Dungeon Master

aka: Crystal Dragon
Moby ID: 834
Atari ST Specs
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Description official descriptions

Dungeon Master is a role-playing game where the player selects four adventurers and descend into the depths of the dungeon. The gameplay is reminiscent of the 3D dungeon crawl type of role-playing games popularized by Wizardry and The Bard's Tale. However, unlike these games, Dungeon Master features real-time combat, which requires the player to click on the opponent in order to execute an attack. Another notable aspect of the game is its growth system: instead of gathering experience points and leveling up, characters improve by repeatedly using the same action. Spellcasting involves selecting and combining symbols, which can be arranged as rune sequences. The game also allows the player to directly interact with objects in the game world through a point-and-click interface.

Spellings

  • ダンジョン・マスター - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Atari ST version)

7 People

Program Design
Visual Design
Audio
Prologue
Cover Painting

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 84% (based on 37 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 158 ratings with 7 reviews)

The Grandfather of all Dungeon Crawls..

The Good
I was first exposed to Dungeon Master back in '87 when my best friend had it for is Atart ST. I can truly say that the best way to experience Dungeon Master is at night, with no lights on, the sound turned up a bit, and with NO background noise.

The gameplays much like Eye of the Beholder (1,2 and 3) and Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos. Dungeon Master was the first color 3-Dimensional Real Time dungeon game, and even today it is in a class of it own.

The Graphics are top-notch for it's day, and even now they are very good. The dungeon is very bright (at least the frist 3 levels are) and colorful...for a dungeon. The enemies are nicely animated also.

Gameplay is incredible. Traps and tricks and puzzles were all that this game was about. There is even one floor that has 8 puzzles that need to be solved (in non-linear order, which made it that much more cooler) in order to proceed to the next level. Timing puzzles, floor switch puzzles, teleporters, etc. etc. A lot goes on in this one.

The sound was incredible. The PC version used the Soundblaster for it's effects, and it used them well. The creaking of gates as they rose, the noises from the creatures, the crackle of a fireball. Oddly enough, there is no Background Music in this game. In retrospect I believe the reason that there is none are 2: 1) lack of memory to do so at the time; and 2) I didn't need it. Racing down a corridor and running headlong into a screaming mummy would scare the heebie-jeebies out of anyone.

The Bad
That depends on your perspective. If you don't like Dungeon Crawls then you'll have a hard time liking this game.

The Bottom Line
If you like Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, or even Ultima Underworld, try the game that started it all... Dungeon Master

DOS · by Chris Martin (1155) · 2000

One of the greatest early computer RPGs.

The Good
A well-balanced and engrossing CRPG. Dungeon walls with real texture, terrifying monsters appearing around a corner. Challenging environmental puzzles involving doors, switch plates, traps, and much more. Unique spell system that players learn by finding spell scrolls and experimenting.

The Bad
An amusing bug allowed resistance items (e.g. fire resistance) to stack to a point where spells did negative damage... Except that they used unsigned arithmetic, so a small negative number turned into a huge positive one. The better you're equipped, the faster you die. This is almost a positive - It's the most terrifying RPG I've played. Another bug could cause the game to freeze in the endgame if you used items in almost the correct way to win. However, these are rare exceptions in a mostly very solid program.

The Bottom Line
Any aspiring RPG designer needs to play and study Dungeon Master. Players who think that a CRPG can't approach the tabletop experience should play DM and be amazed. Dungeon Master is a truly great game, and I wouldn't mind playing it again today.

Atari ST · by Corey Cole (36) · 2023

First 'free-form' job-type RPG I played

The Good
- One of the first truly free form experience gaining systems; You practiced attack spells to gain wizard experience, wielded weapons for fighter experience, and throwing stuff (anything) for ninja experience. I remember having fun throwing all my extra items in front of me, as I progressed down the dungeon halls, gaining ninja experience.

  • Free form spell casting. You had to choose spell components (syllables) to build your spells. Now, you didn't have to blindly figure spells out (although for one you sort of have to), as you find scrolls that do provide instructions for casting new spells. However, you could have figured them out yourself and cast it before you found the spell scroll.

  • Creepy atmosphere; I hated(liked I suppose) the fact that you'd be carefully inching your way around the dungeon, and then spot in the distance some very very bad monsters. Oh @#$@! If you weren't prepared for them, you had to escape back to the stairs up to the upper floor. Also, the silence (which I suppose isn't really a feature but it works) while traversing the dungeon halls was fairly off-putting.



  • The Bad
    - strict saving: If I remember right, you didn't have multiple saves as you do now. Like Sundog (another great FTL game), once you entered the game, you basically eased your save point. You could only save your progress by exiting the game. If you died, that was it; you would reappear at the entrance.

