"Deadly Towers"

In our first service, we reflect on Deadly Towers which was co-developed by Lenar and Tamtex for Irem. It was released in North America in September of 1987 by Broderbund Software. 

Our visiting Deacon is Jeff Gabor. 

Send us a text

The miNEStry founders, Archbishop Dracul and Father Avram, seek to inspire their 8-bit parishioners through methodical and ceremonial scrutiny of the library of games on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:17):
Good evening and welcome to the ministry. I am
Archbishop Dracul. And alongsideme is father Avram. Our creed is
to inspire our parishioners withreflections on the Nintendo
Entertainment System. Tonight weare reflecting on Deadly Towers,
which was co developed by Lenarand Tamtex for Irem. It was

(00:38):
released in North America inSeptember of 1987 by Broderbund
software. This partnershipbetween Irem and Broderbund was
also responsible for publishinggames like Spelunker and
Guardian Legend. Tonight ourvisiting Deacon is Jeffrey
Gabor. Welcome.
Thank you very much for havingme.

(00:59):
You're most welcome.
A testament to the creatorsJunichi Mizutari game and

(01:23):
character design. Other worksinclude the 1985 arcade port
Tower of Druaga for the FamicomI have to say, I've played this
game. And while I understand itsinfluence to like dungeon
crawlers everywhere. I found itto not hold up in the least that

(01:46):
it is. It makes it kind of makessense. It's a sloppy game. Given
the frustration the frustrationfactor is really high on that
game. So you know, I'm not I'mreally not surprised.
However, I don't think it wasactually developed for a western
audience. Keep that in mind.

(02:08):
That's a good perspective. Wisepoint, Deacon Gabor. R. Nagasu.
game design and programming. TheNagasu went on to create a 2d
fighting game engine calledMujin. In 1999, for the PC. I
had never heard of this when Ifound it. When I was doing my

(02:32):
research on the creators i i wasa little bit floored apparently,
it's like a fighting. While it'sa fighting game engine, as I
said, but it's people can likecreate their own content. They
can create their own characterseven and like push them to the
platform. And it kind of becamelike a not a cult classic. But

(02:57):
that type of feel like among itsfollowers, so you have all sorts
of different fighters andcharacters in this fighting
game. It's kind of aninteresting thing. But I'd never
heard of it before doing thisresearch.
Yeah, I saw I saw that supportis was supported by Windows and
Linux and it is it still around.

(03:21):
I don't really know. I didn'tdownload it or play it. I just
kind of read about it. Our lastcreator of mentioned is
Yoshinobu Kasukawa, thecomposer, Kasukawa was also the
composer for the 1987 ZombieHunter, and also potentially the
composer for the 1989 majorleague, both of which were

(03:45):
released for the Famicom.
And it's interesting to notethat from what I can gather,
very little information I'vebeen able to find out about
major league is that it's basedon the movie with the wacky
sheen guy I forget his name,Charlie Sheen. Okay,

(04:06):
fair enough. It also doesn'thave a very good soundtrack.
No The soundtrack is abhorrent?

(04:28):
Maybe he maybe it was anuncredited work, which is why
he's only potentially thecomposer. I could not find any
confirmation that that was true.
It was just kind of a bigquestion mark. So very
interesting stuff.
So marketing. This game wasreleased in 1987, which was pre

(04:52):
internet and pre Nintendo Powereven in the only piece of
marketing we could find was aposter
The poster looks very much likeit belongs in a, you know, a
video store or a toy store ofsome kind or another. It's a
it's a broader bundle poster. Soit actually advertises for five

(05:15):
games. Lode Runner spelunker.
Raid on bungling Bay, DeadlyTowers and sqoon are all on this
poster.
I was at the game store today.
And Good God sqoon Is, isthey're asking $300 for it. It's
crazy.

(05:36):
Yeah, prices have definitelyskyrocketed for games recently.
And I mean, it's, it's it's afun little shooter. It's
charming. I just don't. I don'tknow. It's one of those things
where like, do I really want tospend $300 on this game?
Yeah, it is. It's very, it's avery interesting note that in
spite of the lack of marketing,how much of an actual, you know,

(06:02):
commercial success Deadly Towerswas it's kind of uncanny. It
seems like every player outthere that had a Nintendo
somehow managed to find thisgame in their collection, which
is why it's one of the reasonswhy it's so cheap. Yeah, today
is because it's just there's somany of them.

(06:25):
Yeah, I feel like in that firstyear, first couple years, there
weren't that many games toactually like pick and choose
from. So when you saw the posterand saw what it looked like, it
looked like it was going to belike a sequel or, you know, like
Legend of Zelda. So I thinkpeople wanted to give it a

(06:45):
chance. I certainly did. I sawthat cover. And there were
actually even at the time, it'simportant to put in, in
reflection not only was therenot really Nintendo Power or the
internet, even like the rentalindustry wasn't really quite
there yet for video games. Therewas a there was a handful of
people that were maybe startingto build up and renting a game

(07:07):
which was unique, but peoplejust were end up like I guess
I'm gonna buy it. That was youroption.
Yeah, and you're 100% Correct.
Like the the video stores werethe concept of even renting VHS
tapes, nevermind, video gameswas still extremely new.

(07:43):
first discuss the sevencategories for which we execute
judgment on Deadly Towers.
Category One is the narrative.
A reading from the Deadly Towersstories screen. This is an old
old story from the stone andcopper ages when there lived men

(08:03):
and devils. As the coming of ageceremony approached, Prince
Meyer grew nervous for the daywould be a memorable time in
which he would succeed to thethrone of the kingdom of
Willner. In his worrying aboutthe kingdom of the future, he
took himself over by the lakenear the castle, to think

(08:25):
suddenly, reflecting themoonlight, a shadow a rose from
the lake. As the prince staredat it, it gradually turned into
a man. Prince Meyer, light ofvirtue, the man's voice rose
out, it is time for you to lightup the darkness. Rubas the

(08:46):
horrid devil of darkness isplotting to extend this power
over your kingdom. He isviciously scheming to build a
castle on the northern mountain,to ring magic bells, to lower
monsters out at your defensesand to invade the kingdom in a
single stroke. If you wish to beforever at peace in the kingdom

(09:09):
of Willner you must journey tothe northern mountain and burn
down the seven bell towers inthe devil's castle with the
sacred flame. Prince Meyer, onlyyou can accomplish this feat. Go
to the mountain, burn down theseven powers defend the kingdom

(09:30):
against the devil. With that,the shadow grew Mystere lost its
shape, and finally disappeared,leaving the beautiful lake as
though untouched. Could it be anOracle, Prince Meyer murmured.
He fell deep into thought for amoment but immediately regained

(09:50):
his senses. He had rememberedthe legend of Khan. The legend
said that at the time when God'simage appears from the lake A
great power will be given to ayoung man to defeat the devil of
darkness and restore peace tothe kingdom. hurrying back to
the castle, the prince told theking of the strange event, the

