Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

"Misty Mountain Hopping D&D Style"

Dungeons and Dragons may be the ''missing link'' of console RPG's; more evolved than the Atari 2600's ''Adventure'' but no where near as complex as The Legend of Zelda or Ultima. A solid game in its own right, AD&D presents you with the quest of choosing a solid path through a corridor of mountains to defeat the final beast. While still miles away from needing any kind of battery save, your adventure still required thought, skill, time, and patience. Each mountain consisted of a maze which you opened up by walking through darkened areas on the map. When enemies lurked in dark corridors, a warning ''breath'' would sound. This meant either arm your self for battle or run like a snake on Whacking Day!
The difficulty of each maze corresponded to the color of the peaks: Purple was Easy, Grey was medium, red was hard. After weaving a path to the final mountain, you squared off in an epic battle for victory!
A great title for the Intellivision and yet another step on the way to modern RPG's.

Graphics=8.7 Pretty sharp for the Intellivision. The mountainscape is colorful and rugged. You control your ''advanced'' stick figure in the mazes with ease (there is no confusing what ''block'' is your player!)The enemies, what few there are, are well drawn. From the purple jelly blob to the black bat, these are the missing links in RPG enemies!

Sound=7.0 The breathing of the enemies was a nice touch to a game that other wise does not have a whole lot of aural effects. Still no music but the ''wounded enemy'' and ''wounded hero'' sounds were a reason to leave the volume on.

Challenge=9.2 On the hardest level this game took some skill to master! Red mountains offered mean enemies and mazes with many dead ends. A nice change to the normal ''score as high as you can'' type of games.

Play Control=9.2 Smooth control on a classic system! Your character was actually animated with some detail and the game scrolled very cleanly. The Intellivision controller was always hard to work with but this is about as good as it gets!

Overall=9.1 A refreshing new game for the Intellivision that tapped into our imaginations. While basic to today's epic RPG's, this was the next step to the adventure quest games we love today!

*BRU'S MUST GET OMETER*=10 If you own Intellivision this game is a great adventure and a nice archive of RPG's infant years. Fun and challenging! (Just don't start calling yourself Questor and shooting the mailman with arrows after playing!)

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/21/00, Updated 03/21/00