Game of the Week: Advanced Dungeons and Dragons for Intellivision

Back in the early 1980s, during the golden age of video games and possibly of tabletop roleplaying games, it seemed a natural for there to be a Dungeons & Dragons video game. So, when Mattel came along with such a game for its Intellivision home video game system, fans of both type games were more than thrilled.

And the game didn't let anyone down. For the time, the graphics were actually quite good, though the Intellivision always had pretty solid graphics for the early '80s. The sound was also good, and played an important role in the game experience itself.

Also, the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game for the Intellivision was different and somewhat complex compared to other games of the time. There was no score. Instead, the player had a goal to reach, a crown to find. But before finding that crown, the player had to find a boat, a hatchet and a key to be able to travel through the land in which the game took place.

Basically, you travel around a map and enter caves to search for the needed items. Your only weapon is a bow and a limited amount of arrows. Fortunately, you could find more arrows laying about in the cave systems, which was good because you had plenty of monsters to face such as bats, spiders, rats, blobs, demons and yes, dragons.

Once you found the crown, you won the game.

It wasn't exactly true roleplaying, but it was one of the closest video game experiences players could find at the time.

And yes, of course, by today's standards the graphics and sound and gameplay don't compare, but they were very good for the early 1980s.

Eventually this game was renamed Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain because a sequel game was released, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin, which was a fine game in its own right.