(10:15):
king, believing in the truth ofthe matter, excitedly ordered
Prince Meyer to destroy Rubas.
And all his dark ways. This is areading from the Deadly Towers
story screen.
I think it's important tomention that for those who
haven't played the game, that ifyou let the title screen run, a

(10:39):
scrolling text of the story willactually start showing up on the
screen. And it's kind of likeStar Wars style. And
it's quite long. I would sayit's long.
It's probably one of thelongest, most robust and
intriguing stories for for thetime, either. Even on the NES in

(11:03):
the very beginning. We were usedto like single screen sort of
our TV games, that kind of waslike a continuation from the
Atari. I would say this isprobably the longest story on
the NES. I would bet some moneyon that Xi.
i Yeah, I think I'm with you. Ican't think of any others that

(11:25):
are longer off the top of myhead. Yeah,
I mean, I'm reading like, I'mcomparing it to the Legend of
Zelda right again. I mean, I cansum it up and it's a quarter of
the size. Yeah, many years ago,Prince darkness, Gannon stole
one of the Triforce with power.
Princess Zelda had one of theTriforce with wisdom, she
divided it into eight units tohide it from Ganon. Before she

(11:48):
was captured, go find eightunits link to save her. Yeah,
yeah, that's fastly vastly moreterse.
However, I think it sets thetone for the, for the game quite
well. And I think that's why Ikept going back to it all these

(12:08):
years. I was intrigued. It wasit was, it was mysterious, you
know, and we'll go we'll getinto more of that later. But
like,so at this point, you see that,
that awesome looking poster, youpick up the game? You turn it
on? And you get that story? Howpumped Are you? True,
arguably, with one of the bestsongs on the soundtrack. And

(12:32):
that song to me anyway, when Iwas a kid was creepy and dark as
hell.

(13:09):
Let us proceed to category twoaudio.
I found the soundtrack in thisgame with the exception of the
story screen to be painful, andrepetitive. Now granted, I do

(13:29):
want to say that it had someflavor. But I feel like every
single room in the game in oneshape or form or another was
basically the same song with adifferent twist on it. And that
that was just it gets reallyannoying really fast because of

(13:53):
thatthere are a few decent tracks on
it. I but for the most part, Iagree. I also I think what
killed it for me was the theimplementation of the audio. So

(14:19):
like I don't like let's saythere's always been this issue
where whenever you leave a roomor a screen it the the audio
stops. And then it started theaudio starts over again. Like
from the beginning of the track.
So it got extremely repetitive.
I did download a patch thatclaimed to fix this. And while

(14:40):
yes, when you left the room andentered the next room it picked
up up from where you werebefore, but there's still that
pause in between rooms. So it'dbe like ding ding ding ding ding
and then Ding ding ding dingding ding ding ding ding you

(15:01):
know what I mean? It was it wasit was disappointing because I
do maybe we're able to workaround that. But I guess that's
that's something that I don'tknow why that is Legend of Zelda
doesn't do that. It's like asthe screen is loading the music
is still going yeah,I will say I found it really

(15:23):
speak catchy and we sat so likeplaying it years ago hearing it
again. It has like vibes ofnostalgia so it does get in your
ear a little bit to least tickleyou years later.
I do agree with that it isabsolutely catchy it's it there

(15:44):
are a lot of Nintendo songs Ibelieve that are just like
they're not memorable at all.
Like there are there exist a lotof Nintendo songs are like I
don't know if I can reallyrecall that song. But this song
and maybe just by nature of itbeing super repetitive to like,
there is that but this song likeyou can call no problem. It's so

(16:05):
it does kind of stick with you.
We should probably mentioned thesound effects. And I My biggest
gripe with the sound effects wasthat whenever you pick something
up, it sounds like you didsomething wrong.

(16:25):
Mm hmm. Yeah, it sounds like aclassic 80s Game Show. Buzzer
you got something wrong? Yeah,yeah, well, like when you went
go to a shop and buy an item anduse the minute you buy it
because I guess that was thewrong item.
Basically, like the game justburps in your face, essentially.

(16:47):
It's like, okay, maybe I wasn'tsupposed to pick that up. And
then you realize, oh, wait,that's a good item. And then it
gets confusing. They definitelydidn't subscribe to the tropes
of even arcade games likeobviously, or anything I don't I
don't know why they chose thatsound, but it was a poor choice.

(17:25):
Bla let us proceed to categorythree, which is gameplay.
Reading from the Deadly Towersmanual. Your objective is to

(17:48):
reach the seven towers. Eachtower has one bill which should
be burned by the Holy Flame. Thebills are at the top of the
towers. After burning all thebills, you'll be able to open
the entrance to the king of thedevil's room. When you climb to
the top of each tower, you haveto fight the guardian of the

(18:08):
bell. If you win, climb theladder and get the belt. When
you get the bell, go back to theunderground and touch the Holy
Flame. The bell will be throwninto the fire and the tower will
burn. If you fall off a brokenedge over a cliff, or if the hit
points dwindled to zero, yourquest is over. When you kill

(18:33):
enemies, sometimes they leavemoney or hearts. The heart will
give you hit points. Money helpsyou buy items. Don't forget to
collect the circle hearts easeincrease your maximum hit points
up to two underneath nine and itcan be picked up while wandering
or can be bought at shops whichare hidden in certain areas.

(18:54):
Sometimes an invisible entrancewill take you to a parallel
world, there will be only oneexit to the world where you came
from. Search all areas of thecastle carefully to find the
parallel worlds. Same as theparallel worlds the entrances to
the underground dungeons areinvisible. Each dungeon consists
of about 200 rooms for eachroom, and each room has enemies.

(19:20):
If you rooms in the dungeon havea magical pattern on the floor,
which may be the entrance to ashop the exit of the dungeon or
makes a good map marker. secretrooms are hidden throughout the
tower and Castle searched everyarea by walking around the
entire screen in each area. Whenthe game ends, write down the

(19:41):
password displayed on thescreen. To get a new password.
You have to end the game bydying. When you wish to continue
your game after you quit. Enteryour password in the password
entry screen to start to gain areading from the Deadly Towers
manual. I have Have no redeemingqualities to report about the

(20:03):
gameplay of this Deadly Towers,none harsh words,
and I have a laundry list ofcomplaints.
Well, then maybe I can speak tosome of the pros than please do.
I'll say it's easy to understandfrom the very start, what the

(20:26):
controls are, what your weaponsare, you may not know exactly
where to go, but you have animmediate control over the
character and how to you justnavigate. There is an RPG aspect
to the leveling, like you canlevel the you know, Prince
Meier, that's fun to do, you geta little bit more powerful, you

(20:47):
get a little bit better. So atleast it entices you to keep
playing because you feel likeyou can actually progress. And I
will say it's super ambitious.
The gameplay like with theparallel worlds that dungeons
trying to find back to the realworld. It's all these hidden
things. It just makes itmysterious. And in that way,
it's an intriguing game that itends up being a little fun in

(21:11):
that way.
Do you have any any cons youwould like to bring up in your
experience with the gameplay?
How much time do we have?
Oh, boy. Well, then let it Letus allow Archbishop Dracul to to
speak his mind, please.
Wow, do Deacon Gabor brings upsome very excellent points that

(21:36):
I actually agree with and kindof rescind my last comment. I
will actually say though, thegood definitely does not
outweigh the bad. Like there areone of the things one of the
most frustrating aspects of thisgame is that you get thrown back

(21:56):
when you get hit. Now that mightnot seem like a big deal. But
like in the very beginning ofthe game, you're incredibly
weak. And being thrown backmeans that you could bump into
something else, thereforethrowing you back again,
potentially throwing you intothe previous room you were in.

