Dark Tower

Nostalgia -- Powered by 2 'D' Batteries

I’ve mentioned the mall’s toy & game store (sadly much more the former than latter) before; lamenting that the games were for little kids (at least until the Gamemaster series came out). But for a glorious six months or so, every time I stopped by it was to look at one box.

The Box — Image from Wikipedia

Dark Tower (designed by some combination of Roger Burton, Alan Coleman and Vincent Erato¹) was “more than just a game, an experience.” (It says so right on the box). And it somewhat lived up to that hype. The game’s core game was the iconic Tower, which served as the electronic referee of the game.

You still moved around the board; but then you told the tower where you landed. Then the tower handled events and resolved any combats.

The Tower also provided fog of war: only you could see the display on your turn. Other players couldn’t see what you were doing or how much you lost in battle (although the tower chirped a few sounds that could give them a reasonable guess).

In practice, the Tower was little better than a small deck of cards and some dice (or whatever system it used to resolve combat). The LED display could show numbers and there were lights and rotating film underneath, so it could show “20 Brigand” by writing the number 20 and rotating the film so that the brigands cell was projected by the light².

But dice and cards weren’t cool, the Tower was.

Nowadays computer (or even electronic) moderators have nearly taken over the world (both with video games and in the real world); but Dark Tower represents an early attempt to integrate ‘an app’ into a boardgame.

Sadly, once I finally got my copy I discovered the game itself wasn’t as intriguing as I’d hoped. I doubt I spent less hours playing it than staring longingly at the box in the store store. Partially it may have been because you mostly felt like you witnessed most of the game instead of playing it. To be fair, that can be true of many games “I do this and then roll the dice/draw the card AND….” is a common mechanism. An opaque resolution system can be fun, but for whatever reason Dark Tower lacked staying power.

At least for me.

But finding a working Dark Tower became something of a Grail Quest for many collectors who wanted to recapture that moment of their childhood. Recently Return to Dark Tower was released to much fanfare (and mixed reviews).

Nostalgia has its place; that place is usually “the past.”

But there’s a reason that Dark Tower got a reprint in the first place. Not all games are about killer strategies. Sometimes you just want something that acts like a slot machine and lights up and says “You won!” or “You lost!” and Dark Tower fulfilled that admirably. And once you’d ponied up for a copy you didn’t have to keep chucking quarters into it, so no surprise that it wasn’t as amazingly awesome as Galaga or some other arcade machine.

But because of the integration of electronic moderation with rudimentary animation (and yes, Nostalgia), I think that Dark Tower is worthy of consideration as one of the Most Influential Games of the 20th Century.

1. There was a lawsuit by Burton and Coleman (who were independent) that Milton Bradly and/or Erato stole the idea from them. The jury found for Burton and Coleman, but the judge vacated the verdict … but was later overturned on appeal.

2. I say “The light” but there were a few lights, top middle and bottom if I recall correctly.