View Full Version : Atari 7800 Dark Chambers.
Aswald
11-12-2004, 04:57 PM
Who else here plays this game, or has done so?
I just thought of it, because when I do play it, I always find myself wanting to play either CV Gateway to Apshai, or NES Gauntlet (Tengen).
It's the lack of actual variety in the 5 monsters that makes it dull.
I have that for 2600 complete..but I never got around to playing it :/
vintagegamecrazy
11-12-2004, 06:49 PM
I have that game and occasionally play it when I hook up my Atari 7800, It is truly one of the 7800 greats. I think it plays and looks better than Gauntlet, who copied off of who.
Pantechnicon
11-12-2004, 07:16 PM
Yeah that's a good one. Has anybody beat it? I think I've gotten to Level M. How far does it go.
Dr. Morbis
11-12-2004, 10:24 PM
When placed in context with the rest of the 7800's library, this game shines. However I find it repetitive and most of the levels poorly designed. I hate how the last level Z has no boss or monster or challenge in any way - it's just a big open room with tons of items. I also don't like the fact that there is no ending. I was dissappointed after completing level Z on the hardest difficulty to find that the game kept going and going. Has anyone played long enough to get an ending?
Graham Mitchell
11-13-2004, 08:20 AM
I actually just got this game for the 7800. It looks really good (that title screen is pretty awesome, really), but it is a little dull. I kind of wonder if this and Gauntlet are actually related...like one begat the other, or maybe the same people are behind both. Both games are Atari products, after all (even though I know Atari Coin-Op and the home division were two separate entities). Anybody know anything more about this?
Gauntlet was inspired by Dandy Dungeon, an early multiplayer public domain program for Atari computers. I believe Ed Logg, a prolific Atari programmer, invented Gauntlet. It came out in 1985, & Dark Chambers was a later 7800 title, which came out at least 5 years later.
Pantechnicon, GREAT avatar!!! LOL LOL LOL
Aswald
11-13-2004, 02:24 PM
If you look at the copyright date on Dark Chambers, you will see 1983, Jack Palevich. So Gauntlet would be based on this game, if anything. Someone once mentioned that it was an old Atari computer game, brought out under that "second party" deal they used to have (Phobos was another one).
I have reached Level Z on the toughest setting. There is no ending; you just go back to Level A, maybe somewhat tougher than before. But nothing new happens. It has great graphics, and decent (if sparce) sound, but not much else. It was 1988; they should have souped it up if they wanted to go up against the NES.
The problem with this game is that Gauntlet exists. Gauntlet offered a variety of monsters with DIFFERENT characteristics and powers. Ghosts would do plenty damage, but vanish after hitting you. Sorcerers could briefly vanish. Demons could spit fireballs. Etc...not to mention the fact that you could choose from 4 different characters, and all of the power-ups.
Dark Chambers has the problem of too few. There are 5 enemies, but they are all essentially the same, except for the damage they do. They all move the same, act the same, do the same thing...there just isn't really anything to keep you going. Even Gateway to Apshai has a variety of monsters, "power-ups," traps, and even unique monsters, such as the Blinking Bat. It holds your interest better.
Graham Mitchell
11-13-2004, 09:16 PM
Yeah, I was pretty disappointed by this game. I was thinking "wow, it's some seed in the Gauntlet lineage", but I suppose there was a reason I hadn't heard of it before. It's a shame because I'm a huge fan of that style of game actually. NES Gauntlet is actually a really neat, mysterious little game (has anyone actually beat that impossible piece of shit? I love it but you have to already know what you're looking through in the question-mark rooms in order to get all the characters for the combination lock--something I have never even actually seen.)
The game that owes tribute to Dark Chambers that I think is the best of it's kind, however, is the Dungeon Explorer series. It's that style of gameplay and a whole lot more. Those who've played it know what I'm talkin' about! :-P
vintagegamecrazy
11-13-2004, 11:43 PM
Don't even get me started on how great Dungeon Explorer is! :eek 2:
Ed Oscuro
11-14-2004, 02:01 AM
[Gauntlet] came out in 1985, & Dark Chambers was a later 7800 title, which came out at least 5 years later.
Yeah, I was gonna say...how the hell were 7800 games still being released in 1990? Lol.
Dungeon Explorer...sadly, the copy I picked up at Goodwill a while back for Sega CD came with Lethal Enforcers inside :(
Iron Draggon
11-14-2004, 05:11 AM
Speaking of Gauntlet, is there an ending to Gauntlet 4 on the Genesis? I've gotten several levels beyond level 100, and it just kept going so I finally got tired of it and shut it off.
Ed Oscuro
11-14-2004, 05:15 AM
You were playing the quest? It has a boss fight early on...that's how you should be able to tell. Otherwise you're just playing arcade mode.
Aswald wrote:
Jack Palevich
You know, that name looks really familiar to me! I want to say he was Dandy Dungeon's programmer...I recall seeing it for sale in ANTIC magazine; they had a section of public domain programs you could order, some from the (A)tari (P)rogram (X)change.
As for copyright dates, I dont have a version of Dark Chambers to look at. I thought it was '88-'90 or so since that's when a buddy & me went to Toys R Us & they had a mess of "new" Atari games- I recall it being there but I bought Crossbow instead.
Most of my 7800 carts are copyright '87-'89, but Alien Brigade is 1990. I guess I should have said "the latter part of the '80s". In most cases I was only a year off- sheesh. :roll:
Pantechnicon, go back to the other avatar!!!
Graham Mitchell
11-14-2004, 08:48 AM
Dungeon Explorer...sadly, the copy I picked up at Goodwill a while back for Sega CD came with Lethal Enforcers inside :(
Have you tried the Turbografx version (just the HuCard one)? It's probably a lot cheaper and maybe easier to find (I see it on eBay often). I'd check that out if you haven't had a chance to yet. Or just play it on an emulator. HuGo runs it. It's worth seeing.
