Back in My Day: Dungeon Master I & II

Dungeons! They seem to be everywhere this year. So far I’ve been through Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale, Dungeon Defenders, and Dungeons of Dredmore. That doesn’t even count the dungeons I’ve explored in the various MMO games that I’ve been playing or the dungeons I’ve traveled through in Skyrim. There are so many dungeon style games to count, but there is an important one to always remember. I present to you Dungeon Master and Dungeon Master II.

“I ain't no nerd...” I found myself saying this a lot while growing up. Secretly, I had an obsession with the medieval era, swords and shields, and magical beings. I never wanted to let anyone else know this because, well, “I ain't no nerd.” Those who did express their interests in these sort of things found themselves being ridiculed and bullied a lot at my school. I wanted to steer clear from that. So there I sat most of my junior high life, under a blanket with my glowing television. My interests didn't begin there, however, but long before. Looking back, there was one main game that kicked off my nerdy interest in this field.


Released by FTL for the Atari ST in 1987, Dungeon Master became one of the best selling games to ever land on this platform. One of the things I miss having most is our old Atari ST because of this game. Sadly, I had to part with it when my brother moved away; he got the Atari ST, and we kept the Commodore 64. When Dungeon Master was released, I never really played it to much. It was more of a over the shoulder perspective of watching my father and brother play it. I kind of wish I was a bit braver when I was five or six years old.


The reason I wish I was braver is because something about this game frightened me. I don't know if it was the monsters or perhaps the semi real time 3D environment that Dungeon Master offered. This wasn't your normal turn based game. Danger lurked around every corner, and you had to be prepared. Much like your regular RPG or Dungeons and Dragons type game, Dungeon Master pits the player in a dungeon, of course, to battle monsters using weapons, armor, and magic. The magic, being the most difficult to use, had to be figured out by using the manual. Manuals and a five year old don't mix.


To be honest, I never really played this game. As mentioned, I watched most of the time. However, when I did get a chance to play, I spent much of my time studying the party members that you chose to adventure with. It was at this moment that something inside me was triggered. I was fascinated by the statistics of each hero. While I didn't really know what the stat meant, I had a great time staring at portraits. I knew that the person with a big sword and armor was the fighter and that the man in soft clothes was a magical person. For the man who didn't wear any clothes, I just assumed he enjoyed being naked.

When I finally did play, it would never be for terribly long. I can remember moving about the dungeon while picking up food and water. The game layout was quite simple for its time, but it was also pretty amazing. For a child, seeing something as if you were actually walking down the hallways of a dungeon was incredible. There was no smoothness to how you looked around or turned. Players would just click on the arrow, and the screen would flip to that direction. After I gathered my food and water, it would be time to quit the game; I never really knew what to do next. This game was filled with monsters that you had to defeat using quick clicks to select a hero’s action and different puzzles to proceed further into the game. It was way to much for me at the time.


So I never got the chance to really get my hands dirty with the original Dungeon Master. In 1995, however, I was given a new opportunity. Dungeon Master II: The Legend of Skullkeep made its debut, this time released by Interplay,. By that point, I had played a few other games that aided me in my dungeon crawling addiction. I was a fan of Barbarian for the Tandy 1000 and had a blast with Gauntlet for the NES. So when Dungeon Master II came out, I knew what to do. I still had fuzzy memories of the first but had grown to be prepared for the second.

Dungeon Master II: Legend of Skullkeep is basically the same thing as Dungeon Master, but with a revamp on graphics, game play, and sounds. The objective of the game is still the same: explore the dungeon and emerge victorious over the boss. The first time I ran into this game was through a game pack disc with over 1000 games on it. After about ten minutes, I was completely hooked.

For me, being a closet nerd at the time, this game was amazing at what it did. Once again, the player would start off at a character selection dungeon. You had to navigate through a cave that had all different types of heroes locked inside some sort of chamber. Each character had different stats and excelled at various things. The main types to choose from were fighters, caster, healers, and ninjas, which to my knowledge would be the equivalent of a rogue. What really caught me was the portrait of each character. The game was very creative when it came to heroes. I can still remember my favorite fighters being the horse man, a barbarian, and some sort of brown mutant man. Other times I would pick a different hero just to sell his stuff.

As for casters, I didn't really care too much about which one I picked. Basically my method for picking a caster class was finding the coolest looking one and, from time to time, selecting the girl. There is one hero that stands out vividly: the guy with the rope. For some reason, I hated this guy because he carried rope and never selected him.

After you have your party selected, players will be reminded of the first Dungeon Master because they will be exploring through a very house-like area to pick up food, water, torches, bags, and keys. This is basically to get used to the controls and the ability to pick things up and throw them across a room. The game also gets a chance to show off how well the graphics have been bumped up since the last game. Curtains now blow in the breeze, and there are different weather effects outside. The interaction with different objects in the game has been remade as well. Players will find the very common pressure plate, but they can also click and drag items (such as tables, lanterns, and others) around rooms.


The moment players open the door to the outside world, they will be confronted with a monstrous slime. I can clearly remember killing this poor slime over 1000 times through different play throughs. From there, players have an area similar to a miniature playground to figure out how combat works. They will also discover that running into the fountain repeatedly can and will kill them.

Now, for the biggest memory of this game, I introduce you to the shop keeper, his bodyguard, and the currency system. Normally, players will find themselves attracted to the immediate adventure at hand. They're willing to get down and dirty for some dungeon crawling. Me on the other hand, I remember spending a lot of time in the shop. I'm not sure what it is about me and money, but I spent hours on end trying to get the lowest price for a lot of the merchants goods.

In the shop, the player is separated from the shopkeeper by different tables. One table is to sell, and one table is to purchase. Players can interact with the shopkeeper by selecting an item in the preview bubble and moving to the purchase table. The merchant will then place that item on the table and the trading begins. Each item has a set price. Players can pay full price for an item or try to haggle with the merchant by placing different amounts of money on the table. For example, a sword that that is worth three gold coins may be able to be purchased for two gold and three copper coins. At the time, this was the best idea I had seen in a game that wasn't a first person shooter.


As said, I would spend so much time in this little building that I wouldn't even bother with the rest of the game. Sad, but true. Much like the first game, I never fully completed Dungeon Master II. I did, however, progress a lot further. At times the game seemed a bit too difficult for me still, and I would get frustrated and quit. Controlling four different characters was just a bit too much for me.

While I enjoyed Dungeon Master a lot, I do have to mention the few bugs that it had. I still have not found the correct fix, but many times this game is quite difficult to get running. I can remember having many problems loading up this game to the point where it would simply crash or freeze my computer. If I did get it running, I would be with no music in the game. It's quite disappointing because I can remember when I first tried this game out, the music was really welcomed. It enhanced the spooky, stormy night setting in the game. I'm pretty sure that this game is available for free download with a simple search, but I'm not too sure I could get it running today. Even if I did, I know where I would end up: right back in the shop.