Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin

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Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin
ADNDTarmin.jpg
Developer(s) APh Technological Consulting
Publisher(s) Mattel Electronics
Series Dungeons & Dragons
Platform(s) Intellivision
Mattel Aquarius
Release
Genre(s) Role-playing
Mode(s) Single-player

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin is a video game for the Intellivision video game console and the Mattel Aquarius computer system. This game was a licensed Dungeons & Dragons adaptation. It is a successor game to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain (1982).

Contents

Gameplay

In Treasure of Tarmin, the player wanders through a multi-tiered dungeon, each level consisting of a 10x10 maze square and its surrounding hallway making it a 12x12 square maze with the hallway included. The objective is to slay the Minotaur who guards the Treasure of Tarmin and take his treasure chest.

The game's catalog gives the following description of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin:

"You've found the secret map to the underground lair of the dreaded Minotaur. You can go in, but you'll never come out unless you slay the Minotaur and claim his Tarmin treasure. As you make your way through the hallways and chambers, monsters wield their conventional or spiritual weapons. You must gather the proper defenses along the way. But use them sparingly, the Minotaur looms closer!" [1]

While the battles were turn-based, [2] Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin is different from most games of its era, as it involved a first-person view, giving it a three-dimensional feel. The player begins the game with the lowest-level bow, a small supply of food, a number of arrows dependent on the selected difficulty level, and minimal "Spiritual" and "War" health. Randomly placed throughout the maze are new weapons, armor, magical items, and treasure. [3] The treasure in the maze (aside from the Treasure of Tarmin the Minotaur holds) can either boost the player's score (visible from the map screen), contain a potion (blue, pink, or purple in large and small varieties), or a bomb reducing the player's war/spiritual score. The bomb can cause a game over depending on the strength of the player at the time of the bomb trigger.

Types of threats

The alternating wall panels created a convincing 3-D world. ADDTarmin.png
The alternating wall panels created a convincing 3-D world.

Each enemy (aside from the Minotaur) can be found in three colors, signifying different levels of difficulty. [4]

Situations

Publication history

The game was written by Tom Loughry in 1981 and was published by Mattel in 1983. Treasure of Tarmin was the second AD&D game for the Intellivision, after Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain . A version was also released for the Mattel Aquarius home computer.

In 1983, Mattel Electronics commissioned an Atari 2600 version of Treasure of Tarmin. This was developed by Synth Corporation in Chicago. Two Synth software developers, Michael Bengtson and Neal Reynolds, wrote the game to conform to the play of the Intellivision version. While the game was completed, it was not released before Mattel Electronics closed their doors.

Reception

German gaming magazine TeleMatch gave the game a positive review, giving it a one and a half out of six (on their rating system one is the highest), stating, " Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is already the outstanding pinnacle of Intellivision-Cassettes, but Treasure of Tarmin raises the bar even further" and, "at least for the German market, no other video game of this type exists ... What happens next is almost unbelievable: you yourself are the adventurer, and you're not represented by a symbol of a small man on the screen, rather you see what one would see if one was walking". TeleMatch was also impressed by the number of levels in the game, and felt that the awarding of points for defeating monsters was rewarding. [5]

In a retrospective review of Treasure of Tarmin in Black Gate , Ty Johnston said "this is a game worth playing, loaded with thrills and fun". [6]

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References

  1. "Intellivision Classic Video Game System / 1983 Games". Archived from the original on 2006-04-27. Retrieved 2006-05-11.
  2. Brett Weiss (20 December 2011), Classic home video games, 1972-1984: a complete reference guide, McFarland, p. 211, ISBN   9780786487554 , retrieved 2011-03-18
  3. "zebeth.com is coming soon". www.zebeth.com.
  4. "zebeth.com is coming soon". www.zebeth.com.
  5. "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Review". TeleMatch. TeleMatch Verlag. December 1983. p. 39.
  6. "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin video game for the Intellivision console – Black Gate". 11 June 2021.