(22:19):
And because they spawn enemiesat the entrances for some reason
to these rooms. In a lot ofinstances, you could get thrown
back yet again. And this isespecially frustrating in the
dungeons. I've had it happen towhere I would enter a room there
was a enemy spawned right whereI walked in, I got hit I got

(22:43):
sent back, got hit by the enemythere, but sit back down, hit by
another one sent back out of thesecond room and literally had a
chain reaction of going fromroom to room until I died. And I
had nothing there was nothing Icould possibly do not not to
mention also in the castles,there's these little jagged

(23:03):
edges to the walkway. Those areconsidered cliffs. And if you
and you can fall off the castleand die. It's not uncommon for
you to be walking and then allof a sudden, these little
terrible features or entitiesjust attack you with no warning,

(23:27):
and they are going extremelyfast. And your reaction time in
the very beginning of the gameis very slow. So you will most
likely if you were anywhere neara cliff, you wouldn't go
backwards, you would go down thecliff, you wouldn't go the
opposite direction of where yougot hit, which was a very

(23:48):
bizarre choice. In my opinion.
The combat mechanic only allowsone sort to spawn on the screen
I think at any given time. Thisperiod would how slow your sword
is at the start of the gamemakes makes the start of the
game unrealistically difficultalmost the concept that are the
best way to defeat an enemy wasto get rid of against the enemy

(24:13):
and expand the button the attackbutton. And what would happen is
because the close proximity andsymmetry of the enemy it would
allow you to sort of do a turboshot later in the game to us so
called Power Up is called theparallel shot. And while on
while it might make sense thatit would be a power up for the

(24:39):
bigger enemies that reallyaren't that many enemies that
were the size of the two swordscome in getting shot out. So
most of them were too smallwhich would end up having an
effect of you get you hit itwith one sword and you have to
wait for The other sort thatmissed it to leave the screen

(25:00):
before you could shoot again,making the the strategy of going
up against a character andspamming the button, a moot
point, it doesn't work at thatpoint. So there was, there was a
lot of a lot of things likethat, that were really
frustrating. The dungeons feltlike an afterthought. They

(25:22):
didn't feel as developed as, asthe rest of the game. The
dungeons entrances have novisual representation. So you're
literally if you don't knowwhere you're going, you can
literally be walking andsuddenly the screen goes doing
unless you're in a dungeon. Andyou're like, oh, no, what is

(25:44):
where am I? What is this? And?
And probably the worst partabout that?
How do I get out?
How do you get out because youcan't exit the same way you
enter?
Well, I'm sure that there mustbe a map you get right.
Well, there was only one map onin the man in the manual. And

(26:09):
but somebody somebody somehowand I can't remember what year
it was, somebody somehow mappedout every single dungeon. Now,
that may not seem like a bigdeal. But given the repetitive
nature of each room, and thefact that they actually loop the
dungeons in certain points. Solike, if let's say you go, if

(26:32):
you go all the way to the right,it won't stop. It'll just loop
back to all the way to the tothe left most room on the other
side. I have no idea how thatperson mapped out those dungeons
with with the looping mechanicand I have no idea. It's

(26:56):
daunting to me, like I, I'm, I'mlike, I'm impressed. It's crazy.
And then my last day, I'm sorry,I've been talking a lot to let
you guys talk after this. Butthe last thing I want to say is
that there are like missioncritical items hidden in these
parallel worlds or secret roomsin the towers. Now, yes, is it's

(27:23):
you should go and find it right.
But if you didn't know, likeback then in the context of
being back then if you didn'tknow that you needed that like
the best armor in the game wasin these parallel dimensions or
secret rooms in a tower and yougo up the tower, you kill the

(27:43):
boss, you get the bell, and youleave the tower. And once you
leave the walkway, and end upback in like the tower hubs, so
to speak. The entrance is gone.
Essentially soft blocking thegame, making it impossible like
literally and probably literallyimpossible to beat it without

(28:06):
those items because you can't goback and get them.
So, as for me, I I rememberplaying this game as a kid and
being extremely frustrated withit. Because I didn't read the
manual of course, and I didn'treally get into the story. I

(28:29):
just thought it was a cool Zeldalike game as Deacon Gabor has
mentioned, it was definitely aselling points, try and sell it
as like a kind of Zelda clonebased on the screenshots right.
So I was kind of expecting thatobviously, it wasn't that and
I'd get really frustrated. Thatbeing said, coming back to it as

(28:50):
an adult was a differentexperience for me. I really got
into the story really got intoreading the manual looking at
all the hints in the manual. Andas an adult appreciating these
types of games now, from amodern perspective, looking back

(29:10):
at these types of games andappreciating them for what they
are, it was a totally differentexperience. Now that being said,
this game is virtuallyunplayable without a walkthrough
unless you have countless hoursto walk over every inch of the
screen as suggested by themanual. Unless you have

(29:31):
countless hours to map out everysingle dungeon or you just have
dumb luck to find stuff.
uncannily. You're gonna have areally hard time with this game.
It's it you need a walk through.
And I used to walk through toplay this game, and it was an

(29:52):
enjoyable experience. Once I hadthat walkthrough. The game was
still difficult. The game wasstill seemingly impossible in
places. But at the end of theday, it was achievable. It was
finishable, I beat this game. Ithink all three of us beat this
game. In fact, when we played itfor this for this reflection,

(30:13):
and what was a turning point forme in regards to enjoyment,
actually was when I realizedthat this was an early day
roguelike. So the as, as youguys know, roguelike derives
from the 1980, game, rogue,where you're basically doing the

(30:35):
same thing, you kind of go andyou build up stuff, and you die
and you lose stuff. And there'ssome sort of like, meta
character development rightthroughout so that you get
better and better as you keepdying and playing. So as soon as
I realized that, oh, wait, whenI actually get that armor, when
I actually get that sword, I getto keep it forever, that changed

(30:56):
the face of the game for me,suddenly, dying didn't become as
scary. And I would actually, mygoal would be just to survive
just long enough to get thatnext piece of armor. And then
once I did, I felt safe, andactually die a couple of times,
just so I could get the passwordin case the game crashed or
something like that. And thatwas a really enjoyable challenge

