1980s Dark Tower commercial Featuring Orsen Wells

To play, the board is placed around the Tower and each player takes turns rotating the Tower to face them and then moving about the board. The quarter of the board in front of a particular player is his territory. Gameplay proceeds by moving a player's token one space and then pressing a button on the Tower that corresponds to the type of space (e.g., Plains, Tomb, Bazaar, Frontier) which has been moved to. The Tower then resolves what happens to the player by showing the player the appropriate cel and reporting whatever occurs. For instance, if the Tower decides that the player has encountered Brigands, it will turn to the Brigands cel, simultaneously displaying the number of brigands encountered. If the player chooses to fight, the Tower resolves the battle by alternately counting off the remaining numbers of friendly troops and Brigands. Once all events have resolved, the Tower is rotated to the next player and their turn begins.

Each territory besides a player's own contains one of three keys--bronze, silver and gold, in that order--needed to unlock the Tower. The location of the key is randomly determined by the Tower. Each player will therefore need to travel counter-clockwise around the board, through each of the other three players' territories, until the player has all three keys. At this point, the player returns to his or her territory, buys reinforcements, and then attempts to attack the Tower, which contains a certain number of defenders inside. The first player to beat the Tower wins the game; losing requires building up another army.

A note on rarity- Working copies of Dark Tower are increasingly hard to find, and thus highly sought after by collectors. This is primarily due to two things: wear and tear on the tower unit, which tended to experience technical faults with the light bulbs and carousel after prolonged use, and,the fact that the game went out of print shortly after release due to a lawsuit brought against Milton Bradley for intellectual property theft. The suit was brought by two men who claimed to have presented the original concept for "Dark Tower" to Milton Bradley in the late Seventies, at which point, MB declined to pursue it. Thereafter, they claimed, MB independently developed the game based on their proposal. As part of the resolution of the lawsuit, Milton Bradley pulled the game off the market, and it was never republished

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Dark
• tower
• old
• commercial
• Orsen
• wells
• Great
• dragon
• army
• sword
• game
• board
• roleplaying
• 1980
• Milton
• bradley
• MB
• toy
• classic

[snapshotbygdw]

Remember this use to play it day after day with my brothers, seemed so amazing at the time, can't believe how much "computer games" have evolved in such a short time.....

[ziadn27]

One of my favorite teachers back in the 8th grade used to bring this to the school cafeteria every morning. I used to go to school at 6 in the morning eat breakfast then play the game with some other students. His name is Mr Bonnet he taught literature at Lincoln Middle School In Passaic New Jersey. Oh how i wish i can go back to those days.

[alcrani]

This looks kinda badass

[bbton2]

Why doesn't someone make this game again? They would still sell... this game goes for 200-300 bucks on eBay somewhat due to scarcity.

[ganondorf02]

i have a copy of this game, it still works really greatly. haha. I bet i could sell it for so much money.

[IU2BE2]

I rember this... Dark Tower was the sh!t back in the day