    The Bottom Line
    First off, I believe that this was the first great RPG I had played. I recall playing some early version of Ultima on the Apple II, but I didn't really get into it. (Eamon games were fun, but mainly for the hacking/programming/design side.) Anyways, Dungeon Master is a 1st person perspective game, where you are a guiding spirit, controlling up to 4 champions that you would choose for your quest down into the dungeon. You have to progress down the levels, solving puzzles and defeating monsters until you reach the end and defeat the dark lord.
    This game was one of the first 1st person RPGs, and so the immersivity of the game was good for its time. It was also a real time game; your stamina would drop if you threw too much; your food and water meters would drop over time as well. You couldn't take a look at your inventory unless you were sure you were safe, otherwise, you'd hear the groans of your party members suddenly being attacked.
    All in all it was a great game for it's time. I would tell you to run out and get it, but it isn't 1987 anymore.

Atari ST · by eamonman (7) · 2004

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
PC release date? Pseudo_Intellectual (66274) Jun 16, 2015

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Dungeon Master appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

CDTV version

Amongst many Dungeon Master was ported to the Amiga CDTV but this version was never completed because FTL could not obtain reliable information from Commodore about save-game options. This version would have had additional animation and sound.

Development

In 1981 Andy Jaros and Doug Bell founded their own development studio called "PVC Dragon" and started working on the game called Crystal Dragon. It was supposed to be influenced by Ultima series but with a hope of being a "much better game" (as stated Doug Bell in Retro Gamer Issue 34). The game was developed in Pascal on Apple II. After two years of programming, due to financial problems, they decided to find shelter under the wings of another development company. In 1983 the team joined FTL for a temporary period of time in order to get the game to a working state. When Atari ST was announced, FTL decided to halt all the works on the Apple II version of the game and port all the code to Atari ST which was "much more capable computer than the Apple and better suited for Crystal Dragon." The idea was to release the game for the debut of the new 16-bit machine at the beginning of 1985. However doing both, porting from Apple II to Atari ST and completing the game, which was still work-in-progress, was impossible to make it on time, so they decided to port to Atari ST a different game of FTL - SunDog: Frozen Legacy which was about to be released on Apple II. This move bought them some time to get an experience of coding on Atari ST and they could resume working on Crystal Dragon. By this time the game was renamed to Dungeon Master and all the code was ported from Pascal to C. It was basically ready to be released at the end of 1985 and was previewed in a demo version released in May 1985, however they decided to expand the initial scope of the game and postponed the premiere to 1987. The game was fitted on a single-sided diskette 360 kB in size however the uncompressed data would take 1.6 MB.

Dungeon Master was ported later to other platforms. The first port was on Amiga in 1988 followed by AppleIIGS and FM Towns (1989), Sharp X68000 and PC-98 (1990), SNES (1991) and finally MS-DOS and PC-Engine (1992).

DOS version

The DOS version contains some individual marks: it has an extra animation at the end of the game and plays music in the starting screen.

PC-Engine version

PC-Engine version of the game deviated from the original title in number of ways. It was subtitled Theron's Quest and instead of one big dungeon it was split into seven small dungeons, each of which contained puzzles and maps from original Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back. The biggest change was in the introduction in an anime style that told the story of a teenage boy named Theron proving his worth by defending an evil force. The player has to play always as Theron and is able to hire only three additional champions. Your three companions lose all their skills and items after completing each dungeon. Theron also loses all his items, but not his skills. Another change is possibility to make saves only after completing the dungeon.

Speaker

In the United States FTL released an sound adapter along with Dungeon Master. It connected to the computer's joystick port and plugged into any speaker or amplifier to add digital sound to the Dungeon Master game. Built into the device was a 9-pin joystick adapter.

Awards

  • ACE
    • October 1988 (issue #13) - Included in the Top-100 list of 1987/1988 (editorial staff selection)
    • February 1991 (issue #41) - Included in the list Greatest Games of all Time, section Role-Playing Games (editorial staff choice)
  • Amiga Power
    • May 1991 (Issue #00) - #16 in the "All Time Top 100 Amiga Games"
  • Computer Gaming World
    • October 1988 (Issue #52) - Special Artistic Achievement Award
    • November 1989 (Issue #65) - Introduced into the Hall of Fame
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #49 on the "150 Best Games of All Time" list
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #63 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • Power Play
    • Issue 01/1989 - Best Role Playing Game in 1988
  • Retro Gamer
    • October 2004 (Issue #9) – #34 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
  • ST Format
    • May 1990 (Issue #10) - Included in the list "ST Format's 30 Kick-Ass Classics"
    • August 1991 (Issue #25) – #2 Top Atari ST Classic Games (Editorial staff vote)
    • January 1993 (issue #42) – #4 in '50 finest Atari ST games of all time' list

Information also contributed by Macintrash, PCGamer77, Rantanplan, The Real DJ and Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe.

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  • MobyGames ID: 834
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Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Chris Martin.

Sharp X68000 added by Rola. PC-98, Apple IIgs, FM Towns added by Terok Nor. SNES, Amiga, Atari ST added by Rantanplan.

Additional contributors: xcom1602, Pseudo_Intellectual, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa, Rik Hideto, Jo ST, FatherJack.

Game added February 7, 2000. Last modified March 27, 2024.