Deadly Towers retrospective: Myer lemon | NES Works  

My Dad rented this game back in the day when renting games was a mindblowing experience. It was so bad that we couldn't believe just how terrible it was. It was a running joke for us. That no matter what games we rented, nothing could ever be worse than deadly towers. He joked that he was going to get the box from the rental store, wrap it up, and give it to me for Christmas just to see my face. I miss my Dad.

I always liked the little bit from the manual from this game: "You have no confidence in this sword". Not inaccurate.

being reminded that seanbaby dot com is so old that nes games were still on sale at the time is certainly a shock to my system. good lord i feel old

This was the first NES game I owned, before I even had an NES! I lived in Novato, home at the time of Broderbund. They came to my middle school to have some kids test a prototype of their UForce controller. Being a computer nerd, writing games on my Atari computer, no doubt some teacher figured I was a shoe-in for that, so I got to skip a class and go try it out. Deadly Towers was my gift, in return. I tried to like it, I did. Eventually traded or sold it, way back when.

The cover art was magical in all of its Molly Hatchet-style fantasy glory.

I'll have you know that I'm accustomed to waking up on Thursday to these delightful tributes to era's gone by... But today I'm halfway across the world in Cambodia working my ass off. I just came home from a long ass day of work with a pizza and a beer. I can say definitely these we'll crafted expose's go just as well with evening grub and alcohol as they do with yogurt and coffee. Thanks, Jeremy.

My grandma used to play this one all the time! and would regularly beat it!

The biggest problem I had with the game was, that I was in one of the dungeons mapping it, so I figured, I would get to the dungeons outer walls, then fill in the rest of the rooms in the middle. An hour later, I discovered, to my horror, THAT THE DUNGEONS HAVE A WRAP AROUND EFFECT. You can keep traveling through rooms and eventually wind up back where you started, since there are no outer barriers! Happily, nowadays, you can find maps for every dungeon in that game on the internet.

My first two games on the NES was this and Mickey Mouscapade, so I definitely had a skewed view of what was acceptable levels of difficulty in my video games. I still have a lot of nostalgia for Deadly Towers, and I can still remember mapping out those endless dungeon mazes. At some point I figured out that learning where all the invisible entrances were and _avoiding_ them was the secret to actually making progress in the game and eventually, finally beating it.

This was the first game my older brother bought for our brand new NES which we received the weeks preceding Christmas 1987. I remember being very intimidated by the game and not wanting to play it. Course after playing Deadly Towers we inserted Super Mario and the NES immediately clicked for me. Once I had my fill of Gombas and warp pipes I returned to the infamous Deathly Towers. Luckily, being 6 years old with all the spare time in the world helped to find fun in this title. I was a little surprised with the hate it got, I don't believe it deserves it. Once you have your head wrapped around the secret areas and path to the bells it does become pretty fun. However the music will slowly drive you insane, it's best turned to the lowest volume possible. Also it arguably has one of the coolest NES covers. I imagine it was what lead my metal head brother to buy it at the time.

The editing and script on this episode is by far some of the funniest

As speedrunner DragondarchSDA has said: this game is sentient. It has a mind of it's own and decides whether you live or die.

Thank you for giving Deadly Towers a fairer shake than most anyone else.

A Seanbaby retrospective followed seconds later by a Martin Luther joke is why yours is my favorite channel on RU-vid Jeremy.

Finally, Deadly Towers. I have fond memories of playing and actually beating this game as a kid no doubt thanks to a password or two but when we recently tried to recreate this experience on a stream, sadly none of us could do it.

Wow, I had completely forgotten about Seanbaby. Never really put it together that James and AVGN were probably heavily influenced by that website.

I loved this game as a kid. The music was epic and me and my brother actually managed to beat it.

5:40 "Prince Myer makes Simon Belmont look like a surefooted bastion of stability in comparison"

Fun fact regarding Color a Dinosaur the composer was Tommy Tallarico.

A game that randomly and inexplicably kills players at a moment's notice. Yup you can thank classic D&D/AD&D for that since most of those games like Deadly towers were inspired in some part by Wizardry and Ultima which in turn were inspired by a love of and a attempt to recreate on computers D&D, old Gygax era D&D, the era of D&D that gave us such classic charecter grinders as Tomb of Horrors and Dungeonland. So crypticness and brutality were part of the experience because that's what old classic era D&D was I mean in Tomb of horrors you had a dead end with a face statue with a open mouth large enough for you to crawl into but inside is a sphere of annihilation which will permanently destroy your charecter upon contact but you didn't know that till you accidentally find out, same with the last room of the dungeon you have a pile of treasure and a creepy skull with gem eyes. You have to destroy the skull to win but doing so will cause it to wake up and instant kill the strongest party member by taking its soul and trapping it in a gem and this is a unavoidable attack. So yeah thank classic D&D for games like Deadly towers.

