For DOOM the Bells Toll. Let's play... Deadly Towers!

Like everyone who had an internet connection at some point within the last 8 years, I read Seanbaby’s list of the 20 worst NES games of all time, which topped off the list with Deadly Towers. I couldn’t help but think that odd. Surely Deadly Towers was a poor game, but how could it be worse then Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, or Action 52.

And so, in the tradition of my covering games I never played but want to try, this LP. It is a learning experience for me, and for you too, I’m sure.



Deadly Towers uses the same kind of plot that every other action-RPG on the NES uses. It’s like MadLibs.

The heroic [PRINCE MYER] must defeat the Demon King [RUBAS], by gathering/destroying the [SEVEN] Magic [BELLS]. Our Hero must trek through [TOWERS], [TOWERS] and even [TOWERS] in his quest to defeat the Demon King.

But please, don’t believe me, observe the opening text crawl.



I can’t help but mention that the games localization is several orders of magnitude better then Legend of Zelda’s, though. This bodes well.

So now that we all know the intricacies of the narrative, lets see just how Deadly these Towers are. Spoiler Alert: Very.



All right! Here we are. This joyful little Blue-Green man is Myer, afore mentioned Heroic Prince on a quest to save the kingdom from Rubas.



And this is his starting inventory. Myer decided to assault 7 demon-infested (DEADLY) Towers with… nothing whatsoever. Well, he’s got a Short Sword, which inspires very little confidence, 50 Ludder (the games currency) and 100 hit points. Which is something.



And, unlike other adventure heroes I could mention, he doesn’t even need a full life bar to chuck Sword Beams. Or perhaps he’s throwing the swords themselves. I’m not really sure on that, but Myer can chuck a scimitar with the best of them.



Just outside the DEADLY Tower we encounter out very first hellspawned creature: a Fire. Fire’s are among the games weakest enemies, being slow and wimpy, but they move in unpredictable patterns. This one saw it fit to leave me a large Ludder coin (which is worth five) upon it being extinguished. Apparaently, I failed to take a shot of it while alive, but hey, the enemies explode into sparkles, so we can see that.

Let’s say we walk into that Tower now, why don’t we?



Well… okay… I can see where the towers get that description from now. This is the first screen of the first proper dungeon, and it is LOUSY with enemies. Beating one Fire is one thing, but monsters on this level…

The curved creature is a Crawler, the round one a bounder and the bat is… a bat. Tiny, incredibly fast dust balls and rats also occasionally dart in. Luckily almost all of them are weak enemies, but the intimidation level is pretty high already. The Bounders take a down-right RIDONKULOUS amount of damage before dying in a glittery cascade, which leads me to believe that they weren’t actually meant to appear until later in the game. The little blue dust ball moves very quickly, but is utterly pitiful. Luckily, they all can be dodged easily.

It's worth mentioning that the game gives you little to no mercy invincibility when you take damage. So a steadily advancing enemy could probably kill you quite dead, quickly. And a large quantity of enemies, even more so.



The Door in that screen leads to this, significantly Greener, section of the Tower. It’s still infested with low-level enemies.




Not too far from the Green entrance we find another door which puts us back into the Blue region, and our brief questing is quickly rewarded with a Heart Orb. The Orbs are the games Heart Container, fulfilling the much needed task of extending Myers meager life bar by a good 10 points each. It doesn’t really amount to much, since the average enemy takes off more then that on their own, but it helps.



It should be noted that Deadly Towers is not meant to be played with the same cavalier, gung-ho approach that most other NES games take. Rushing into combat will get you killed, promptly. You need to isolate the enemies, and do your best to defeat them one at a time if you want any chance at all of surviving.

You’ve seen how damn many enemies are thrown at you at once, so you can well imagine how long this takes. Fortunately, many of them do not respawn when they’re scrolled off the screen, except for the occasional enemy that does do that.
…yeah.

Also, your Swords are tossed very, very slowly this early in the game (the manual teases items which increase your firing rate and speed, so there’s still hope), which makes the grind even worse.

That’s right, the game requires enemy grinding in order to pass from one side of a room to another.



The far west side of the Orange floor has two exits. I head South.



