Game:

Tower of Doom (1987)

Duration: 0:00

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7

A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom [ddtod], played with WolfMAME 0.273. Score: 1,076,994. Played for the Summer Yolympics 2025 high score contest - go team Better Off Fred!

Thanks to ‪@CaptainGordon23‬ for a lot of guidance - he's the speedrun WR holder and knows this game inside and out.

I first fell in love with this game 30+ years ago, when it first came out. I played it with a group at a quirky "we're open when the owner feels like it" comic book shop, then later had regular access to it at the student union building. I eventually credit-fed through it, feeling overwhelmed by the late-game bosses, and I never would have expected to be able to play through the whole thing on one quarter. Much later, I tried learning the game on MAME, but still struggled with stage 3 and beyond. Having the game show up in a high score contest gave me a reason to give it a more serious effort. I was

This is a hard game. I think it's the hardest beat-em-up I've cleared - definitely harder than The Punisher, and I think harder than Battle Circuit. There are some obvious difficulty spikes. The dark elf battle is frustrating if he hits you with Hold Person and brutal if he gets his Haste spell off. The red dragon is a grand-scale fight with many dangerous attacks. And of course the final boss is rough. He's immune to most of your spells, so stockpiling magic and then spending it all up won't save you there. (You can nibble at his health with Sticks to Snakes, but that's not a major factor!)

Even regular enemies have an impressive toolkit. The troglodytes that show up in stage 3 can do a long stab attack with their trident, or swing the trident around, or do a jump attack, or throw satchels that burst into dangerous (to you only) fire. They can randomly block attacks, they can dodge attacks while re-standing, they can do back-flips to move around. That's a lot more juice than a non-boss enemy typically gets in a beat-em-up. Even the lowly kobolds can occasionally toss out a dagger or burning oil. Difficulty during stages comes less from being swarmed and more from smaller squads of enemies that each have tricks up their sleeves. The unpredictable enemy behavior makes it tricky to learn the game: because you might get rewarded the first and second time for doing something, only to realize that what you learned doesn't work reliably. Using an approach that's not fully reliable is risky for a long game where any hit may (or may not) be a big setback. Any random hit - even the low-damage kick from a gnoll archer - might break your boots of speed, making sections like the red dragon fight far harder. So even if your HP are safe, getting hit is dangerous.

While it's hard, the game gives you the tools to make it winnable. Learning a route is invaluable - knowing which branching path to take, how to avoid traps and collect secret treasure, when and where enemies appear. The resources you get are very powerful - in particular, the burning oil subweapon is incredibly useful in many situations and easy to come by. And then from your attack moves, the slide attack (duck, then release duck and attack while pressing forward) is the MVP. While it's annoying to get the hang of when you first pick up the game, it's extremely useful. The slide attack is a good default way to apporach enemies, zipping in and damaging them before most of them can react. It also hits grounded opponents. It doesn't solve all problems: you still have to think about timing your attack or approaching from off-axis for enemies like troglodytes or hellhounds or gnoll archers who might hit you on the way in. Another situationally awesome move is blocking: press attack and hold then press back, then keep holding attack and don't press forward. You get a brief window of invulnerability after successfully blocking, and you can use that window to punish with a heavy attack. Cleric has the best block of all, but still I never got the hang of working blocking into my route. I had better success staying out of range then dashing in to score hits.

All four characters are viable. I think Cleric is the easiest - healing spells give you some extra margin of error, Turn Undead makes some scenes free and in others makes it easier not to get swarmed, Hold Person is handy for crowd control on troglodyes and gnolls and such.

I'll end with one trick I worked out: At the start of stage 5, at the shop, move the item selector to Continual Light, then advance one item forward, then buy (or try to buy) an oil. That will insert oil just after Continual Light in the item rotation, making it easier to kick off the loop on the dark elf (Continual Light, cycle items once, Oil). That's also the shop where you want to talk to the shopkeeper repeatedly to get your ring of resistance, if you chose the route earlier to save her.