I'm generally fond of this one, as one tends to be when it's all you have to play. Never understood the outright scorn. It's broken, but parts are enjoyable. Did beat the game some years back, but with a guide of course.

dear lord, this video has to mark the first time I've thought about Seanbaby in almost 20 years. Wild!

I liked Deadly Towers! I krakked out on it til I finished it, drawing my own maps, etc.

Like George Carlin said at the end of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, "They get better!" Gunman's Proof for the Super NES proved that Lenar would eventually be capable of realizing their ambitions.

Thank you for giving this game a nuanced review. I got Deadly Towers as a kid when it came out, and although I found it frustratingly difficult and cryptic, I don't recall ever thinking it was a "bad" game. There were plenty of other cryptic and frustrating games out at that time, like Golgo 13 and pretty much every SNK game. And we played and enjoyed those games, too. Sure, they weren't top-tier like Legend of Zelda, Mega Man or Kid Icarus, but neither were most games at the time. I was actually pretty confused when I saw that people were singling out Deadly Towers as the worst NES game ever. I would much rather play Deadly Towers than something like Mach Rider. Nobody ever puts Mach Rider on their "worst" list, and that game is ugly, grating on the ears and monotonous to play for any length of time.

Part of me feels like 'Tower of Druaga' has become the NES Works 'Heiankyo Alien'.

I still can't beat this game. There are hidden regions that have the best items you need, but to get them, you have to battle past these bats that hit like trucks and move so fast you can't hit them. And after you kill them they just... keep... coming. I think the best example of the game's bad mechanics is the dungeon shops. You go into the shop then, when you exit, enemies spawn right on top of you and knock you back into the shop. You can actually die this way. And of course, when you go in the shop, you spawn just SLIGHTLY RIGHT of the exit ladder, so that you have to move over a bit before climbing it instead of just being able to hold "up" to quickly exit. All that being said, the way the game gives the illusion of perspective changes is really interesting: the path to the tower sort of feels like a top-down game, the stair regions have a 3-d feel to them, and the towers almost seem like side scrolling levels, even though the game mechanics are the same throughout. Also, the final boss had 3 different forms, which, aside from Castlevania, was very rare for NES games. Finally: the game's antagonist is Rubas, the King of Devils, but you hardly encounter any devils in the game at all, except for these little fairy-like imps. The most prolific enemies in Rubas' army: killer bouncy balls.

an episode so nice, it's in the playlist thrice

This was one of the first NES games I ever played, not long after it came out, and didn't have a lot to choose from at the time. It never occurred to me that there was anything wrong with it, and I got quite good at it where I've beaten it multiple times.

Renting this game as a child I remember being severely confused and incredibly underwhelmed, a major feat as I wasn't exactly the most picky 7 year old when it came to game selection. I don't think I would put this on my list of worst NES titles so much as most frustrating and obtuse. Anyway another informative and entertaining video, the continued high point of my day, and overall my ten minutes of unalloyed happiness for the week. Keep up the great work.

Never played it but I used to watch my neighbor play it when I was 7 or 8 years old. have always wondered what the name of the game was. finally found it!

EXCELLENT video! I really enjoyed Deadly Towers as a kid and even beat it a couple times. It's Zelda meets Marble Madness! I know the game had a lot of problems though. I actually had dreams about a sequel to this game that fixed all the problems. Alas it wasn't meant to be.

The silver lining to having to review or create retrospectives for bad video games is that writing about them can be so much more fun. I've found both in writing and reading game reviews over my life that when a game is fantastic, there can be a sort of fear of "How can I make sure I'm doing this game justice," and so the writing can end up a little more "safe" as a side effect. By contrast, playing a bad game isn't fun, which makes that longing for fun sort of burst out in the writing stage, where risks are taken, humor blossoms, and you end up with a richer work for the effort. Case in point: the first minutes of this video, where it's clear you had a good time "loosening the tie" as it were, and it came through very enjoyable on this end as well. "You gotta start small." Indeed! I enjoyed your earliest videos, but it's hard to imagine you putting out something of this quality right from the get-go. Everyone needs time to find their groove...yes, even you, Lenar.

I really love inscrutable old games like this.

Deadly towers is one of my favorite NES games. It is not meant to be any of those other (easier) games.

I actually love Deadly Towers, but I don't particularly think anyone *else* should love it. I recognize its faults and understand how most people would, and should, hate it. But I still like it, mostly because I played all the way through it way back when it was new, and because there are hints of greatness in there, scattered around. If you have a good FAQ with you, and have a lot of patience, you can fairly easily get some basic equipment, which once equipped stays on your character even after you die and increases your survivability by a fair amount. From there to get the best equipment you have to survive Parallel Zones and Secret Rooms, which are ludicrously deadly, but still possible, *with patience*. Anyway, I like it. I don't claim that means anything other than that I have ridiculous tastes.