And am rewarded with another Heart Orb! Score!



The North Door has our first boss fight, against what the manual refers to as a “Serpent”. It looks more like a dragon to me, and it’s breathing fire, so I’m going to go with the assumption that the manual is wrong. Or else there’s a species of fire-breathing, legged snakes that I knew nothing about.

Battling single enemies isn’t anywhere near as dangerous as groups, since being struck by your Sword will briefly stun anything you hit, so you can just get right up into any monsters face and stab the bajeezus out of it whilst safely out of harms way.



Consequently, the Serpent didn’t stand a chance in hell of winning, and relinquished its spoils of about 11 Ludder. Not too shabby, all things considered. I think it actually had less health then the Bounders do.

Holy sweet god yes! I've actually put some time into this game ... but I don't think I've gotten as far as you have already. I just got killed/fell a lot. You have to mention how stupid-easy it is to fall. I'm sure it'll happen to you a few time ....

Hrhrhrhr...

I conquered this game...with a map...and an FAQ...and save states.

Should be pretty easy.


Hint: It won't.

I hope you weren't too attached to your sanity or anything, Prime, 'cause holy shit.

Prime is a masochist, CONFIRMED.

OctoPrime, you are nuts for doing this to yourself, you know that?

Man, this is going to be awesome.

Heh. "Ludder" is Norwegian for slut.

Deadly Towers makes Legacy of the Wizard look like a pleasant stroll through the park.

Nice!

I'm not going to lie, this game broke me.

It broke me into little bitty pieces, and I had to stop playing for about a month.

I had to Save-State my way through several individual rooms!

None of you can possibly appreciate how much I suffered for this one.

I think that's enough to keep me from ever playing this game.

Correct. For instance, a walk in the park can be fun.

I made it to the final boss rush of this game, though I never got through it. I did it by using the EF/FE password cheat. And playing with a friend so we could remind each other where those invisible areas that sent you to the dungeons were and avoid them.

Doing that, I actually had some fun with this game.

The final boss rush wasn't that bad if you know what you're doing.

And learning what to do by consulting with Wikipedia...

Yeah, I only stopped then because I had to go home. It seemed like pretty standard figuring out of boss patterns.

This is SO awesome. What's the penalty for dying? Give us some info on the stakes, man.

Floor Five of the Tower has a primarily white color scheme. I’m sure that, from the outside, this has to be the ugliest tower ever designed. Or at least the most garish.

What it lacks in aesthetic pleasure, though, it makes up for with Treasure! Barely been playing the game for five minutes and I’ve already killed a dragon and found 3 Heart Orbs!



Incidentally, you see those funny-looking bits of ground near the edge of the floor there? Those are areas of the tower without a safety guard. If you fall off the tower, you die, and must restart the tower without your items intact (you keep anything you've equipped and your Orbs), but down to 50 Ludder and 100 HP. It’s also the only way to get a Password. So there’s that.

Another amazing similarity to Zelda! The only way to save is to embrace your cruel death!



I’m going to come out and be totally honest here, some variety of map is a NECESSITY for this game. Many of the games items are found in the Parallel Towers and Dungeons, and the entrances to them are invisible. This first one was found in an arbitrary patch of ground near the staircase from Floor 4, and despite the name, the Mini-Dungeons are a preposterously vast maze of virtually identical rooms. Luckily, the Internet has quite a few maps ready and willing to go for this game.

The opening of this first Mini-Dungeon is staffed by four Bounders.

I tend to write my LPs AS I play the game, and I’m playing this part in late October. Bearing that in mind, and given how damn resilient Bounders are, I should have finished clearing the room a few minutes before you’ve read this sentence.



And my reward for my eternity of struggle: One, single Large Ludder coin. I suppose it could have been worse, but even four Small Ludder coins would have at least given me a better sense of satisfaction. Upwards I trek!




The north room contains a Bounder Tower. As its name suggests, it’s a tower made of Bounders. It has a single Bounder orbiting it, rather then… err… bounding. Luckily it’s pretty immobile, so it’s easy enough to kill it safely.