(31:18):
for me. So, but that being said,all of the flaws that Archbishop
Dracul has mentioned, I echoentirely, I don't understand how
people have mapped out dungeons,in spite of the fact of it being
looped, other than recognizingfeatures and saying, Oh, this

(31:39):
must be a loop because I alreadymapped it like up here. So I
don't, I don't really know how,how people have done it. The
other thing that was really,really aggravating to me was
trying to figure out how to endthe game. And what I mean by

(32:00):
that is, I was playing throughand there was a point where I
actually had to jump back to oneof my previous like two
passwords ago, points, because Irealized I had set myself up for
failure, because I burnt down orgrad didn't actually burn down
the tower. But I but I had takenthe bell from a tower that had

(32:22):
something in it that I needed tocomplete the game. And there was
no going back. Because as soonas you grab that bell, and you
leave the tower, you're notgoing back in there, the game
doesn't allow you to do that.
That is such a major flaw that Iecho what Archbishop Dracul has
mentioned in there, I don'tthink there's anything left to

(32:44):
be said. Other than that, forme,
I was just gonna mention somemore like, of the technical
gameplay stuff that bothered me,like right from the beginning,
the dungeons, you get throwninto a room, you're gonna get
hit, like you mentioned, butalso say you don't get hit,
you're like, I'm gonna take thislittle dragon guy on. You're,

(33:06):
you're sitting above it, and youassume like any other like
slightly top down perspective,that your character can kind of
walk behind things or has alittle bit of room. It did that
doesn't exist, like you barelyget inside this collision box,
and you go fly in. So that thatthree quarter down perspective

(33:29):
doesn't really make sense. Andit also the rules of that are
all over the map, sometimes onecharacter Oh, in the the, the
idea that like your sword cansometimes pause the enemies,
right? Like it's like, Okay,once I hit them, it'll stun
them, and then they'll stay inplace and I'll finish them off.
No rhyme or reason. So half thetime the characters don't

(33:51):
actually get stung, and theyjust keep on walking, making it
super difficult to manage therooms when there's five or six
of these enemies on the screen.
And then inexplicably, you startso weak, and then the enemy's HP
is so high. You mentioned likeyou run up to, you know, an
enemy and you start spamming,it's like you are literally

(34:12):
spamming like 20 swords into alittle blobby circle die, just
to get them dead. It's crazy.
I do want to mention somethingthat you said about without
rhyme or reason they don't stopwalking. There's certain enemies
that are actually two parts.
They have a head and a body. Andif you hit them in the head,
they don't stop walking. But ifyou hit them in the body they

(34:35):
do.
Is that is so as it'sinteresting.
Yeah, it's not. It's not a greatchoice. But I discovered that as
well. And I was like, What'sgoing on here? And then I
realized, Oh, I'm hitting themin the head. And then they keep
going. So yeah, very interestingdesign choices that we're we're

(34:55):
not.
Yeah, and that like meeting eventhe The idea that you're not
actually you climb at one pointshould you be so lucky get to
the point where you're actuallyclimbing the ladders, even
though it's like a weird downperspective, all of a sudden
that perspective shifts, veryodd. But you can't shoot enemies

(35:16):
while you're on. And theycertainly come for you. Like
there are these ghosts in theparallel worlds and the towers.
They're flying all over theplace. Soon as you're climbing
up a, I don't know how manytiles up it is like 1215 tile
ladders. You're completelyvulnerable. Unless you get hit.
Should you get hit all of asudden, you can use your sword

(35:38):
for that brief iframe moment.
Which toe on the ladder? Yeah,yeah, for sure. Is a bug not a
feature?
For sure. Yeah. Yeah, it'sdefinitely an exploitable bug.
And thank God for it. Right, Iwould have died without it.
I was gonna say, a couple ofthings. Before we move on. One

(36:02):
of those things was that Inoticed. So just to just so
people have an idea of how this,of how the progression of the
levels go. You start off at thevery base of the castle. And you
have to walk climb your way upto different like, I think it's

(36:22):
like seven or nine levels of thecastle before you can actually
enter what is called the cliffwall, which is essentially a hub
for that leads to every singletower. Now, if you go into one
of the one of the one of thecaves that leads to the tower,
before you get to the tower, youactually have to climb a

(36:43):
section, which I'm not 100% surewhat it's called. But it's it's
it's diagonal stares in years,like sort of ascending towards
the tower during that section ofthe game. That is arguably some
of the best background graphicsin the game. Why do I agree? Why

(37:03):
do I and arguably some of thebest music in the game now. And
one of the things that I want tobring up about that section that
I found incredibly interestingis that when I was a kid, I
remember the labor of love ittook just to get to that section

(37:25):
of the game. Like how long howmany times I've died, how like
the frustration, the anger, justto get to that section of the
game. Right? Nintendo of Americahad had very strict rules about
things about about how in orderto, to publish on their system,

(37:49):
you have to abide by these verystrict rules, one of which is
you cannot use religiousiconography. In the game in your
game. I was climbing thatsection and notice there were
crucifix shaped windows. Now youmay not think that's a big deal.

(38:11):
But the interesting thing isthat it ducktales for instance,
in the Transylvania level, inthe Japanese version for the
Famicom had crucifixes on thecoffin that Nintendo of America
made Capcom takeout? Which meanseither they didn't see it as a

(38:31):
crucifix window, or theyliterally never got to that
section of the game, because itwas so difficult.
It's a very interesting point.
It's,it's up for interpretation.
Lastly, I to use the walkthroughto talk about walkthroughs
father even brought up but Ifound it very hard to find one

(38:54):
that either that either wascomplete or wasn't broken. And I
feel like it's a testament tohow frustrating this game is to
play.
Yeah, the walkthrough is leave alittle bit to be desired. I

(39:15):
don't know if I also had to usea walkthrough I think it would
have been very enjoyable. ShouldI have unlimited time and could
map out each one of the dungeonsI feel like getting the old
graph paper out it would havebeen satisfying and fun. And
back in the day when you onlyhave so many games and you can
spend a year playing the gamewould have been cool. Don't have
that luxury right now. But oneof those walkthroughs said that

(39:39):
the parallel shot that youmentioned its flaws earlier was
the best item in the game. So Iwas so excited to get it and
start using it. I was like whatis going it's worse.
It is I would say I wouldliterally say it is the worst
powerup on the NES that I'veI actually would have agreed

(40:00):
with you until I revisited thefabled ghosts and goblins
recently and picked up thetorch.
I don't know. I don't know,because the torch doesn't change
the strategy. Right? It's you'restill attacking with the

(40:22):
parallel what you're stillattacking? I mean, I guess
you're attacking at literally isyeah, it's because you're you're
attacking it literally the samefrequency that you are at the
beginning of Deadly Towers,because you have to let the
flame burn out before you canthrow another one. Yeah, it's
still an attack. But like, butbut the parallel shot literally

(40:47):
takes your strategy of attackingout of the game.
Yeah, no, I agree. I still Istill contend that it may not be
the worst, but it is definitelyin the top five worst power ups
on the NES.
And it is very difficult to getso you're looking for a big

(41:11):
reward. It's not thatthat being said the double shot
is what you should go for.
Right? Yes, that's thatis a huge reward.
Stay away from the parallelshot. When I when I was playing,
and I got the double shot. I waslike, oh my god, it's so much
better. It's so it wasinfinitely better.

