PixlBit

Lesson 1

I wasn’t sure if I was going to do this this year. Last year I did seasonal gaming blog series, much like my Halloween Games of the year series, near the end of summer when I had a lot of time on my hands and was in the mood for something retro. It only came about because I was unemployed at the time and when it got too hot in the house to do job searches on “The Beast” PC Destop Rig, I’d retire to “my dungeon” where most of my retro systems are housed. Left with a lot of time on my hands, and a sudden feeling of nostalgia brought on by the summer heat, came birth to this concept where I shine the spotlight on some retro titles that I personally remember growing up with, wishing to have tried back in the day, or games I generally associate with summer during the time I played them.  And since it’s starting to finally feel like summer in my area (unlike the west and east coasts at the moment, my area enjoyed mid 80 degree weather with no humidity) my interest in the retro has grown yet again. So let’s see how long I can keep this up shall we?

Please note I don’t really mean for these blogs about my retro summer to be mini-reviews or blogs about any particular genre of gaming. Their mostly just to share a little something about me and the games I enjoyed, or wished I could’ve enjoyed, in times past. You might notice a general theme but that’s purely by coincidence given my retro mood.

So with that said let’s being this year’s RetroSummer2013 with a title that has been a long time coming: Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara on XBLA, PSN and eventually on Steam.

 

I know this might be considered cheating. My Xbox 360 is not housed in “my dungeon” where it’s nice and cool. But how could I not start off this year’s RetroSummer with this enchanted title that was just as elusive in the arcades as it was on a home console release. To many retro gamers this game is hard to find as a mystical creature itself. The game only saw a console release in japan as “Dungeon & Dragons Collection on the Sega Saturn (also requiring the 4-MEG RAM cart for some gameplay). So forgive me if I don’t play this game in “My Dungeon” but instead during the early morning/late evening hours when the weather is cooled by the darkness. I don’t feel like dragging my system down to “My Dungeon” but regardless I can’t start this RetroSummer and not say anything about this game.

 

If anyone will recall a blog I wrote last year, I spoke of a fantasy-adventure beat’em up that looked oddly like a D&D game. King of Dragons seemed to have almost everything you could expect out of a D&D arcade game except for the D&D name.  Yet even if you were lucky enough to play King of Dragons at your local arcade, you’d be even luckier if you actually stumbled across one of the most fabled arcade games of the 90’s era: Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom! You wouldn’t be able to miss it if you found it. Boasting two different screens for two different players to share, making a total of four players total, this game brought a whole new dimension of player co-op during a time when TMNT, The Simpsons & X-Men ruled the 4 player game modes. You get the choice of choosing the basic staple of characters form the D&D Universe: The fighter, the elf, the cleric and the dwarf. And each character played differently and had different access to items/magic associated with their character class. Even though you could play solo thru the entire game, it was best played with a group of others if only to make it easier to play in the long run. Not only did it make it easier to play with every character’s unique skills coming into play during the game, it was more fun when you had a whole crew to back you up.  Having a fighter charge in with sword drawn, the female elf by his side ready to draw her sword or use her arsenal of magic, the cleric ready to bash heads in with his mace and case a spell to heal or chase away the undead, and the dwarf ready to jump into the fray that only a dwarf can when it comes to the thrill of battle. Opening treasure chests for loot, ganging up on a cheap boss or fighting off hordes of enemies never felt more awesome!

 

I remember Towers of Doom fondly when I happened up it at my local arcade. I would always see at least two or three people playing the game. I’d enjoy watching them play just to see how the different characters were like and see how far they could progress in the game before calling it quits. Though I didn’t have the pleasure of having three other friends with me, usually some arcade goer would drop in on my game and lend an assist till I ran out of quarters. Like other arcade games of their time this game is a quarter cruncher! It had the usual cheap bosses and cheap death traps that one would expect from an arcade title. I don’t even recall even getting to the ship level when I played it back in the day.

 

But as the years passed, and the arcade machine went away, I still didn’t forget how fun it was to play that type of Capcom coin-op title. It was everything you’d expect out of a Capcom title back in the day. The artwork was beautiful, some of the magic spells were truly blinding with their casting and animated so wonderfully, it controlled well (though a bit slow for my taste), it had a level up system in the game and you had branching paths in how you want to reach the titled “Tower of Doom”. It even stayed true to the D&D formula with authentic enemies, character designs, and world rules of the game (I forgot the only way to truly defeat a troll in D&D was with fire) I even remember being told by other arcade goers to avoid the path that lead to the Red Dragon for he was a foe one could never beat, as if it was like the other stories told of Red Dragons in D&D pencil and paper game sessions.