The good news is that every piece of the tower (even the part that’s not attached) takes damage simultaneously. The better news is that each piece has a chance to drop an item! Bounder Towers are AWEXOME! East next.



The East room contains Pac-Man Ghost-esque Slimes. They make up for their wimpiness by being crazy-fast and plentiful, which is a lethal combination. More importantly then them, though, is the blue circle on the ground. “What is it” you ask? Why... lets have Myer walk into it and see!




The Blue Circles are the entrance to the games shops. The Orange Potion restores 100 HP, The Green Scroll acts to teleport you back the beginning of the game, and the Hyper Boots cause Myer to move at less of a glacial pace.

I’m about half way to being able to afford the boots, and moving at something higher then a snails pace would be appreciated. Luckily, there’s that Bounder Tower that can be used to farm for precious, precious Ludder.



After what seems to be an eternity, I max out Myer’s wallet with 250 Ludder. Lets Buy us a pair of Shiny Boots! The speed increase is pretty meager. Negligible, in fact. To determine how much faster it truly is: With the Boots unequipped, I timed it to take about 2.09 seconds to move across the small, top part of the floor. With them equipped, it takes about 1.79 seconds.

Whether or not saving a whole 0.30 seconds of travel time is worth almost the maximum amount of money you can carry, is a question left to you, the viewer.

There’s a slightly different store to the west of this store. That’s plenty of justification for smashing down these towers, time and again, if you ask me. And now I can walk imperceptibly faster, to expedite the process!



The first room contains two Slimes, lined up to allow for easy stabbery.



The second room to the right has a few bats, which don’t leave the top of the room, rendering them harmless.



The third room is full of snakes. That’s something. Snakes are really, really fast, and being really fast trumps being really strong in this game.



Fifth room is another Bounder Tower. Hooray!




And the sixth contains that shop. The Shield (presumably old, weathered, and made of bronze, due to the color) improves defense, and the little green man will briefly paralyze any anthropomorphic enemies on screen. I think I’ll go for the crappy, old, broken shield, thanks.

A short ways south of that last Bounder Tower is yet another store.

The way is plagued by: A room swarming with harmless bats. Another room full of harmless bats, a very similar, but slightly different room that is still full of bats, and another bat filled room.




This shop contains another Orange potion, a helmet (the manual says this is a “Chain Mail”, but given the quality of items found so far, I’m going to say it’s actually just full of holes) and the torch will lead me to the exit of the dungeon. I’ve got a handy map, so I can save my Ludder there.



Check out these stylin’ duds! Got my Hat, Shield, Boots and tiny, tiny sword! Myer is ready to WRECK some demons! South of the Shop room is the exit to the dungeon.



Of course, the exit is guarded by a Werecat, which looks surprisingly similar to a wolf, yet is not referred to as such. Werecats can breathe fire, though, so there’s an important distinction between the two of them.

There is a werecat in the Eragon series. Paolini named it "Solembum." Paolini thinks this is the greatest name in the universe.

Paolini thinks a lot of things are cool. Mostly he's wrong.

Those dungeon mazes are the worst part of Deadly Towers. They are what makes the game a pain even if you play with the cheats.

At one point I wandered into a dungeon by accident (since, you know, the entrances are invisible), and I was relieved to had appeared in a room where the monster killed me as soon as it spawned, since being sent back to the Entrance of the Castle lead to a shorter walk then navigating the dungeon.

In many ways this is not a well designed game.

According to the map, the dungeon exit puts me on the Sixth Floor of that Deadly, Deadly Tower. I head to the west, since that’s been a very good direction for me, so far.



And my questing is rewarded with another Heart Orb.



The rest of the room is pretty treacherous, since the recoil from taking damage knocks you downward, and there’s an awful lot of ground to fall down from, which, as previously noted, is fatal. At least the enemies do significantly less damage, now that I’m not running about nekkid.

DEADLY Towers indeed!



A short ways east from the entrance to the Seventh Floor is another stair down to the sixth, albeit a rather different section. Besides the usual swarm of tiny, harmless critters, there’s a monster apparently being held captive! The captive monster can still hurt you, and you can still hurt it, so it’s really just there for flavor. Not sure why, though. Maybe it was mouthing off to Rubas? Maybe those cages are like box-seats to monsters? Maybe I’m barging into a guys bedroom? I don’t know.

