The Dark Tower (game)
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Dark Tower is a 1981 electronic board game by Milton Bradley Company, for one to four players. The object of the game is to amass an army, collect the three keys to the Tower, and defeat the evil within. The game is in no way related to Stephen King's Dark Tower series of novels. The game came out during the height of the pencil and paper role playing game craze in the early 1980s.
Components
The game consists of a battery-powered center unit (the Dark Tower), a circular game board divided into four interlocking quarters (with a hole in the middle for the Tower), four cardboard tokens, several plastic flags, playing pieces, and locations which are placed in convenient holes in the board. In addition, there are several peg boards (with red Battleship-type pegs) used to keep track of a player's number of troops, gold and food.The Tower itself consists of a small membrane keyboard beneath a "display" (a piece of tinted plastic). Behind the display cover is a carousel containing a number of film cels, which, when backlit by one of three lights mounted underneath, display the appropriate picture on the display cover. The display cover also conceals an LED digital display for representing numbers up to 99. The Tower emits appropriate sounds for the events represented by the cels.
When the Tower is first turned on it goes into a self-diagnostic test. A red zero will appear in the digital display window and quickly disappear. Two flashing red dashes will appear in its place. Next, press a button on the keyboard panel. You will hear a motor turning inside the tower and two flashing dashes will disappear. Three lighted windows will appear, one by one from top to bottom. This gives you chance to see if any of the bulbs are burned out. As each window lights up, you will hear a beep and see the number 88 appear in the digital display window. After the three light-up windows appear and disappear with their accompanying beeps and digital display’s, a red flashing L1 symbol indicating Level 1 will appear in the digital display window and remain there. The Tower is now ready for game play.
Gameplay
To play, the board is placed around the Tower and each player takes turns rotating the Tower to face them and then moving about the board. The quarter of the board in front of a particular player is his territory. Gameplay proceeds by moving your token one space and then pressing a button on the Tower that corresponds to the type of space (e.g., Plains, Tomb, Bazaar, Frontier) you've just moved to. The Tower then resolves what happens to the player by showing the player the appropriate cel and reporting whatever occurs. For instance, if the Tower decides that you encounter Brigands, it will turn to the Brigands cel, simultaneously displaying the number of brigands you've encountered. If you choose to fight, the Tower resolves the battle by counting off the remaining numbers of both your troops and the Brigands. Once all events have resolved, the Tower is rotated to the next player and their turn begins.Each territory besides a player's own contains one of three keys--bronze, silver and gold, in that order--needed to unlock the Tower. The location of the key is randomly determined by the Tower. Each player will therefore need to travel clockwise around the board, through each of the other three players' territories, until they have all three keys. At this point, they return to their territory, buy any more troops they need, and then attempts to attack the Tower, which contains a certain number of defenders inside. If they beat the defenders before anyone else, they win the game; a loss requires them to build up another army to try again.
Rarity
Working copies of Dark Tower are increasingly hard to find, and thus highly sought after by collectors. This is primarily due to two things: (1) wear and tear on the tower unit, which tended to experience technical faults with the light bulbs and carousel after prolonged use, and, (2) the fact that the game went out of print shortly after release due to a massive lawsuit brought against Milton Bradley for intellectual property theft. The suit was brought by two men who claimed to have presented the original concept for "Dark Tower" to Milton Bradley in the late Seventies, at which point, MB declined to pursue it. Thereafter, they claimed, MB independently developed the game based on their proposal. As part of the resolution of the lawsuit, Milton Bradley pulled the game off the market, and it was never republished.The secondary market is therefore fairly brisk, with complete working copies of the game typically selling for between US$150 and US$300, depending on condition.
External links
- [Games, Parts and instructions for] Dark Tower Games
- [An online version of the game] (requires Flash, single player)
- [A review of the game] with photos
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