Dungeon Explorer review - PC Engine

Gauntlet has been a source of inspiration for many programmers, and there have been many clones and derivatives released over the last few years. Dungeon Explorer s one such clone, but stands head and shoulders above everything that's previously been seen. That might sound over the top, so let me explain...

At the start of a game there's a neat introductory sequence in which a mountain scene scrolls in five level parallax to show a gang of characters atop a cliff. The action then switches to a tavern, where the game characters are selected.

Up to five players can play at once (as long as you've for a five-player adaptor and enough joypads to go round), and the participants can take control of either a Fighter, Warlock, Witch, Bishop, Bard, Thief, Elf or Dwarf. Each has his or her own characteristics (intelligence, strength, agility and charisma), represented by status bars which can be called up and viewed. The characters are also assigned hit points and hit power - in other words how much punishment they can give and take.

Retrospective comments

When the PC Engine was first released, NEC and Hudson knew that they would have a hard time tempting third party companies to produce games for the machine - Nintendo's NES was still the number one machine and Nintendo themselves had made many publishers agree to not produce games for their rivals. NEC/Hudson tackled this problem by releasing games that took more than a little inspiration from other successful titles. Dungeon Explorer builds on the concept provided by the arcade smash hit Gauntlet, and it actually manages to be a much better game, too. There's more depth, with RPG elements and multiple locations to explore. If you're a fan of Gauntlet then you'll get plenty of enjoyment out of this, even more so if you've got a few like-minded friends.

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