A cursory glance online shows that killing the captive monsters removes all your money, and a glance at my inventory confirms this. Stupid monster. Kind of wished I look it up before killing it, but whatever.



On the other side of the room is the entrance to the second of Rubas’ generals: The Black Box!

…seriously. That’s his name. The Black Box. While he’s certainly black, I do not quite see where the Box description comes from.

Unlike The Serpent, Black Box sees it fit to fill his room with minions, mainly bats. Of course, only a few are in your way from hitting him, they don’t respawn, and most don’t even go near you. So Black Box is very, very nearly as easy to beat as The Serpent. Onward we go.



Right in front of Myer, here, is the entrance to the next Mini-Dungeon. You can tell it’s the entrance to another dungeon because, unlike every other piece of dirt, stepping on it sends you to a dungeon. That’s the only way to tell.

That’s some quality game design there, Irem.



This Dungeons opening salvo consists of a single bounder. Fairly underwhelming.




The first room to the right, however, contains a shop, which contains another Orange Potion and a New Sword! Well, a New-To-Me Sword, in any case. It’s another Short Sword, and buying it has absolutely no benefit besides lightening your wallet. Theoretically you could intentionally down-grade your weapon if you feel like playing with more of a challenge. This is a ridiculous notion in this game. I’m not sure if I’ve made it clear yet, but these towers are seriously freakin’ Deadly!



Luckily, there’s a Bounder Tower in the room directly to the South of the Shop. That’s good. However, Bounders move upwards when they spawn, rather quickly at that, and getting hit will deal heavy damage, and knock you down, into the path of more Bounders, without (as previously noted) any sort of Mercy Invincibility.

The Long and Short is that if you don’t head left or right the INSTANT you walk into this room, you will probably die.



Scorpions, incidentally, are terrible, terrible beasts. They’re nearly as durable as Bounders, but they move around, and usually attack in swarms.



There IS a circle on the ground here, but it doesn’t do anything. It’s also guarded by a team of very ridiculously powerful Hyper Knights.



Just above that pointless room is one full of mercifully wimpy Crawlers, and a real shop. The Crawlers fall quickly, leaving the Store unguarded. The only new item is the Green/Orange Scroll, which will automatically send you to the Top of the Tower. Neat, but the top is close by anyway, so we’ll hold off on that for now.



A nearby room has a small caveman. It dies.

Besides a few stray fires, this room has the Exit to the dungeon. We’re not done in here yet, so we trek onwards, ignoring that tempting circle.



The next Store has more items that we’ve already seen, despite the fact that it’s colored the same as the Orange Potion, the cheaper potion is an inferior Red concoction that merely restores 50 HP. I’d call the Better Business Bureau on that, it’s flagrant false advertising.



The next room over has another shop, this one with Leather Armor. It gets bought, as all good armors should be, and has the genuinely unexpected trait of increasing your defense. Shocking, I know.



Two doors down is the final shop in the dungeon, containing a Glove. Gloves increase the speed at which the swords travel. Unlike the Boots, whose impact were only noticeable under close scrutiny, the Glove has an incredibly dramatic effect on your swords, easily doubling their speed. And it’s the lowest level of Glove available!




Cruelly, on my way out of the Dungeon, I was inadvertently knocked into another room, full of GIGANTIC snakes, which were more then willing to oblige me on my way to oblivion.

So I restart back at the bottom of the dungeon, but with 50 Ludder in my pocket that I didn’t have before. That’s puzzling, yet pleasant! I lost all the Red Potions I bought though, that’s predictable, yet distressing.

Up Next: Towers that Lead to Towers, at the end of which, are more Towers! All Deadly!

Holy shit.

Well, they're not Safe Towers, now are they?

Well yeah, I know that. It's just that it's not everyday when a "windfall" can kill you in an instant.

Except in this game, when such a thing is rather commonplace.

When trying to move back DOWN the main tower, enemies usually spawned in such a way that I would be knocked down a hole by recoil damage.

As I walked into the room.

Hence: Holy shit.

Now I understand!