
	Platform TurboGrafx-16 Genre Action/RPG Publisher Atlus Developer Hudson Soft ETA 1989
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Dungeon Explorer

I remember way back when the 16-bit era was just starting to pick up, the TurboGrafx-16 was already seeing price drops left, right, and center, at least up here in Canada. It got to the point where one could find the system and get an extra game for it; all for under $150. So, when I saw this, I just had to get one, and managed to convince my little sister to pay half of it. After having my fair share of fun with Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, I was hankering for something new, and managed to find it at a local mom and pop’s game shop: Dungeon Explorer.

It was a neat little Gauntlet clone, with a slight shooter-esque sensibility to it. What really stood out to me from the get go was that there was quite a variety of characters available to players from the start, ranging from rogues, to warriors, to wizards, to bards, there were so many different types of character classes, each with their own specialties. Back then this just fascinated me. Some of these classes were utterly useless, however, as they had absolutely horrible defense. One hit to these guys and they were as good as dead.

Regardless, I picked a warrior and got down to business. Story-wise there was never anything to be terribly impressed over when it came to Dungeon Explorer. It was a run of the mill story of some great evil making threatening the kingdom, and it’s up to a hero to set things right, leading up to a final battle against “Natas”. (Heh)

Navigating the different dungeons was usually very linear, as the path set forth in front of players didn’t leave much room for exploring (kinda weird given the name of the game). There was very little opportunity to wander around aimlessly, with several sections blocked off until a specific boss was killed. The only time one could

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do much in the way of exploring was when in the overworld, as some of these areas were surprisingly spacious. Even then, there really wasn’t a whole lot to look at; all you could really do was kill off a few monsters that happened to spawn around there, and get back onto the main path again.

Despite the linearity of the game, its world was surprisingly large for the time. There were so many dungeons to blast through that it would take

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at least a few days to clear the game. Of course, the problem with this was that the HU card that Dungeon Explorer came on didn’t have the ability to save, so players had to break out the pad and paper to jot down a code to input the next time they fired up the game. It was annoying, but at least it wasn’t as bad as some of the code-based continue sequences found in other games at the time where players would have to punch in a couple dozen characters, or an assortment of images.

And speaking of images, the visuals really weren’t anything to be impressed about even when Dungeon Explorer was new. You could really tell that the TurboGrafx-16 only ran on a pair of suped-up 8-bit processors. The characters, enemies, and environments were severely lacking in detail and vibrant colors. The only thing that saved the game’s presentation was its peppy music, and even then the tunes became very repetitive very quickly.

But despite the game’s shortcomings, I still had a lot of fun with the combat in the game when I first got it. Mowing down swarms of little soldiers, slimes, and anything else the game threw at my on-screen persona was a blast. They would drop the occasional power up that could do things like increase my character’s speed, defence, or offence, and generally gave a little more oomph at key moments when going against bosses. The bosses themselves were a bit of a mixed bag. In an age where most games would have an end of level boss that took up half of the television screen, Dungeon Explorer didn’t do this very often. Instead players would be up against anything from a giant warm, to a tiger, or even bosses that were no bigger than a player’s character. The only boss fight that ever really stood out was that against the end boss of the game who did actually take up half of the screen.

Nonetheless, when I finally beat Natas for the first time, I was very satisfied with Dungeon Explorer. There were a lot of dungeons to visit, plenty of enemies to kill, and a huge cast of character classes to choose from. It may not have had the visual pizzazz, originality, or overall grandeur of its contemporaries on the Genesis and SNES, but as a 14 year old trying to eek out a decent next gen gaming experience circa 1990, I still got a real kick out of the game.

Mr. Nash

(March 26, 2005)