"It's really not that terrible, not great, but not terrible."

Deadly Towers has a horrible reputation. Most everyone that plays it hails this game as simply the worst game to ever grace the NES. Hell the way everybody acts about this game you'd think it infects you with some horrible disease or something. While for the most part the game is well-deserving of that hatred I can't help but feel that the game really isn't that terrible. By all means, the game is not good, I wouldn't want to imply that it was, it's just not as horrid as people make it out to be.

The game starts out with Prince Myer walking to a lake to escape the worries and troubles of his impending coming-of-age ceremony. Where he'll ascend to the throne of the kingdom of Willner. As he's at the lake a voice calls out to him. Warning him about Rubas, the horrid Devil of Darkness, whose plotting to invade Willner. His scheme involves him building his fortress in the mountains where he intends to sound seven bells and summon forth untold horrors, which will then invade and murder everyone in Willner. Unfortunately for foul Rubas (the horrid Devil of Darkness) he's built his fortress and seven belfries atop the sacred flame. Which, ironically, can destroy the very bells that Rubas seeks to use to summon demons. To me that just seems like bad planning… I think foul Rubas' (the horrid Devil of Darkness) evil plan needs to be revised just a tad.

The quest seems relatively straightforward, bust into Rubas' castle, destroy his bell towers, and then kill Rubas himself. Seems pretty straightforward enough, so when the game begins Myer is teleported to the moat outside Rubas' castle. Two paths present themselves, one leading into the dangerous den that leads to the seven bell towers, the other to Rubas himself, but you need to destroy the bells first. So as you walk to the first gate with your piteously slow walking speed you encounter the first foe of many. That enemy? A bouncing blue ball, but hold! After that another dread opponent presents itself; a blue puddle. In fact most, if not all of the enemies are really bland and boring looking. The aforementioned bouncing sphere and puddle enemies for instance. But even the bosses hardly do anything to look better, and more often than not are just circles with a snarling mouth and eyes. Also the environments look pretty damn bland and unappealing.

Another thing about this game is the fact that you start out really, pathetically weak. You will die, and often. The starting enemies can easily whittle away your pathetic lifebar in about four hits. One of the real kickers here is regardless of how much health you accumulate throughout the game every time you start the game anew you will always have just 100. Something that aids little to this is the fact that Prince Myer's weapons are woefully weak and slow.

Most of the time when you toss a weapon the enemy you threw it at will dodge the projectile with ease. But hey, slow projectiles add to the challenge, and beside there are powerups that increase the speed of your blade over the course of the game. The problem is, after you launch your blade you are utterly defenseless until the blade either hits a target (unlikely) or it passes off screen. The only way to ensure a successful attack is to rush up to an enemy and stand about a centimeter away from him while launching your swords into its body.

Which will stave off your inevitable death, but hey, at least you bested that enemy. I can dig that Irem wanted their game to have a special gimmick but only being able to toss one sword until it hits something? That's just stupid if I may be so bold. Also the foolproof strategy illustrated above can really backfire on you, if say there's more than one enemy on screen.

But hey, let's say you survive your encounters with the various monsters long of enough to make at least five screens in. In addition to the normal hazards presented via the normal enemies there are also the dungeons to contend with. Which, in itself, isn't really a problem, a vast majority of adventure games like this have dungeons. Problem is you have no way of knowing where in the hell the dungeon's entrance is. For whatever reason Irem made the dungeon entrances completely invisible. You can be trucking along, when suddenly you'll step on a piece of ground, that differs in no noticeable way from the rest of the floor, and be warped into a dungeon.

When trudging through the dungeons the rooms only vary in very slight ways. So it's really, absurdly easy to get hopelessly lost trying to find the exit. It would've been great if they had included a map of some sort to chart your progress throughout the winding corridors of the dungeons, but alas none is given. So you'll often just keep skulking through the halls until you either find the exit, or suffer a demise at the hands of a monster. Also the dungeon rooms are pretty dang small, and the game trades up the tried and true ball, and puddle enemies with things like knights, and lizardmen. Which is nice, because it's a new type of opponent, but you take massive damage if you touch one single pixel of them.

