When my parents sold the house and moved to the great white north, they dropped off a few boxes of my stuff that was still in the garage. Now that we're getting things cleared away in case we have to make a move of our own in the not-so-distant future, it was time to go through those boxes, and one of the boxes was this, my old Mattel Electronics DUNGEONS & DRAGONS™ Computer Labyrinth Game.
This is the bigger, more deluxe of the two Mattel dedicated D&D games (the Intellivision of course had its own set, and we had a Tandyvision ourselves), the other being the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS™ Computer Fantasy Game. That was a handheld unit with a surprisingly compelling implementation of Hunt the Wumpus, and something we might talk about another time. This one is more like a board game, but with a computer antagonist and audio.
The box says copyright 1980 but I think we got it late 1982 or early 1983. Either way, I was probably too young for this game at the time: it advertises 8 and up, and I would have been around six or so. It requires you to juggle a number of different audio signals and build up the maze and the objects in it (you, your competitor, the dragon, the treasure, your lifeless defiled corpses when you try to get the treasure, etc.). My recollection is that we barely played it at all.
Well, better late than never. And hey: let's find out what makes it tick. (Teaser: it's four bits and we have an annotated die photo. Read on.)
