The Dungeons & Dragons Eye Of The Beholder series was one of the most popular PC adventure games that ever came out. It was one of the first really big ones and started what would become a very long line of other similar types of games by a number of companies. But Dungeons & Dragons was the pioneer.

The series was issued in three installments, simply titled Eye Of The Beholder, Eye Of The Beholder II and Eye Of The Beholder III. There were sub titles to each game but most people only remember them by their version number. In all honesty, the version number was all you needed as each game was so much different from the one before it.

The original Eye Of The Beholder was a very simple and rather crude game graphically speaking. It came on one floppy disk, which should give you an idea of how simple it was. But in spite of the old fashioned graphics this game was as exciting as it came. Around every corner was a new challenge. The puzzles in the game itself were so complex that unless you were an expert at these games you couldn’t get through them without the clue book. Clue book sales were very big for all three games.

The concept of EOB was simple. Your team of adventurers was given a mission by the king of the land. You then went out on the mission and tried to complete it without getting killed. There were 12 levels in the game so it took quite a long time to get through the whole thing, even with the clue book. The creatures were many, including skeletons, goblins and of course the evil Beholder himself, one very dangerous creature. In order to ultimately win the game you had to get by him, which was no easy task.

Eye Of The Beholder II was a vast improvement over the original. The graphics were a little cleaner and it was much harder. There were many more levels and the final battle itself, against the evil dragon, was even harder than the one against the beholder. In this game you also fought not just one beholder but many. Again, the clue book was a must for this game as the puzzles in the game are mind boggling to say the least.

Unfortunately, Eye Of The Beholder III was a step back from number two. Yes, it was even more involved and the final battle was so hard that your hands could go numb trying to get through it, but the game itself was very disjointed. Things in it didn’t seem to go very well together and many of the puzzles seemed thrown together. Plus, they changed the battle mechanism. In an effort to make it easier, they only made it not as interesting. The game itself just had no real heart to it. Oddly enough, it was the least popular of the series and after number three the Beholder series was done.

In spite of its disappointing finish, this series was still one of the most popular early adventure games of all time, even to this day.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to PC Games

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The year was 1989. The concept was simple. Build a city from scratch, watch it grow and hope to God that it didn’t end up getting destroyed by fire, storm or just a bunch of riots in the streets. It was simple, straight forward, to the point and started a craze of goal oriented PC games that have been going strong ever since.

The original Sim City was very simple and by today’s standards, very primitive. The graphics were crude two dimensional blocks and the terrain itself was pretty unrealistic. But people had a blast playing it. As you kept building onto your city, which had to be done under certain basic rules, it became harder and harder to keep it from crumbling under your nose. There was a degree of realism to the game. As your city grew and the population grew with it, so did crime, pollution and all the other negative things that went along with a big city.

As was stated above, you did have to follow some basic rules. For starters, you couldn’t have a city without some kind of power plant, whether it be coal or nuclear. Nuclear was very expensive so you pretty much had to start off with a coal plant. You then put up your houses and businesses and had to connect them to the plant with electric lines and to each other with the same.

You were given a certain amount of money to do this. Everything cost money in this game, even the power lines. So you had to be very careful with the way you spent it. Income was derived by the taxes paid to you buy the people who moved into your city after you started to build it. Actually, at first you’re a town. You don’t get to be a city until you reach a certain population, which takes quite some time.

There are other ways you can make money such as putting up a stadium for sporting events. You can also put up a sea port to get income from trade. Airports can also be built. Eventually your city is really hopping. That’s when the fun starts. How?

Well, your roads start to crumble from the weight of all the traffic jams. People begin to complain because of the traffic, crime and pollution. They start to move out if things get too bad. When that happens, your income goes down. There’s not enough money to repair the roads. Funding for your police and fire departments is inadequate. Fires start to break out and there aren’t enough firemen to put them out. Things become a real mess.

As simplistic as Sim City is, it’s also a real challenge. Unfortunately, because of limitations of the game itself, cities can only get so big before the game crashes. Fortunately, Sim City 2000, a 3D version of this game, released in 1993, took care of this problem. Sim City 3000 came out in 1999 and Sim City 4 saw the light of day in 2003.

To this day, many people still get a thrill out of seeing their favorite city crash and burn.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to PC Games

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With the early craze of PC adventure games back in the 80s, you just couldn’t get enough of them. Every month, game players would wait for the next release. What adventure would they be up against next? And what could be better than to be able to create your own adventure? That was the premise of the original Dungeon Hack by the makers of Dungeons & Dragons. Unfortunately the game didn’t deliver on its promises.

Dungeon Hack could have been a great idea if the makers of it had put the time into it that was necessary. But as with so many products that we see everyday, this was obviously a rush job and it showed.

The premise of Dungeon Hack was simple. Instead of the game engine giving you a set game to play where you journey through some dungeon looking for treasures and fighting monsters, with this game you could design your own adventure and your own dungeon so that each game was different. What could be more exciting than that?

Except the game was anything but exciting. The number of problems with the game far outweighed the number of things that were good about it. Let’s start off with the good parts as that won’t take very long.

The only good part about this game was that you could indeed “technically” make an infinite number of dungeons and adventures. You could designate how many levels, what kinds of monsters and treasures and a number of other things. On the surface, this would appear to make this a game you could play over and over without ever getting tired of it.

But the actual game play itself didn’t quite work that way. Dungeon Hack was simply a random dungeon creator. Even though each one was “technically” different, the truth of the matter was, each one was the same. The only difference in the game, from one play to another, was that the maze was laid out differently and you encountered different monsters in different areas and found different treasures. But the game play itself felt the same each time. It wasn’t like playing a different game. It was simply a continuation of the game you played the last time you fired it up. Add to that the fact that the graphics were horrible, even by 1980s standards and this game was almost unplayable.

In the years since the original Dungeon Hack was released, other customizable games have come out. Whether or not they were able to achieve what Dungeon Hack could not is a matter of opinion. Certainly Dungeon Hack had its appeal. For those who didn’t need more than just a random dungeon each time they played, it served its purpose. But for those who wanted a different story, in which case this game had none, then you were really out of luck. Dungeon Hack had no story, no cohesive structure and no real interest to a die hard game player.

Maybe the next time somebody comes out with Dungeon Hack they’ll do a better job of it.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to PC Games

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