(41:33):
Don't Don't make the mistake oflike, alright, well, I picked I
just happened to pick up thedouble shot first. Maybe leave
burn that tower. Then pick upthe parallel shot. Oh, no, I
want to go get my double shotback. Nope, that towers gone.
Yep.
Yep. Leave leave that parallelshot in the bowels of hell

(41:59):
yes, where it belongs.

(42:21):
Blalet us proceed to category four,
the graphics. Aside from thedungeons, I really liked the
background graphics. I thoughtthey were detailed and
interesting, and verymysterious. I also thought that
the addition of like thecharacter in the jail the little

(42:47):
goblin in the jail was a niceslice of life sort of thing.
Which Which, by the way, you cankill him. But you'll lose all
your money. And when I say wehaven't discussed the fact that
money the currency in the schemeis actually called letter. So
I'll I should probably bringthat up now. I found that so

(43:08):
yeah, I found the backgrounds inthe castle in the cliff wall in
the towers to be quite decent.
But I didn't find the enemies tobe inspired at all. You fight

(43:30):
things like blobs, and flamesand wind your the sky and US
suit of armor. Which doesn'tlook like the boxer at all. In
fact, he he is modeled off ofthe Famicom box art, which was a

(43:51):
little bit more anime themed. Sothat's why when you look at the
cover, and you turn on the game,and you see this guy in this
blue jumpsuit with horns, likeoh, what what happened? And but
we'll get to the box artpresentation in the next
section. But the graphics hereI'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not

(44:12):
a huge fan. I think one of thethings that that is that that I
found most interesting. Werelike the windows and like the,
the the faces in the walls. Youknow there is it's just
interesting, mysterious youknow,

(44:33):
I would say that the graphicsfor this game are are half
inspired. I did not like therepresentation of Prince Meyer.
It left much to be desired andit was a stark contrast to the
rest of the universe. Thedungeons were also uninspired

(44:59):
and They all the rooms basicallythey just did palette changes
and use the same graphics overand over with different palette
changes and then either doorswould be there or doors would
not be there and then every oncein a while you get like the same
graphic on the floor where a mapmarker is which may or may not

(45:21):
be a shop hidden in the centerof the map marker or the exit
but yeah, the the enemies werehalf of them were bland, like
single color type ofrepresentations. And the other
half like the humanoid typecharacters, I thought were

(45:42):
pretty well done. There weresome bosses that I thought were
very were very astute as thestale stupid. And but then there
were other there were othersthat were actually pretty cool.
I really actually think that thebest boss in the game is great

(46:05):
wing visually. That's all I haveto offer.
Well, you don't like you don'tlike beat plant
at least at least the thesprites were big, which was very
unusual for the NES at the time.
Like even even Prince Meyer was,I think two tiles high. I mean,

(46:28):
his animation was only twoframes, which is rough. But it
is still that was pretty cool tosee such large sprites and the
bosses were huge. Unfortunately,I also feel like that same thing
that your character is a littlebit larger than normal and so
are the enemies. How however, iffor some reason when you get

(46:50):
into the dungeons, the vastmajority of the visual real
estate is taken up by walls andyou're left with a teeny tiny
little play area to move aroundwhich of course then that's why
we get the problem of knockbackbeing walking into a room and
instantly getting spawn killed.
Just because it's like half thereal estate is just used to

(47:14):
decorate the walls. Very weird,huh? Yeah, and you know that
being thrown back through thethrough the rooms of the
dungeons, I'll say it again.
It's so frustrating not only forthe fact that you can't do
anything about that anything tochange your device. But it's
almost like the game is teasingyou because the music resets on

(47:35):
every entrance to a room so itgoes ding ding ding and then you
die.
So there is a little trick thatI will mention in the hints and
cheat section later remind me ofit that you can use to help get
out of that.

(48:09):
Let us proceed to Category Five,box art and presentation. A
reading from the back of thebox. You are a young prince
Meyers setting out to defend theancient kingdom of Willner Rubas
king of the devils has built acastle in the north is preparing
to invade your kingdom. Riggingmagic bells is calling out an

(48:34):
army of the most terrifyingcreatures known or unknown to
man. To defeat rubbish mustjourney to his palace and burn
down his seven bell towers. Onyour quest. You will collect
weapons and armor to defendyourself against rats and
crawlers. That's snakes andslime demons dragons immortal

(48:56):
you'll need every ounce of helpyou can get understatement of
the year for you are all thatstands between your people and
the forces of darkness. gamefeatures include arcade action
with role playing game depth,state of the art graphics and
music. special password systemallows players to continue a

(49:19):
game in progress. A reading fromthe back of the box.
Can I just mention really quickhere that there are absolutely
to my knowledge no rats in thisgame.
No rats.
Rubas is bringing his magicbells and calling out an area
the most terrifying creaturesknown to man. Like slime balls,

(49:42):
wind, flames. Spheres, justspheres. Yep,
sphere spheres. Yep. spheres areof the devil.
Blue and orange ones.
And ones that stack those arethe worst.
But those are the ones that bearfruit father Avram?

(50:03):
Correct. They provide the mostletter and hearts
I'm sorry. So the art the, thebox art. So just to reiterate,
my first experience with thisgame was going what was when I
walked into the video store andlooked at the wall of games that

(50:26):
were available now back thenwhat they would do is they would
line the wall with the actualboxes of the games. From a
collector's point of view thesedays. That's sacrilege, but
that's beside the point. The inso you see, you get to actually,
like, pick up the game, and lookat the cover and read the back.

(50:48):
That's why we included thereading from the back of the
box. Because that was literallythat was the cover art was
literally the only marketingthat really existed for this
game. Now did they do a goodjob? I I had never heard of the
game before this. And theconcept of like burning towers

(51:10):
to kill evil monsters and like,it sounded high adventure like
awesome. And the cover art wasthe cover art really captured
the, the essence of the storyquite well. A lot of atmosphere
and like hellish overtones. Andit was just, it was very, very

(51:33):
intriguing.
Yeah, I'd like to say that thethe cover art to me was very
reminiscent of like, a moredetailed Saturday morning
cartoon. Like, these are thedays that people are watching,
you know, Transformers andhe-man and, you know, that kind

(51:56):
of thing. And it almost lookedkind of like, oh, yeah, yeah,
I'd love to be here, man, youknow. So it had that kind of
vibe to it. And that wasdefinitely one of the poles for
me to this box.
What are your thoughts DeaconGabor?