 

Being able to play “Tower of Doom” in the comfort of my own home has been a dream I’ve wished ever since I played the arcade game and couldn’t afford to import the D&D Collection for my Saturn.

Now I know what you’re going to say. But NSonic79, you amazing handsome and sage gamer of the retro modern age, you said this game was called Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara! Not Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom! What does Tower of Doom have anything to do with Chronicles of Mystara? To that I would say have patients my ADHD gamer for its purpose is far grander than any retro treasure one would find at your local goodwill.

 

If you’ll recall I mentioned the Dungeons & Dragons Collection that was released in Japan on the Sega Saturn. The reason why it was called that was because the release contained TWO D&D Games, Tower of Doom being the first game. Little did I realize back in the day that there was indeed a SECOND arcade title to bear the D&D name: Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow of Mystara!  I never had the pleasure in playing it myself but I did read about it in an issue of my GameFan magazine back in the day. It spoke of how it was an upgrade to the original game, adding two new characters, a new land to explore, tightened gameplay mechanics, even more branching paths, better combat animations and far more complex move sets for each character, complete with some characters able to change their main weapon to using two at the same time. Yet despite the upgrades it still kept to the tried and true formula of D&D by having the same character sprites of the main characters and enemies. They make up for this by going all out with what the game has to offer in graphics with having enemies jump out at you from both the fore and backgrounds, even more insane magic spell visuals, scrolling backgrounds and newer enemy bosses that can be bigger than the player characters themselves. Despite this the game still retains the roots of its coin cruncher sibling by having the usual cheap bosses, cheap death traps as before.  

 

Now here’s the reason why I brought up “Shadow over Mystara”: Because just like D&D Collection, D&D: Chronicles of Mystara has BOTH games offered! That’s right! D&D: Chronicles of Mystara is basically “Tower of Doom” AND “Shadow over Mystara” put together into one! Instead of having to swap out game discs like with the D&D Collection or pray the arcade you find house both cabinets, all you need to do with this digital release is just push one button to switch between which game you want to play. The only difference between them is that D&D Collection was reworked from the arcades to compensate that the Saturn version could only handle two players at one time, whereas Chronicles of Mystara was reworked from the arcade game itself to give us the best experience.

 

And try they do!

 

Though sadly some slowdown is detected in this game (where the Saturn and arcade versions did not) Capcom did all they could to tickle our retro glands with this game. You have various settings you can set the games to for difficulty, visuals, gameplay modes and types of play. Don’t like the HD visuals? Unfilter them and go all pixilated. Want scan lines? Boom! You got them? Don’t think the game is hard enough? Crack up the difficulty and play as if you were in the Ravenloft Universe! Don’t like the original screen ratio? Change it to whichever you wish! (I have mine set to widescreen) You even get the option to choose two player split screen if you want the total nostalgia feeling like you had in the arcade! Though fairly pointless it was nice that Capcom would allow that feature in the game. They even throw in crazy game modes where holding onto your loot is your life bar or a game mode where vampirism comes into play!

 

If there can be one downside to having this game is from what you might be able to tell from the screenshots I took from Game Rig One, Ver. 2.0. It’s not that easy to set up a game to have others drop in and play along, either locally or over the game’s respective networks. I hope it’s just me living in Nebraska but I could hardly find a game where anyone was playing any mode of gameplay between the two games. Usually I have to be the one to create a game session and people drop in/drop out as I play. Not surprisingly very few people want to play as the dwarf in both versions of this game. As much as I wanted to play with others to get screenshots of four players going all out, it was hard to get a crew gathered to explore the D&D world.

 

At 1200 MS Points on XBLA and $14.99 on PSN the price might seem steep to some. Even if you are getting two games at that price, these games are dated even with the HD visual thrown in. It might not be for everyone given how they are aged. But for me these games have aged well and it’s a far cheaper alternative than trying to buy the Saturn Import (Or convince a certain SOMEONE to part with their copy, they know who they are =P) or track down arcade cabinets. You can’t get any more retro than with Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara and these games are just as enjoyable as the other offerings given by Capcom during their arcade coin-op heyday.

Ta-ta

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