Dungeon Master

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