(52:17):
Well, the art was actuallyreally cool. And I was gonna say
it even had like a Lord of theRings type vibe, or Ralph Bakshi
type animated movie where I feltlike, you know, this is for
adults. And this is like, thisis really cool stuff. You know,
that even though it was likemore realistic type of painting.
You know, we've seen those kindsof things go horribly wrong with

(52:39):
like, say MegaMan, you know,those kinds of like box art
where they're trying to likecapture that kind of energy.
This is really cool. Like, Ithink in terms of like, the way
the box art is presented at, youcan't do much better. It was
really cool.
No, and like the, the attentionto detail is fantastic. If you
look closely on the front of thebox, in the mountains, you can

(53:02):
see a castle with seven belltowers. It's really cool.
I never noticed that beforeactually.

(53:25):
Let us proceed to category six,which is the fun factor. We
talked about the how we usedwalkthroughs to play the game,
which from today's standards, usbeing arguably full grown
adults, you know, so we don'thave the luxury like Deacon

(53:47):
Gabor said of just sittingaround and, and trying to figure
this thing out like we did whenwe were kids. So we did us a
walkthrough. And I found thatonce you pick up the there's two
things that that you picked upthat like literally changed the
game. Like it's almost like alight switch. One and those two

(54:10):
things are the hyper armor andthe HyperX gauntlet. When you
get those two things, the gameopens up like monumentally and
actually becomes a pleasantexperience, all things
considered. Now, the downside ofall of that is if you look at it

(54:31):
from the context of being a 10year old boy, throwing this game
in and trying to make sense ofit. It wasn't fun to like
literally walk around every gridsquare in the game. Just so you
can find a dungeon or a shop orthings that should actually have

(54:56):
should have had visualrepresentation in my opinion.
Yeah, that was going to be myfun factor. Review pretty much,
pretty much almost verbatim.
With the exception of sayingwith the walkthrough, I enjoyed
it. However, at face value, andconsidering my experience as a

(55:17):
child with this game, it was notfun. You need to know the
secrets you need to know thesecret handshake, really, in
order to have fun. Quitehonestly, though, with some
small tweaks, it could have beenfun. Could have been fun if they
had done visual representationof stuff, gotten rid of the

(55:41):
cliffs. And you know, didn'thave looping dungeons with 200
rooms. I feel like the gamecould have been a lot of fun.
And Father Avram actuallystarted the process of picking
apart the ROM and trying tofigure out how to redaction how

(56:06):
to make those little changes tomake the game playable. I just
thought I'd throw that in here.
Yeah, I'm not sure if it'spossible. They we'll get into it
on the technical section next,but that's it. It's very
complicated.
Yeah, I will say I had funplaying it now, with the

(56:28):
walkthrough, like I wouldactually recommend it. For
people that are into older videogames, like get the walk through
it, you can actually have a goodtime with it. But I actually
distinctly remember renting thisgame as a kid, I had a
stomachache, and I got a game torent over the weekend. And I'd
rather I remember sitting withmy stomach ache over playing the

(56:50):
game. I didn't, I put it in twoor three times. And that was it.
I didn't. It was it was almostimmediate deaths, it was not
understanding what the purposeof anything is. And it was a
bait and switch of what Ithought I was gonna get, and
then what was actuallyhappening. So I had no fun and
that my lasting memory is that Itook it back immediately. And my

(57:12):
mom was upset that I didn'tactually play the game that she
spent her money on to rent.
It actually this is this is kindof totally anecdotal. But I do
remember one of the flaws ofrenting games, especially games
that had been out for a littlewhile, unless the rental store
was really on top of theirstuff. You could rent games that

(57:36):
you just had no manual for, likewhatsoever. You would get sent
home maybe sometimes if you werelucky with like a laminated copy
of the manual. And I feel likethat was only in like the most,
like in the best ofcircumstances.
Occasionally, you would actuallyget a xerox copy of the manual.

(57:58):
Yeah, that was most common.
Yeah. Yep.
Yeah, renting was was a strangepractice, not to mention, again,
going back to the rental store,and I know we've written this
horse to death, but like, the itwasn't like Blockbuster. During
this time. If you a lot ofpeople remember Blockbuster and

(58:20):
how it's like, hey, you knowwhat, I'm gonna go rent this
tonight. And you could quiteliterally go there and rent it.
That wasn't the case. Duringthis time. You had to be
extremely lucky to get the gameyou wanted because the most
places only had one copy? Yep.

(58:51):
Let's proceed to category seven,which is technical. Like I have
no real cons. Aside from maybethe bug that Deacon board
explained earlier, where whenyou're in the ladder, you can
like shoot up and down but youhave to get hit first, because I
never knew that. Being younggrowing up playing recently we

(59:13):
go up the ladder like what inthe hell Why can't really shoot
up or down. I don't know whomade that decision. But that's a
gameplay thing. Anyway,technically speaking, given the
fact that throughout the castle,specifically the castle levels
for some reason, you areinundated with enemies, more so

(59:34):
I think than any other NES game.
I can remember, even though itwas just like, enemies were
everywhere, which was usuallywhat would trigger the slowdown
in other games. So that for meis a pro.
I also have almost no cons tothe technical side of this

(01:00:02):
because they actually did a lotof really impressive things.
With this game on a technicallevel, first of all, the game is
massive. I don't know if it'sthe largest NES game in regards
to number of screens.
Well, I'll just interject andsay that the retrospective that

(01:00:24):
the Retronauts did on this, theydid like a five to seven minute
video on YouTube. And they saidthat there is more screens in
this game, then sell the firstand second quest combined. It's
crazy. Yeah.

(01:00:45):
So the game is humongous. And,you know, so they do a fantastic
job at cramming all of thisstuff. However, on a technical
level, what they did was theyalso sacrificed the amount of
room obviously, that they wereusing for audio, because we all

(01:01:05):
know that the composer wasactually capable of composing a
full length song, as we see inthe story screen. However, it's
just not that way throughout thegame, right. So I think they
probably ended up sacrificingaudio in order to make space for
their massive world, which ismostly irrelevant. But most of

(01:01:30):
the world is totally irrelevant.
I have a theory that the gameoriginally like the game was
originally just the castle, thecliff wall and the towers, I
really think that dungeons wereat on
that very well could be. Butstill, like, it's still a very,

(01:01:50):
it's a feat to really get all ofthat information. And he asked
him. And other thing, one morething that I'd like to mention
in regards to the technical sideof things. And I would like to
say to like, it's almost not athing for any game to not have
any bugs. But we really onlymentioned that one. And I know

(01:02:12):
there's one other one that hasto do with like palate changes
or something, but I've neverseen it. So there's not really
many bugs to note in this game.
But the really cool thing thatthey did. And the thing that's
really impressive, if you knowanything about NES, architecture
hardware, is that the NES couldonly handle I think, I think

