Game Review: Dark Tower (Commodore 16 and Plus/4, Melbourne House)

Dark Tower had previously had a Commodore 64 release where the game was seen as fiendishly difficult and somewhat frustrating by some of the magazines at the time.  Robert Henderson saw an opportunity to convert this over to the Commodore 16, albeit with the game being split into three sets of screens, with ten in the first load, eight in the second and nine in the third.  As this was an earlier release, perhaps later programming may have got the game into less memory, or even one load.

One thing worthy of note straight away for Plus/4 owners is that the game does not display the graphics during play correctly out of the box.  This is due to a Kernel ROM memory location setting which, thankfully, is a relatively straight forward fix, and I have provided this fix over on Plus/4 World so you can play the game on those machines correctly.  It is also useful to know that the game does not feature any form of fast loader, so you are stuck with the standard blue screen load and a wait of around seven to eight minutes.

Towers of Tension

The game’s title screen displays with just some BASIC text.  You can press up to start from scratch, or down to start from the last screen that you reached.  This may be handier for practice and to work out a safe path to get around the screens.  The game’s plot has you as 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, very much in the Manic Miner mould, where you need to collect objects and avoid colliding with anything you should not.

Platform Puzzling

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.  If you lose a life before exiting, the jewels collected are reset.  If you do exit the screen and all the jewels are collected, you do score a bonus.

On a 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, so at least that does make working out a suitable route a little easier.  Not that the game is easy, mind you.  Not one bit of it.  I guarantee that you will be getting frustrated within the first few screens as you work out a suitable path forward to get to the next screen with the jewels intact.

Born of Frustration

The game can get very frustrating far too quickly on some screens and the others on the first load do counter-balance a little bit, so you are at least able to collect all the jewels and then work out what you would need on the other screens.  Get to the second load however, and the difficulty level is ramped up a lot more.  You need to avoid spikes above and below, and almost pixel perfect jumping is required straight away to avoid a loss of life as you inevitably miss.  There are also some very difficult ascents up a wall on the second screen that means more perfect timing, perhaps much too perfect. This can lead to wall denter territory and becoming somewhat too difficult to be enjoyable, especially on the last load where the first screen will have you tearing any remaining hair out.

Losing The Will to Live

Plenty of hazards mean that you can lose lives very quickly from the five that you start with.  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 rope on one of the screens.  Maybe it would have been sensible to tweak the difficulty here a little so for example you could fall a little further without losing a life, or improving the collision detection which is not always perfect.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Dark Tower are reasonable and do use the colour palette of the system well to be bright and colourful.  The animation is okay and at least there is some for most of the creatures, with the platforms, ladders, and obstacles at least easy on the eye to spot.  The sound is mainly just sound effects, limited to collecting a jewel, a white noise collision when you lose a life, and a little bonus sound when you collect all the jewels and leave the screen, as well as an effect for footsteps as you walk around the tower, which soon becomes a little annoying.

Final Thoughts

Dark Tower was a very difficult game on the Commodore 64, and converting it here would have been a good opportunity to perhaps tweak the difficulty a little bit and make it a more enjoyable game than before.  However, despite it appearing easy on the eye, the devil is in the detail and in the difficulty, which although does appear a little easier when you get used to it on the first load, by the time the remaining screens have loaded, you will want to invoke at the very least an infinite lives cheat just to try and see more screens, which is a shame.  It promises a lot but unfortunately delivers a lot less than it should, and is far too frustrating to be worthwhile after a few plays.

* * *

You know what we think but why not share your thoughts on this game! Let us know what you think of it in the comments below, or add your own score using the slider in the summary box at the top of the review!

Please follow and like us: