The Tower of Druaga

Ki was waiting for the knight to save her…

JP release: 5th December 2003
NA release: N/A
EU release: N/A
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco
NGC Magazine Score: N/A
Mods Used: None

The Tower of Druaga is a rather important arcade game that, in many ways, is something that inspired games like The Legend of Zelda. However, the arcade version from 1984 was never released outside of Japan until (from what I could find) Namco Museum Vol. 3 in 1997 on the PS1. It’s one of Namco’s most iconic classic games in Japan (even getting its own anime), so it’s fascinating that it is so unheard of here. This GameCube disc was also a Japanese exclusive, being a pre-order bonus for Baten Kaitos, something I didn’t understand until I actually played Baten Kaitos.

This disc doesn’t contain the original arcade game, but rather an emulated version of the Famicom (NES) version. Surprisingly, everything in the game is in English, so a western release would have been cheap – the main reason The Tower of Druaga wasn’t released outside of Japan was more due to its difficulty. It’s a dungeon crawler game with a simple target: explore each floor of the dungeon (each being a maze you can see from a top down view), find a key then unlock the door to the next area, fighting enemies along the way.

However, if you just do this you won’t be able to make it far, as you’ll need to find hidden items. These items aren’t just out in the open, you have to complete a specific hidden objective on each floor to figure it out. These can include things like killing specific enemies, blocking enemy attacks, walking to specific points of the map or using specific items from previous floors. You get no indication that any of these things are needed, or that you’re even doing something important until the chest appears. It’s all very obtuse. To make matters worse, some items have limited use and if you use them up, you’ll be blocked from finishing the game.

Even using a guide, it’s extremely easy to mess stuff up, and I only made it 19 floors up until I was killed by a dragon. Combat is quite finicky as you have to time your attacks to when enemies aren’t moving. I definitely agree that this game’s difficulty would have put a great many people off, especially as the answers are so random with zero indication of how to progress. In Japan, figuring out a floor and telling your friends was probably a massive thing.

Fine

The Tower of Druaga is, to me, woefully boring and pointless to play. It’s slow-paced and not much fun even on the surface, and digging deeper than that just boggles the mind — its extreme over-complication, with its tons of hidden collectible treasures and the associated random requirements for finding them, is just not what you want in an arcade maze game.
Lucas M. Thomas, IGN (Wii Virtual Console review)

Remake or remaster?

An enhanced version with optional help options would be great. You could have a setting where it displays the objective for each floor, just hints or stuff like that.

Official Ways to get the game

The arcade version is available on Switch via Arcade Archives and as part of the Namco Museum Archives. The NES version is available on Nintendo Switch Online.