Well hello! To preface my first post here, I would like to just say "WOW!" I am completely blown away that the good old Dungeon Master game has a fan following! This is awesome!
My name is Stewart, but in the cyberworld I'm known as tzoneman (creator of The Twilight Zone Archives - a non-profit organization that promotes the work of Rod Serling). I am currently 46 years old (47 in a 6 weeks or so), and was lucky enough to be around when the very first Dungeon Master game was released; let's see, I had/have an Amiga (it's packed away in a box somewhere) and played the game back in 1987/87 (whenever it came out for the Amiga).
At the first moments of entering that very first dungeon entrance, I was COMPLETELY blown away... for even though I was somewhat new to the Amiga, this was THE first time that a type of game was 3D (for it's time), and allowed the user/player to walk through areas and pick up and act upon and in the surroundings. Yeah, sure, a couple years later, Eye of the Beholder came out, and took off from there with a fuller RPG elements with NPC's and such, and then Ultima Underworld came out, and then Stonekeep, and today, we're totally spoiled by The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (I clocked in at 345 hours game play with the expansion pack, and the Fallout 3) but eh... whatever... DUNGEON MASTER always will stand out, for me, and for most likely all of you, as the predecessor of all that followed.
I played the heck out of Dungeon Master, to say the least. Drawing out maps on graph paper (I still have them in a file somewhere), playing the game while my friend was also playing it on his. We'd call each other sometimes at night, talking about where we were stuck, and such, joking about how fun the game was, about how we dug luring creatures under a door and then closing it... up and down it would keep going, until the creature was killed. Man, that first mummy that came out of the darkness, almost make me scream like a wee wittle girl - all of these memories are fresh in my mind... being able to name your characters, that one level that contained the Screamers that would keep appearing, me and my friend Scott called that room The Grocery Store. DM was so unique, no other game put you IN it as well as DM did. Just the first time I opened a door, or threw an object down the hall... awesome! Again, the mummies were scary... I'm trying to remember all the monsters, but it's a little difficult, I've played so many games since then. I do remember the dude that would steal your stuff, pesky bastard, and the great big dragon... mixing games, as I also have memories of digging the Eye of the Beholder games, those were pretty awesome and took it a step further... but DM, ah... so much fun!!! I think because it was THE FIRST game of it's kind, it just holds a special place for me, and obviously other gamers as well.
What a great game, what great memories. I remember seeing the game box for the first time on the shelf (still have it... yeah, you guessed it, packed in a box somewhere), the purple box, the images on the back of the 3D-like dungeon... and getting it home and starting it up... first learning how to use the rune-stones to make magic commands... very cool. The lighting was cool, creating light, creating fireballs - I always hated those poisonous worms... man, they were pesky bastards weren't they? It was quite an addictive game.
I don't remember if I ever finished Chaos Strikes Back, I don't think I did. I found the beginning a bummer because it put you right smack in the middle of a bunch of the frickin' worms... UGH! That was frustrating. But I played the game and dug it just the same, although, I just don't remember it as well as the first. I played Dungeon Master II, and found it to be nostalgic. I could never figure out why someone hasn't made a new game of the DM universe, something with the gameplay of Oblivion. I never heard of the other two incarnations after Chaos, and I guess I should read more about them and the downloads before asking this, but, can I actually download all of these games and play them in Windows XP? Man, that would be cool.
Anywhom, I look forward to checking this forum and thank you good folks for keeping the torchlights burning. It's hard to believe that Dungeon Master was first released over 20 years ago, and people still dig it. Oh, I work in the gaming industry for a few years (long boring story why I'm not working in it now...
, and working with a gal who wrote manuals, whose name was Marisa. She worked on Dungeon Master, and, in some special version for those who worked at FTL, they included her (and maybe other employees) in the Hall of Champions... I thought that was pretty cool.
hope to talk more later AND to download the games (got to read about that - hope they work on Windows XP).
thanks,
tzoneman
to help finance the hosting costs of this forum.
. I vaguely remember we had a hint disk for CSB (possibly might have been DM but pretty sure it was CSB...). We'll still have it, therefore, in one of the disk boxes here in my room...maybe I should check. When it's not 11:35pm and I'm trying to check the forums and stuff before sodding off to bed 
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