The dungeons, are however, a necessary evil, as they contain shops that more often than not contain health items, and shields to increase your defense. The downside is that they have an absurdly large price tag, and most enemies only drop a mere pittance of ONE Ludder (this game's gold). There is also something that's almost commendable with the dungeons, for despite the similar rooms they do manage to sprawl for something like fifty chambers apiece. Which is a fair deal more complex than some adventure games of the time. Granted, most of them are just empty and reused from other parts of the dungeon, but still.

Curiously enough though, when you do manage to get to the towers, you don't really have to journey far to get to the others. They are all rather conveniently place near one another. That's not to say that they're easy, because they really aren't, each one is a difficult trial as you battle to the top. Along the way, as you throw your swords into the enemies you'll encounter hidden rooms, or step into Parallel Zones. Parallel Zones are simply palette swapped versions of the tower you're in, and are a great deal harder. What's annoying is that after fighting your way to the towers if you should die, you are tossed back to the start of the game, and are forced to make your arduous trek back.

Back to the towers though, when you get to the top of the tower you, of course, engage in a boss-fight. These can be particularly frustrating as they are seemingly capable of hitting you regardless of you being well out of range of their attacks. However, their patterns are really quite easy to figure out and often devolve into a “run into the lower right corner (or left, for variety) and just angle yourself and chuck swords into 'em until they die” strategy. But, sometimes they do maneuver around the place and will just keep hitting you with cheap moves. Still, it's not impossible to best them in combat, and when you do, you just climb back down the tower and toss the bell into the sacred flame. At which point your health is refilled and you stroll off to the next tower.

Sometimes throughout the towers when you enter the hidden rooms, or enter the Parallel versions they start you off surrounded by loads of enemies. Oft times you just take an absurd amount of damage and die. Or you'll actually get thrown out of that room, and end up having to do it all again. Which as mentioned above is irritating because, you start all the way back at the beginning of the game, instead of say the Sacred Flame room. But hell, at least they give you passwords and an infinite number of continues.

Now, let's talk about some of the power-ups you get through the game. Naturally, you get stronger swords, and better armor during your quest. There are also a few items that increase your attack. Such as the parallel shot, which lets you throw two swords at once. There's also one that makes it so you can launch the swords faster than you otherwise would. While it would've been awesome if you could combine the two together and get faster parallels, you don't. There's also the obligatory items that freeze onscreen enemies. There are however two of them, one that freezes humanoid enemies, and lets you kill them. The other however, freezes them but you cannot attack, so it's really only effective if you need to desperately get away.

One of the more useful items you can acquire is the Magic Mace. What that does is it is just a ring of fire that circles around Myer and just demolishes most everything the game throws at you. The downside to this is that you can't throw your swords until the mace has dissolved. Which, isn't especially a downside considering if you use this in the final area of the game you will just steamroll over the final bosses with ease.

I can certainly dig why most people hate this game, what with its invisible dungeon entrances murderous initial difficulty, and deplorable combat system. Yet for all of that, I can't honestly say I hate it. I can't say it's good, because of all of its obvious flaws. It's not like Dragon Warrior 2 where you can just really have a hard deep hate, it's just sort of acceptable. Besides, I think it's a nice little feather in the cap to be able to say that yes, you indeed beat Deadly Towers. The game with the reputation of the “Worst NES game Evar!” If you're diligent enough, or are masochistic enough you might find yourself not entirely hating the game. Because after that couple hours or so of deadly difficulty it really does start to get moderately enjoyable. Still, it's easy to figure out why there was never a Deadly Towers 2.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/28/08

Game Release: Deadly Towers (US, September 1987)