As someone who played (and beat) the game when it was new, I just don't have the same level of hate for it as the rest of the internet. It's certainly flawed and obtuse, but there was still some level of fun to be had. (I also liked Milon's Secret Castle and only hated Hydlide a little bit, so it could just be that I'm weird.)

Sean Riely doesn't get enough love these days. I LOVED his MMA articles on cracked when they were at their peak back in 09 - 13.

2:46 a crucifix is a cross that depicts Jesus hanging...those are just crosses...just sayin’. Regardless, thanks for the “Works” series. It’s important work for the medium.

My little brother inexplicably loved this game, and delighted in making me play it for him.

I guess I'm the only person who never heard of Seanbaby, and I was there when the internet became a thing. 🤔

God it’s weird to think how early Seanbaby hit the scene. Also weirdly interested in Sorcerian now. Part of the delight of these videos is all the cameo clips that lead down some very interesting rabbit holes.

Enjoyed this game and beat it back in the day. ;)

Love the outro theme. And the writing as usual.

great stuff. I always loved the intro and have memories of playing this in my uncles basement but we always gave up after about 10 deaths in the dungeons. Later played with Game Genie. I also think they put a code to start with all the gear...

OMG, Jeremy did it. He went and did it. And it's DAMN GOOD!

It's amazing how fast things were moving in videogames at the time. So this would have been good in 1984 but is junk in 1987. Can you imagine saying today that a lousy 2019 game would have been impressive in 2016?

“Worse than The Three Stooges” - whoa whoa whoa. I LOVED that game as a kid!

I think the crucifixes that line the game's towers might be intended as arrow slits, hence the lack of nintensorship. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrowslit

I bought this when I was little because of the cover. Lesson learned.

If you find a good walkthrough guide for those hidden labyrinth sections and also focus on acquiring the 3 pieces of special armor (and let's not forget the double shot), the game becomes much more manageable and somewhat enjoyable.

Fitting you included a picture of Luthor in a video uploaded so close to Halloween: Oct. 31 is also Reformation Day

My dad was obsessed with trying to beat this game. I thought it was a fever dream because i could never remember the name and it didn't end up on anyone's best of lists. He never beat it. There were parts of a dungeon he couldn't figure out how to get to.

LOL haven't heard of Seanbaby in ages! I used to visit his page all the time!

The jokes and their delivery were on absolute fire during this episode.

James' video was fan comments on the game read by him

Just making the dungeon entrances visible and allowing the player to exit them more readily would have improved this one tremendously. The combat would still be garbage, but at least you wouldn't have to cope with the nightmare scenario of getting endlessly warped around and lost without warning.

So hype for when you get to the snes games i grew up on

I loved this game as a child. Mostly for the story it tried to tell. As a teen I hated it. As an adult now? I agree with you and think you miss a lot of the finer points of its failures. It tried to exceed the hardware with it's world in many ways. For example: Wander any of the invisible dungeons long enough and you will hear primarily the first 5 seconds of a 30 second loop. But there are 6(I think) iterations of the same loop. One basic one and the rest have an additional instrument. Perfect world, that 30 second loop would never restart and play continuously, but have the additional instrument come and go or change from room to room. Ambitions exceeded... Reality. Deadly Towers could have been great as a SNES game, or maybe late, limit pushing tier NES game. But it was far too early for it's own good.

I must've gone online a little after Seanbaby's fame, because I vaguely remember hearing his name years and years ago, but never learned who he was until now

I always think this game looks kind of neat, at least to watch someone else play bits of. From a safe distance it seems like a fun idea, though I'm sure it could be very frustrating to actually play. Of course, I owned Castlequest, so I'm always waiting around hopefully to see people dunk on how much THAT sucked. (Though from some of the other games covered here, I can see what they were going for....)

Definitely one of the hardest nes games I ever played, never did beat it but not for lack of trying. I thought seanbaby was the funniest thing ever when I found it in 97, of course I was a 14 year old goober just discovering Evil Dead and Monty Python so it all made sense, laughing until I was ready to throw up, feeling redeemed for my struggle with deadly towers. Good video, pretty honest too, definitely not the worst on NES!

Got this game when it came out for Easter that year. Could never get anywhere in that game. Had no idea what i was doing. There was no help for that game in the day, just basically walking around lost/blind.

