters

If you do exit the screen and all the jewels are collected, you do score a bonus.  Not only that, but you will also have a little jingle to congratulate you and will also scroll some information across the top of the screen with a secret letter.  All these letters are used to solve the end game puzzle, should you get that far, and the solution to which would help you win a prize.  You could send the solution off to Melbourne House and then win a free game of your choice from their range.  I wonder how many were tempted to cheat on the game for infinite lives and spend hours resolving the puzzle and getting all the pieces.

Give Them Enough Rope

Some of the ropes on the screens make Prince Harry go up, and some of the others go down.  This is key on one of the screens as it means you can descend to safely get one of the jewels, but also position yourself in a place where you can jump across, head down, and then jump off to the next rope and off again in quick succession.  The ones that go up are in white, and the ones that go down are in yellow, and you must land on them the way that the little teeth in the rope is facing too, so at least that does make working out a suitable route a challenge.  On some later screens you also have ropes that swing across, and you need to land on these to be able to swing correctly.  Timing these can prove to be rather difficult at times.

Wall Denter Territory

The game can get very frustrating on some screens – the only positive being is that the collision detection is fair – if you do hit something, then you genuinely have hit it and does allow for some careful planning to work around some of the creatures, spikes, and obstacles. The later more difficult screens as you progress further through the tower can lead to frustration, being wall denter territory as you try to work out what to do.  Those lives you have will run out quickly before you know it, although at least you do seem to get further with every go.

A Life Less Ordinary

Colliding with any creature loses you a life, as does also falling too far to a platform below.  If you are on an up rope that hits the ceiling, you are falling to your doom and another life is lost.  The spikes can be walked into or landed on and that is another life lost, as is if you do not make the swinging ropes, which almost inevitably are placed on some of the screens right above a set of spikes to hand on.  Those five lives can be lost quickly without realising it, and you will either start again or resume at the last screen to practice and get better at the game.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Dark Tower are reasonable, and with sprites used throughout, these have reasonable levels of animation and contract and expand as they moved up and down the screen in some cases, meaning a well-timed jump pays off nicely.  The music by David Dunn is catchy and a little frenetic which suits the game well, and if you switch to these sound effects,  these are mainly set for collecting a jewel, doing a jump over obstacles, and so on.  There is also a nice jingle which plays when you have collected all the jewels on screen and reveal one of the letters needed to solve the final puzzle.  If you do, there is a nicely aminated end screen that is much better than some of the in-game graphics, and makes finishing the game very worthwhile.

Final Thoughts

Dark Tower is without doubt a quite difficult platform game, and this can lead to some frustrations if you manage to get to point in the game where you cannot seem to work out how to get the jewel to get further. On the other hand, the collision detection does help to at least give you a challenge but a frustrating yet fair one at the same time.  There is some nice polish with the music and sound effects, and the twenty-eight screens are enough of a challenge albeit maybe a little too difficult for most.  There are good rewards for perseverance and I am sure that the competition to win a free game would have been the icing on the cake for doing well.  Not the best platform game on the system, and can be very frustrating, but also rewarding.

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