(01:02:33):
it's eight sprites, I think it'seight, seven, or eight sprites
per scanline. So on the samevertical, sorry, same horizontal
line across the screen, therecan only be eight, eight by
eight tiles, that display on thescreen. If there's more than
that, then suddenly, it becomesrandom as to which one is going

(01:02:53):
to display on the screen. Thus,we have so many Nintendo games.
With the sprite flicker, it'sthere's so many games that are
plagued by the sprite flicker.
This game has sprite flickering,too, because you can't just get
away with not having spriteflickering. But their solution
to the problem. I'm reallysurprised it did not get

(01:03:16):
implemented in like other gamesthat are, at least not many I
haven't, I haven't found anyothers. But their solution to
this problem was was was prettyunique. If you if you run into a
situation where there's whereyou reach this limit, or you
cross over this limit of numberof sprites on screen, rather

(01:03:36):
than just leaving it up to thehardware to figure out like
which one to display orwhatever. Which usually meant
there was just the one of thelike, one on the far right, or
the far left just wouldn'tdisplay at all. And then one of
the solutions that they ended updeveloping at some point was to
just randomly display seven ofthem every frame. This takes a

(01:04:00):
whole other to a whole wholeother level, technically, where
they actually decide tointerlace it, pixel row by pixel
row. So basically, if you havelike, one more sprite on the
screen, then you should, thentwo of those sprites are
suddenly going to become kind oftransparent. And if you look at

(01:04:24):
it, it's almost like they it'slike looking through a screen
like every other pixel row isdrawn. And it's that way for for
both sprites. And that to me wasamazing. I'm not sure I've ever
seen that in another Nintendogame.
That's pretty cool. I will saythat i i took notice of like
some of the sprite flicker andstuff, but I didn't notice the

(01:04:46):
detail in that. That's prettyawesome.
Do you have any technical issueswith the game? Deacon Gabor?
I mean, the only other ones Itook really note of was the fact
that you basically have noiframes and that you get hit and
you lose control of yourcharacter. And then so that just
puts you into a perpetual stateof dying. And then I mentioned

(01:05:07):
the hitboxes being a little off.
And then there's the one thingis like you look, you're so
slow, right walking around theworld, especially at the
beginning, and you get an item.
That's the boots. Boots. Is thatwhat it's called? I think it's
something Yeah, let's let's callhyper boots. So you're like,

(01:05:28):
Okay, great. I'm gonna runfaster. You only speed up if you
were walking in a diagonalmotion. Yeah, that was weird. I
can't help but think that's atechnical bug. Like, it makes it
it makes no it at leastgameplay. If it's a gameplay
choice, then it makes no sense.
I don't understand why you woulddo that. And then otherwise, it

(01:05:48):
feels like a bug.
Yeah, it's supposed to behelping you get up the stairs
faster. But you're saying itonly helps you get up the stairs
faster if you're walking up themdiagonally. That's right. I
didn't notice that when I wasplaying. That's really
interesting.
Yeah, very odd. Like is he youare so slow that you're looking

(01:06:11):
forward to moving fasterthroughout the entire world. But
that never really happens. Hmm.
When I realized I was like,something's off. I was like, I'm
moving fast sometimes, but notall the time. And it's, and I
realized that yeah, it's onlythe the cardinal directions
aren't affected. Let us proclaimthe Henson treats of agar.

(01:06:36):
A reading from the Deadly Towersmanual. Collecting circle Hearts
is the only way to increase yourmaximum hit points. Once you
fire your sword, you cannot firethe next sword until the first
sword disappears from thescreen. If you were not wearing
the gloves to increase yoursword speed, you might not be
able to fight quickly enough.
enemy attacks are more powerful,and exits are more difficult to

(01:06:58):
find in the parallel worlds. Butyou may find useful items in
these worlds. To find your wayaround the dungeons and to keep
from getting lost. Carefully mapthe dungeons and write down the
locations of magical drawingsand monsters. Burning a bell
will allow you to recover hitpoints, but you can also keep it

(01:07:18):
and burn it later. After you getthe bell from the tower the
enemies in the tower and outsidethe tower may become more
powerful. When you get a bell atthe top of the tower and return
to underground, the entrance tothe tower will disappear. A
reading from the Deadly Towersmanual.

(01:07:40):
The concept that they that theyjust said of like you can hold
on to your bells. Oh my god. Iwas playing the other night I
think. I think Deacon Gabor youwere watching. And I yeah, this
was guy, I had four bells and Iwalked up the turn one because I

(01:08:04):
needed to refill my hitpointsnow keep in mind I was only
going to burn one becausebecause of the two because of
two really poor gameplaydecisions. One being being
thrown back to being the enemysprite will ambush you from off

(01:08:30):
screen and give you no chance toreact. I got ambushed by the
wind and thrown into the fire.
Now you may say what's the bigdeal you are going to touch the
fire anyway. Well, when the gamewhen the game when you throw a
bell into the fire that game i ibelieve and father Avram would

(01:08:52):
be able to attest to this morethan I would. But when you throw
the belt into the game, Ibelieve the game literally
pauses and they play music andeffects and then the game starts
again. So what ended uphappening was since you get
thrown back when you get hit,the wind threw me back and I

(01:09:12):
kept moving back into the flametherefore burning every last one
on myself with no way of ofstopping it.
That's devastating.
But hilarious.
Yeah. So in regards to hints andcheats that there's actually so

(01:09:34):
the reading from the manual thatall excerpts little little
footnotes that are collectedthroughout the manual compiled
into one reading. So they dogive you they they tried they
really did try to give you asmuch information as they could
which is actually I gotta saythis. Again, not very Popular in

(01:10:01):
early Nintendo history, likethey didn't really give you a
whole lot of information andmanuals, not like not like this.
So that was cool. But they, theythere is another cheat, Nintendo
Power. Issue three has a very,very small excerpt about Deadly

(01:10:24):
Towers in their hints sectioncalled classified information,
where if you basically start a,a game, and then die, that
brings up the password screen,and then you substitute the
first two letters of thatpassword with E F, or F E, then

(01:10:46):
you get all the hyper armor andthe best sword in the game.
However, you also get thedreaded parallel shot. And so it
might make your life easier inregards to survivability in

(01:11:06):
regards to getting hit. But itis not, I do not recommend this
cheat, especially in a like aI'm just starting the game, give
me all the hyper armor and theparallel shot like I almost feel
like that's going to be morefrustrating to try to play the
game that way.