I played this as a child, and was always enchanted by the name and the story, but perpetually disappointed by the execution of the game. Well, actually I thought I was just bad at it, and if I were just a little better then maybe I would get the "legend of zelda" experience I was looking for, but then I would play it and find that no, I was wrong, the game was just bad. And then I would forget about it, until later I wondered... Maybe the problem was that I was just bad at it...

I had a real love hate relationship with this game as a kid. Being a kid that grew up with apple II in my school and playing a lot of Commodore 64 this game really had a computer game feel. Despite the obvious chibby style of the character sprite enemies, stage layout and balancing feel straight out of a computer game.

Man I miss Seanbaby's EGM articles about crappy forgotten games

I had a lot of fun playing this but I do remember dying all the time, and I'm sure we never beat it

Sorcerian is more about solving multiple puzzles in a map and all the stagea are varied and have their own story with everything in them being original

"Deadly Towers is not a great game. In fact, it's not even good, but it's absolutely not the worst thing to be inserted (into an NES)." Thank you. There are plenty of other games that are worse than this game. Not saying I'm a fan, but the overblown hate for it is more boring than the game itself.

You have no faith in this sword

I remember renting this, thinking the box art was so cool. disappointed and returned it ASAP. it was super difficult and vague on where you are supposed to go

Bells in the chat boyos! I played the crap outta this game as a kid and only saw 4 screens the whole time haha.

Actually, there is a better excuse for Deadly Towers. The maker took a longer time to get it made, having begun work on it before work commenced on those better examples. But, when it was finished they thought, "Well hell, it's still obviously a decent playable game, so why the hell wouldn't we sell it to Nintendo??" And obviously Nintendo found it decently worthy enough as well.

Wait... Seanbaby wrote that list 20 years ago? Shit, I feel old now.

bravo!

I literally went as Sean Baby for Halloween in high school.

This was the first game I remember playing as a kid that made me think "This is kinda bad." Mind you, I _liked_ the NES Athena when I was a kid.

Lenar also had a earlier Famicom game called Bird Week. I also agree with the Atlantis no Nazo comparison another commenter made. (The AVGN episode on Deadly Towers is really funny. I'd hate to think this game would ever get associated with AC/DC if they got the localized title they wanted)

Yup thought about Seanbaby right away

Is that where all this talk of Deadly Towers being the worst NES game ever came from? I remember a number of kids in school back in the day owning it (probably because of the title or flashy box art) who all said that it was terrible. And of course those of us who didn't own it ourselves would agree with them when we played it for ourselves.

What is the song that always plays during the ending sequence?

I think it would be amazing if someone kickstarted a bad ass remake of this game :)

This game, Atlantis no Nazo, and Milon's Secret Castle are my personal trilogy of objectively terrible games that fascinate me to no end.

A new Jeremy video with an intro that sounds like AVGN and makes a reference to Giant Bomb? Have you been reading my diary again, Jeremy?

Houseguest: "Let's play Street Fighter 2." Me: "Sure, but first play this for five minutes..."

This game looks awesome

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only retro gamer who never played this.

This was the first game I rented the day I bought my NES. Made me second-guess my purchase of the console. I think I gave it 20 minutes and just couldn't do it any more.

You should really get a Patreon account set up, you deserve some compensation for your great work!

I do agree some of those old reviews like the stuff Seanbaby wrote and AVGN have probably done a lot to shape public opinion on games like this.... although I do remember playing this one as a kid and not really enjoying it.... though indeed I've probably played way worse!

I LIKED IT

I loved this game back in the day, every tower had a different theme and background music ,kind of reminds me of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory!!! Lol

I feel like someone could do a ROM hack of this and make it into a good game.

I hope Stan, Christopher, and Bruce all have nice apartments in Dead Lee Towers.

What is the name of the song that plays at the end? It's so familiar, it's kinda driving me nuts.

Dangerous Domiciles, a game of frustration, fear, gorillas, and hand grenades.

Maybe someone stated this before... But it ist episode 55 or 54? It says 54 on the title card

You put the wrong episode number in the episode, but said the right one and titled the video correctly. Just looking out for one of my favorite creators!

You can't actually map the dungeons ... we tried when we were kids. Even though the rooms are all squares, they don't actually lay out in a grid. They overlap in ways that don't make sense so that if you're mapping it on, say graph paper, two different rooms end up occupying the same space. But that doesn't really matter. There's no need to ever enter any of the dungeons. The Parallel Zones in each of the seven towers each contains the strongest power up items you need, just lying on the ground, for free. So you basically go to the towers first thing, and upgrade yourself for free, and hope to God you never accidentally stumble into a dungeon because you know you're dead if you do. This game is truly awful, although I appreciate the effort to make it sounds like there's a decent game hidden somewhere within.

95 Theses joke, and actually well done. Nice.