The Tower of Druaga
73K plays 1992 #RPG
The Tower of Druaga is a 1984 action role-playing maze video game developed and published by Namco for arcades. Controlling the golden-armored knight Gilgamesh, the player is tasked with scaling 60 floors of the titular tower in an effort to rescue the maiden Ki from Druaga, a demon with eight arms and four legs, who plans to use an artifact known as the Blue Crystal Rod to enslave all of mankind. The game runs on the Namco Mappy arcade hardware (which is a revised/modified version of the Super Pac-Man hardware with a horizontally scrolling video system previously used in Mappy).
Druaga was designed by Masanobu Endō, best known for creating Xevious (1983). It was conceived as a "fantasy Pac-Man" with combat and puzzle solving, taking inspiration from games such as Wizardry and Dungeons & Dragons, along with Mesopotamian, Sumerian and Babylonian mythology. It began as a prototype game called Quest with interlocking mazes, revised to run on an arcade system; the original concept was scrapped due to Endō disliking the heavy use of role-playing elements, instead becoming a more action-oriented game.
This is the Japanese release, so its text is in Japanese.
From Wikipedia's article The Tower of Druaga, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Keyboard controls
| TG-16 | Player 1 | Player 2 |
|---|---|---|
| D-pad | ↑↓←→ | IKJL |
| II | Z | N |
| I | X | M |
| Select | Shift | B |
| Run | Enter | Space |
Hotkeys
- 1 Quick save state
- 2 Quick load state
- 3 Change save slot
Gamepads are detected when you press a button. Remap any key from the emulator’s Controls menu (gear icon).
Live chat
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Keyboard controls
| TG-16 | Player 1 | Player 2 |
|---|---|---|
| D-pad | ↑↓←→ | IKJL |
| II | Z | N |
| I | X | M |
| Select | Shift | B |
| Run | Enter | Space |
Hotkeys
- 1 Quick save state
- 2 Quick load state
- 3 Change save slot
Gamepads are detected when you press a button. Remap any key from the emulator’s Controls menu (gear icon).
3.5 Good job
Players 76 · 105 votes
No critic scores found for this game: this is the players' rating.
Review scorecard
- Graphics 3.5 out of 5 Overall fallback
- Sound 3.5 out of 5 Overall fallback
- Control 3.5 out of 5 Overall fallback
- Fun Factor 3.5 out of 5 Overall fallback
Overall fallback: Players 76 · 105 votes. The same 76/100 overall rating fills missing categories using the face scale; these are not separate category scores. Player rating; no critic scores available.
What the reviews talk about
Key wordsboringdifficult
What the critics said
Lucas M. Thomas of IGN was the most critical of the game, lambasting its "arbitrary, off the wall" item requirements, slow pace, and high difficulty, calling it "woefully boring and pointless" to play.
— IGN (Lucas M. Thomas)
From the Reception section of Wikipedia's The Tower of Druaga article, under CC BY-SA 4.0. The words are the critics'; their full reviews are on the publishers' pages.
Scores
- AllGame 2/5 (retrospective)
- Eurogamer 2009 4/10 (Virtual Console) (other versions)
- IGN 2009 3/10 (Virtual Console) (other versions)
From the review table of Wikipedia's article. The face takes, first that applies: the Metascore for this platform, GameRankings' average, our average of the critics (one number per publication, a panel averaged), one review alone, the players' rating. Critics and players are never mixed.
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