(01:11:27):
The other thing that I was goingto mention that, as I mentioned
earlier, is that there are acouple of places. Namely, the
places I'm thinking of are thetwo mini bosses in the castle.
If you try to enter back throughthe room, like from from from
the entrance that they'reblocking, you're gonna get hit

(01:11:50):
right, and normally, you wouldget pushed back into the other
room. However, whenever you'redoing a room transition, you can
actually get out of that loop.
Sometimes I don't know if it's100%. But you can sometimes
sometimes get out of that, thattransition by by pushing
diagonally in the direction youwant to go as you enter the

(01:12:13):
room. So because the hitmechanic in, in the game is
based on the direction you arefacing, not the direction that
you got hit from. So so if youcan change your direction real

(01:12:34):
fast, then it I think it ends upit either I think throws you to
like the left or the right. Andthen you know, either way you
don't get through, you don't getthrown back into the other room.
So that is something to keep inmind.
I think one thing that we needto make sure people know if

(01:12:55):
they're going to play this game.
And we kind of mentioned it alittle a little earlier is the
absolute best way to get letteris to go into the dungeon and
find was called a blob tower. Idon't know if that's the
official name of it. But that'swhat everybody calls it. Because
they are, for the most part,very easy to kill, and are very

(01:13:19):
lucrative, they leave a lot ofgoodies behind for you. The only
downside to that is that you'regoing into a dungeon. And if you
die, which probably nine out of10 times you do when you go into
a dungeon, you're going to loseyour money anyway. So I think if

(01:13:42):
you it's kind of this catch 22Well, you need the money in the
beginning of the game to get thebasic armor from the dungeons.
So it's at least a good startinghint. At some point the letter
kind of loses its value as yougain hyper armor. But there are
still some valuable items thatyou can buy from the shops. So

(01:14:04):
towards the end of the gamespecifically, you might want to
go and load up on items beforeyou had to the last boss.
I vaguely remember being a kidand somehow finding a password.
I don't remember where I foundit. Or maybe it was a fever

(01:14:29):
dream I don't know but Iremember getting a password
where I had everything and allthe bells were burned and I had
to do is go and beat the bossand I couldn't do it because it
didn't have the blue necklace.
It's very unfortunate.
Anyways, do you have anypasswords or stories anecdotes

(01:14:52):
you want to share with us DeaconGabor about hints and cheats for
Deadly Towers.
I got nothing. Just find awalkthrough and enjoy it that
Ournow, brethren, let us offer each

(01:15:17):
other the body of price. So thegame price then in 1988 was $35.
And according to the CPIinflation calculator $35 in 1988
is worth $92.88 today.

(01:15:41):
That's pretty crazy.
Yeah, that's that's someinflation right there. So what
does the price of Deadly Towerslook like today to actually
achieve a require a physicalcopy, a loose copy this is all.
By the way, I should mention allthese prices are according to

(01:16:01):
price charting.com. A loose copyis roughly $7.32 The box only is
$20.50. Manual only is $8.63.
Complete. That means, you knowinbox with the manual and the
loose copy $40.50. And then abrand new sealed copy is$294.66.

(01:16:32):
I started collecting completecopies of games within the past
few years. And $40 For acomplete game is nothing. It's
literally nothing comparatively.
Yeah.
Yeah, this game is definitely onthe low end of price points for

(01:16:57):
collecting NES games.
Especially given the last fewyears on how much it's risen
like this a $7 game is unheardof.
Yeah, it's probably fair tomention that price charting.com
a basis its prices I believetotally on online sales. So like
if you can't you can't expect togo into a retro video game store

(01:17:19):
and get even a loose copy ofthis for $7.32 it's going to
cost you a little bit more thanthat.
Yeah, I was at one today and Isaw a couple of copies of deadly
tellers and they were $8 Ohreally bad right? That's
actually not bad. Because I Iwas expecting more along the

(01:17:40):
lines of 10 or 12 but nope. Verycool.
Let us now execute judgment uponDeadly Towers to decide which of
the seven cardinal sins it hascommitted. Father Avram it in

(01:18:02):
regards to narrative What isyour final judgment?
In regards to narrative DeadlyTowers has committed no fault?
Deacon Gabor in regards tonarrative What is your final
judgment?
In regards to narrative? DeadlyTowers has committed no fault
in regards to narrative and thepresence of this assembling

(01:18:23):
Deadly Towers has been spared?
Father Avram in regards to audioWhat is your final judgment?
In regards to audio DeadlyTowers has committed a most
heinous cardinal sin.
Deacon Gabor, in regards toaudio What is your final
in regards to audio DeadlyTowers has committed a most
judgment heinous cardinal sin.

(01:18:48):
In regards to audio and thepresence of this assembly,
Deadly Towers as committed aloathsome cardinal sin deserving
of hellfire and damnation.
Father Avram in regards togameplay. What is your final
judgment?
In regards to gameplay, DeadlyTowers has committed a most

(01:19:10):
heinous cardinal sin,Deacon Gabor, in regards to
gameplay. What is your finaljudgment?
In regards to gameplay DeadlyTowers has committed a most
heinous cardinal sinin regards to gameplay, and in
the presence of this assemblyDeadly Towers has committed a
loathsome cardinal sin deservingof hellfire and damnation once

(01:19:32):
again. Father Avram in regardsto graphics, what is your final
judgment?
In regards to graphics, DeadlyTowers has committed a most
heinous cardinal sin,Deacon Gabor in regards to
graphics, what is your finaljudgment?

(01:19:56):
In regards to graphics, DeadlyTowers has committed no fault
in regards to graphics and inthe presence of this assembly
Deadly Towers has been sparedfather Avram in regards to the
box art What is your finaljudgment

(01:20:17):
in regards to box art inpresentation Deadly Towers has
committed no faultDeacon Gabor in regards to box
art and presentation what isyour final judgement?
In regards to box homepresentation Deadly Towers has
committed no faultin regards to box art and
presentation and in the presenceof this assembly Deadly Towers

(01:20:37):
has been spared. Father Avramfrom in regards to fun factor
What is your final judgmentin regards to fun factor. Deadly
Towers has committed a mostheinous cardinal sin
Deacon Gabor in regards to funfactor What is your final

(01:20:59):
judgmentin regards to fun factor Deadly
Towers has committed no faultin regards to fun factor and in
the presence of this assemblyDeadly Towers has committed a
loathsome cardinal sin deservingof hellfire and damnation.
Father Avram in regards totechnical What is your final
judgment?

(01:21:21):
In regards to technical DeadlyTowers has committed no fault.
Deacon Gabor in regards totechnical What is your final
judgmentin regards to technical, Deadly
Towers has committed a mostheinous cardinal sin
in regards to technical and inthe presence of this assembly

(01:21:43):
Deadly Towers has committed aloathsome cardinal sin deserving
of hellfire and damnation.
Deadly Towers By the authorityvested in me I execute judgment
upon you having committed fourcardinal sins in the categories
of audio gameplay, font factorand technical for which there
can be no forgiveness, no mercy,no redemption, we exile you to

(01:22:07):
the bowels of hell.

(01:22:43):
This concludes this eveningservice. Remember our liturgy
does not simply come to an end.
Those assembled are set forth tobring the fruits of the ministry
to the world.