Dark Tower (game)
A 1981 electronic board game with a rotating tower.
Dark Tower is an electronic board game released by Milton Bradley Company in 1981 for one to four players. Players aim to gather an army, collect three keys, and defeat the evil within the central tower. The game is notable for its television commercial featuring Orson Welles and for a sequel, Return to Dark Tower, released in 2022.
Quick Facts
- Designer
- Roger Burten
- Alan Coleman
- Vincent Erato
- Illustrator
- Bob Pepper
- Publisher
- Milton Bradley
- Date
- 1981
- Players
- 1–4
- Playing time
- 90'
- Ages
- 10+
- Related
- Dragonmaster, Return to Dark Tower
Facts from the source article.
Components
The game includes an electronic center unit called the Dark Tower, powered by two D-size (LR20) batteries, and a circular cardboard game board divided into four kingdom quadrants. Sixteen plastic buildings (bazaar, ruin, sanctuary, tomb) are placed on the board, along with plastic structural pieces to hold the board together. Four plastic warrior pawns, one plastic dragon pawn, and four cardboard Pegasus tokens are provided. Additional items include twelve plastic key pieces (gold, silver, brass), five plastic flags (Arisilon, Brynthia, Durnin, Zenon, and the Dark Tower), four cardboard peg boards for tracking troops, gold, and food, and 42 red plastic Battleship-type score pegs. The Tower itself has a small membrane keyboard beneath a tinted plastic display cover, behind which is a carousel with film cels backlit by three lights; it also contains a digital LED display for numbers up to 99. The Tower rotates and illuminates cels during gameplay while emitting sounds. Artwork for the game, including the cels, was drawn by Bob Pepper. Each kingdom quadrant has spaces for buildings, a citadel where the player pawn starts, and a frontier space between kingdoms. The sixteen buildings come in four color-coded sets, and stickers are applied to keys and flags during assembly.
Development and litigation
Milton Bradley launched Dark Tower in September 1981 at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles. Development began in January 1979 and cost the company more than $1 million; the name was finalized in November 1980 after earlier names Venture and Hostage were discarded. The game uses a TMS-1400 microcontroller with 2 K of memory. M-B vice president George Ditomassi said it targeted people who had heard of D&D but did not want to be Dungeons and Dragons freaks. Marketing included a television commercial with Orson Welles. Production stopped after one holiday season. Independent inventors Robert Burten and Allen Coleman had demonstrated their prototype Triumph to M-B in February 1980, signing a waiver of non-disclosure; Vince Erato was present. M-B retained the game for evaluation but returned it, stating no interest. Triumph received a Presidential Review on March 20, 1980. At Toy Fair New York in January 1981, Burten and Coleman saw Dark Tower and noted similarities to their prototype, despite the changed theme.
Reception
Games magazine included Dark Tower in their 'Top 100 Games of 1981', noting how the tower swivels so each player alone views events for their warriors. In a retrospective review in Black Gate, Scott Taylor expressed nostalgia for the game and its card game predecessor Dragonmaster, crediting artist Bob Pepper. The game appears in the book Family Games: The 100 Best. Several web-based versions have been developed, including an Android app called Droid Tower by Muse of Water and an iOS app by MacCrafters. Return to Dark Tower, a cooperative game for 1–4 players designed by Isaac Childres and Rob Daviau, launched on Kickstarter on January 14, 2020, by Restoration Games, featuring a motorized rotating tower guided by an app.
More in Fantasy Board Games
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced