Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom Retrospective
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The title alone was reason enough to drop a few quarters in: the appeal of the fantasy setting in arcade games had already been established by many other games. But to see the official character classes, each fulfilling a specific role in a party, just like in tabletop D&D? Be still my beating heart. Gauntlet, the granddaddy of fantasy co-op, had drastically different characters, sure. But in D&D:ToD , each class felt totally different from the rest. The burly fighter was the master of weaponry, and quite strong. The cleric and elf couldn't hope to hack and slash as well as he could, but then again, they had spells! And lots of spells, too, unique to their own class, from Hold Person and Sticks to Snakes to Fireball and Magic Missile. The stout dwarf could really whittle the enemies down to size, as well, often times even better than the fighter. Grafting the D&D character classes into a beat 'em up was a master stroke.
But it gets even better! Not only did each character have sweet skills, they could use different items as well. Not like the pizza boxes or temporary weapons of other brawlers, but sweet magical items taken right from the rulebooks. Daggers, hammers, arrows, magical rings that allowed you to cast spells, the list went on and on. By picking up gold that enemies dropped, or from treasure chests, you could save up and buy items in between levels. In 1993, this was state of the art innovation.
