Dungeon Master (video game)
A pioneering first-person dungeon crawler with real-time combat.
Dungeon Master is a role-playing video game developed and published by FTL Games for the Atari ST in 1987, with ports to the Amiga and PC DOS following in 1988 and 1992. It sold 40,000 copies in its first year and became the best-selling game for the Atari ST. The game was an influential early example of the first-person party-based dungeon crawler genre, later inspiring titles such as Eye of the Beholder.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- FTL Games; Victor Musical Industries (X68000)
- Director
- Doug Bell
- Producer
- Wayne Holder
- Programmer
- Doug Bell
- Dennis Walker
- Mike Newton
- Artist
- Andrew Jaros
- Platforms
- Atari ST
- Amiga
- Apple IIGS
- MS-DOS
- SNES
- TurboGrafx-CD
- X68000
- PC-9801
- FM Towns
- Released
- December 15, 1987 (NA)
- 1988 (EU)
- 1990 (JP)
- Genre
- Role-playing, dungeon crawl
Facts from the source article.
Plot
Theron, the Grey Lord's apprentice, must resurrect four fallen champions and lead them through a dungeon. Their goal is to retrieve Librasulus's firestaff, which the Grey Lord needs to regain a physical body and vanquish Lord Chaos. If the player secures the firestaff and defeats Lord Chaos, the true ending is achieved. However, an alternate ending occurs if the player obtains the firestaff but leaves the dungeon without destroying Lord Chaos.
Development
Development began under the name Crystal Dragon, coded in Pascal for the Apple II platform. Doug Bell and Andy Jaros started work at their studio PVC Dragon before joining FTL Games in 1983. The game was finished in C and published for the Atari ST in 1987. An Amiga version ported by Phil Mercurio followed in 1988, becoming the first video game to use 3D sound effects. The game was later ported to PC, Apple IIGS, TurboGrafx-CD, Super NES, X68000, PC-98, and FM Towns, and translated into German, French, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. A port to the Amiga CDTV was never completed because FTL could not obtain reliable information from Commodore about saving to memory cards. A Macintosh version was developed but not released, and a prototype for the Atari Lynx existed under the name Dungeon Slayers. The cover art, painted by David R. Darrow, shows a scene from the manual's prologue featuring Halk the Barbarian, Syra Child of Nature, Alex Ander, and Nabi the Prophet reduced to skulls. A soundtrack album titled Dungeon Master: The Album featured music by Darrell Harvey, Rex Baca, and Kip Martin, composed for the FM Towns version and other tracks.
Reception
Dungeon Master debuted on December 15, 1987 for the Atari ST and became the best-selling game for that platform; Bell estimated that at one point more than half of all Atari ST owners had purchased it. FTL's sophisticated copy protection led many who pirated software to buy the game. The Amiga version required 1 MB of memory, making it the first prominent Amiga game to exceed the standard amount, prompting many to purchase additional RAM. Hosea Battles Jr. of Computer Gaming World in 1988 praised the dungeon graphics and monster details, including multiple facial expressions on ogres, and noted the control system worked extremely well with real-time adrenaline. He also praised the extensive sound effects, uncommon to RPGs, but complained about the manual lacking monster descriptions, a frustrating shortage of food and water, and the lack of a map making the game extremely difficult. Scorpia in 1992 called the IBM PC version's graphics surprisingly good despite the game's age, but found the endgame extremely frustrating. In 1993 she stated the game still held up well after seven years but was not for the easily frustrated due to its ending.
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