#druaga

[malamiteltd]

"Destroy Red!"

Ever played "Mr. Driller Drill Land?" Originally released on the Gamecube in Japan, it had gotten an "encore" release on modern consoles a few years ago. The last of the main Mr. Driller series, it divided its modes between five themed attractions. From personal experience, I found "The Hole of Druaga" to be the best one. It takes the Dristones of the previous game's scenario mode and infuses it into a themed dungeon-crawler, where you have to find and defeat Druaga by navigating the dungeon floors in search of the key and Druaga. The mode randomly generates the layout of rooms each time, so each playthrough is different.

In this image we have Vale and Hazy playing with the theme. Vale's armor is inspired by the original Gil, while Hazy is dressed like Druaga. Hopefully Vale ("Valegamesh?") has enough red and blue Dristones to combat Hazy; otherwise, he may have to dig quite a bit for some while avoiding her magic tricks.

Tower of Druaga & Mr. Driller © BNGI Art, Vale & Hazy © 2024 Malamite

[kerbrobro]

TONIGHT AT 5 PM CST (so in one hour lol): Im going to check out the PC Engine remake of Namco's classic and foundational (but divisive!) arcade rpg, The Tower of Druaga! We'll be killin slimes and finding secret treasure in a game that helped inspire Zelda!

[dmdarius]

Nothing like thrusting yourself into a new area to make you feel rather weak! Same enemies, new area, all the pain. But this time, I'll at least have a hammer while I'm trying to find the fountain.

[chronivore]

Druaga

[itsfantasticac]

"Namco Dot Graph" was a line of diorama figures released by Banpresto in 2006. Each figure also included a button on its base, which would play audio from the games.

Arcadia magazine No. 72 (May 1, '06), pg. 55

[doyouknowthisanime]

Do You Know This Anime?

[funbil]

drew my friends' favorite namco characters last night

[ninjastar107]

This happens often.

[self-loving-vampire]

Reaper in Ultima Underworld 2.

Reaper in King's Field.

Look who's back in Lunacid.

[katewillaert]

Zelda Is Not An RPG

In this important contemporary document from Program Pochette No. 9, the author tries to correct people that Legend Of Zelda (and Druaga) are not RPGs, but adventures. The first person to offer a non-machine translation of this will be my hero.

(The author comes so close to finding his way to the term "action-adventure" in a later paragraph, but never quite gets there.)

[akfamilyhome]

The NES ROM on a GameCube disc vs. the SNES ROM on a Wii disc, pick your poison

[redwolfnik]

Fatina from Tower of Druaga

[obscureanimeoftheday]

Obscure Anime of The Day:

The Tower of Druaga: the Aegis of Uruk

Aired: 2008

Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Magic, Romance, Violence

[dmdarius]

Something terrible is happening with the Blue Crystal Rod in town! And poor Gil is none the wiser while he's being surrounded by slimes, knights and mimics! Could this be the end for Gil? Well, yes, but not the way you think.

[houseboywife]

The Tower of Druaga: a game you can't play properly anymore

(insert image) Some people, upon reading this title, might think I'm talking about some kind of lost media. Not at all: The Tower of Druaga has been perfectly preserved. It has been rereleased on multiple platforms, and hell, if you wanted to you could even download and play it right now. Legally, of course. Right? Right. No, what I mean is that The Tower of Druaga is a game that was made to work only in a specific cultural context, at a specific cultural time, and playing it today would be an utterly miserable experience. And yet, the game was insanely successful when it launched in 1984. So let's see what it's all about, and why it is so utterly bizarre.

The Tower of Druaga has a pretty standard premise: you're the hero Gilgamesh, with your sword, shield, useful trinkets, and the like. Your goal is to climb 60 maze-like floors of the tower, slay the eponymous demon, save the girl and get the magic thingamajig. Each floor has enemies to avoid, a treasure to collect, a key and a locked door. Easy enough, right?

Except there's a catch. A big and huge catch. You see, each treasure contains items, and to make them appear you have to solve puzzles. Except those puzzles are completely arbitrary and are not communicated to the player in any way. They range from killing enemies in a certain order, to pressing a certain button combination, to crossing two arbitrary points in the map. Again, there is no indication on how to do any of this. What about the items? Well, here's an example. The first one you can get is a copper pickaxe that can be used to break walls. Pretty neat, but not necessary. Except that, if you miss it, you don't get any of the significantly better pickaxes later. Also, you have to break walls to get some items. Also, you can only use it twice in a floor before it breaks. Forever. You're not told this.

Some items have no effect other than making items spawn in later floors. Some are useless. Some have actively negative effects. But some items, oh some items are mandatory. And they might require that you picked previous items to spawn. And they might be locked behind nonsensical puzzles. And, of course, you can make the game unwinnable without knowing about it. The game doesn't tell you, it even lets you put in another quarter if you die. But if you miss a required item, you just can't win. Oh, and also: each floor has a time limit. Once expired, wisps start chasing you, and if they catch you you get zapped back to a lower floor. Without some of your items. Even the required ones.

Here's some examples just to put things into perspective:

Floor 5, white sword. Doesn't do anything, but without it you can't collect any of the future sword upgrades. One of them is required to win the game. To get it, you must block three spells from a wizard enemy with your shield, while moving.

Floor 19, book of light. If you don't get it, the next 3 floors will be completely dark. To get it, wait 3 seconds after unlocking the door.

Floor 25, nothing. Defeat every enemy to collect it.

Floor 28, gate detection book. If you don't collect it, the door on floor 30 doesn't spawn, softlocking you. To get it, stand on the locked door and draw your sword.

Floor 30, potion of unlock. If you don't collect it, a useful item on floor 31 doesn't spawn. To get it, walk three times over point A or B as illustrated in the following map. But also point A doesn't always work and you might need to kinda wiggle around a bit .

Floor 37, hyper helmet. Increases your health and is required to win the game. If you didn't collect the item on floor 36, turns into the evil elmet that decreases your health and makes you softlocked. To get it, defeat two druids and cross paths with a roper.

Floor 59, Druaga Fight. Just kill all the enemies, but if you accidentally absorb a spell using the hyper armor you collected previously, you get soft locked.

Floor 60: execute a specific series of actions to win, if you accidentally break a wall with a pickaxe you get softlocked.

I think this is sufficient to get that point across. And the thing is: people absolutely loved it. The Tower of Druaga attracted millions of fans, inspired a large amount of games including Zelda, had nine sequels, one manga, and even two animes. All for a game like this. Once this game got released in the future in the west, critics absolutely demolished it. And rightfully so: it really sucks to play now. Really, the only way to do it is to use a guide, because there's no way to find out realistically how to do any of that, at all.

And that's the thing, really: this game is pretty shit here and now, because it was meant to be played in a japanese arcade, in 1984. It makes little sense to review it now cause, well, an element of the game is missing. Sharing the secrets and tricks to other people can't really be done the same way anymore. Everything has been discovered, and if it released today the solution would just be posted on the internet on day 1. So every rerelease should be seen more as the preservation of a very important piece of media, a sort of time capsule to the past that can't really be replicated anymore. That's why, I think, The Tower of Druaga is really, really cool.

[itsfantasticac]

Cosplay column, from a 2005 issue of Arcadia magazine.