Iron Draggon
11-14-2004, 08:00 PM
You were playing the quest? It has a boss fight early on...that's how you should be able to tell. Otherwise you're just playing arcade mode.
I forget which mode I was playing. It was a long time ago. Does it make a difference? I would assume that quest mode would have an end to it, or else what's the point of the quest? But this just kept going on and on and on, so it probably was arcade mode. I forget where I cut it off, but it was something like level 150 I think. I was like, there's no end to this, screw it.
shopkins
11-17-2004, 02:16 AM
I beat the Tengen Gauntlet for NES when I was a kid, Graham. I remember it has a pretty tough final boss and an ending screen showing my character, Questor. I also remember a very frustrating room at the end that was all exits, most all fakes.
Graham Mitchell
11-17-2004, 10:05 AM
I beat the Tengen Gauntlet for NES when I was a kid, Graham. I remember it has a pretty tough final boss and an ending screen showing my character, Questor. I also remember a very frustrating room at the end that was all exits, most all fakes.
Did you find all the letters for the code to the vault? That's where the pain lies... LOL
Dr. Morbis
11-18-2004, 12:09 AM
I beat the Tengen Gauntlet for NES when I was a kid, Graham. I remember it has a pretty tough final boss and an ending screen showing my character, Questor. I also remember a very frustrating room at the end that was all exits, most all fakes.
Did you find all the letters for the code to the vault? That's where the pain lies... LOL
I beat Tengen Gauntlet earlier this year and it was a bitch. What I did was record all the letters for the vault up to the final map. Then on the final map (world 5 I believe) I worked on making it to the '?' room and finding the last peice of the puzzle. Once you have that, you can avoid it on future runs and just focus on making it to the end because the code is set and will always be the same for that game. I spent a few hours just taking the shortest route to level 100 and eventually I could get there practically unscathed. The final boss is a 3 or 4 headed green dragon who becomes really tough if you accidentally wake up more than one head. Also, time becomes a factor and it takes a ton of hits.
The ending was just one underwhelming scene of your character standing outside with the castle/dungeon in the background.
Graham Mitchell
11-18-2004, 07:05 AM
Too bad about the ending; that makes me not want to bother. Still, though, it is a cool game and I'd like to see the end of it someday. Maybe I should pull it out and work on it during study breaks...
zektor
11-19-2004, 01:32 AM
This was/is a great game. I never reached the end of the game either, if there was one. Makes me think of "Impossible Mission". I loved this game on the C64 and Amiga, and bought it for the 7800. It was great on that console until I realized that the game is "Impossible" to complete.
Graham Mitchell
11-19-2004, 07:25 AM
This was/is a great game. I never reached the end of the game either, if there was one. Makes me think of "Impossible Mission". I loved this game on the C64 and Amiga, and bought it for the 7800. It was great on that console until I realized that the game is "Impossible" to complete.
Impossible Mission; there's a whole new can of worms. You know I recently bought a 7800, mostly because I wanted that game. Now I hear about the glitch and it's making me think twice. The C64 version was so great though...do you think the 7800 version is worth owning despite it's flaws?
Aswald
11-19-2004, 02:40 PM
No. There are supposed to be versions that are finishable, but you can't tell by looking.
An issue of "Atarian" magazine had a letter in which someone complained that he just couldn't finish the game. Was it truly impossible? "No," said the magazine, "you must have missed something somewhere."
I just wonder how crazy that gamer must've gone, trying to figure out what he did wrong. Granted, bugs and glitches will sometimes slip past, but couldn't Atari at least have made sure that one of them was NOT the inability to complete such a game? That's not exactly a "harmless glitch."
Graham Mitchell
11-19-2004, 05:46 PM
No. There are supposed to be versions that are finishable, but you can't tell by looking.
An issue of "Atarian" magazine had a letter in which someone complained that he just couldn't finish the game. Was it truly impossible? "No," said the magazine, "you must have missed something somewhere."
I just wonder how crazy that gamer must've gone, trying to figure out what he did wrong. Granted, bugs and glitches will sometimes slip past, but couldn't Atari at least have made sure that one of them was NOT the inability to complete such a game? That's not exactly a "harmless glitch."
Well, that's kind of the thing about Atari, especially at that time (I think Jack Tramiel was in power during the 7800 days, wasn't he?) I think Atari was never run very well, even in the Bushnell days. It only ran well early on because the company was small, and all these problems maybe didn't have such a big impact.
But look at the 2600 library in general. Some of those games are so bad, and such shameless copies of other titles. Why did they think consumers would go for that? Activision clearly had a good thing going, and Ray Kassar considered them to be complete scum; a plague on the video game industry using Atari's console for their own benefit. Why didn't Atari ever put two and two together and realize that if they stopped treating their home division programmers like crap, the good ones would stick around and not defect to other companies (like David Crane)? Because of that, I think a lot of these Impossible-Mission-like problems got more and more exacerbated. I had once read that E.T. was so bad because Kassar kept pushing the developers to finish it in a hurry without paying attention to what they were doing. And God only knows what the hell went wrong with Pac-Man (I'm sorry; how can you screw that game up?)
SoulBlazer
11-19-2004, 07:56 PM
The European version of Impossible Mission for the 7800 WAS fixed, as that version came out later. The bug was reported and known for the US version, but it is believed it was never fixed.
zektor
11-20-2004, 02:16 AM
The European version of Impossible Mission for the 7800 WAS fixed, as that version came out later. The bug was reported and known for the US version, but it is believed it was never fixed.
But I did see a remake US version of the game fixed. Maybe for sale at AtariAge? I can't remember...