Software:Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain
The original cover of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons before it was retitled to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain.
Developer(s)	Mattel Electronics
Publisher(s)	Mattel Electronics
Series	Dungeons & Dragons
Platform(s)	Intellivision
Release	NA: August 16, 1982
Genre(s)	Action-adventure, role-playing game
Mode(s)	Single-player

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is an Intellivision game and was one of the first Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games to be licensed by TSR, Inc. It was later retitled to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain to distinguish it from the sequel, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin. It is the first Intellivision cartridge to use more than 4K of ROM.

Plot

In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the player must cross difficult terrain, reach the resting place of a broken crown, and restore the crown. During the game, the player will navigate randomly generated rooms and corridors within a mountain range, collect items, and fend off monsters. The player's only weapon is a bow and arrow, which can be fired in any of eight directions by pressing the number-pad keys on the Intellivision controller.

Gameplay

The gameplay involves exploring a series of randomly generated scrolling mazes, looking for treasures and weapons with which to defeat monsters, and recovering the two pieces of the Crown of Kings. The speed of the monsters and the quantity of available arrows are determined by the choice of difficulty setting.

The player character inside a maze

The player begins in a cabin on one side of a large wilderness map; on the other side is a huge mountain containing the crown, topped by clouds and inhabited by sleeping dragons. Smaller mountains and geographical obstacles bar the way to the goal. Some mountains are impassable, while others turn different colors as the player approaches them to indicate their difficulty level.

When the player enters a mountain, the screen shifts to an overhead view of a maze of rooms within it. The player is represented by a black figure with a bow, and must move from one room to another. Rooms and connecting passages initially cannot be seen, but gradually light up as the player moves into them. The player must avoid or destroy the monsters, collect useful items, and find an exit in order to return to the map screen. The difficulty level of the mountain determines the types of monsters and items that can be found inside. The player starts the game with three arrows to use in destroying monsters, but can find more as the game progresses.

Items include:

• Quiver: Adds arrows to the player's inventory.
• Boat: Required to move along the rivers on the map.
• Axe: Required to move through the forests on the map.
• Key: Required to pass the gates in the walls on the map.
• Crown: Found only in Cloudy Mountain; both halves must be found to win the game.

Quivers can be found in any mountain, while each of the other three items can only be found in mountains of one specific color (blue mountains for the boat, red mountains for the axe, and purple mountains for the key).

Most monsters will injure or kill the player character on contact, but evidence of their presence can be found in the form of tracks or audible cues. Spiders and bats inflict no injury, but spiders can steal arrows from the player on contact and the flapping of bats' wings will obscure any sounds made by other nearby monsters. The player begins the game with three lives; if a life is lost, a new character respawns in the same maze.

The final maze, Cloudy Mountain, has no exit. Upon entering it, the player must find both halves of the Crown of Kings, each guarded by a powerful winged dragon. The game ends once the player either loses all three lives or reassembles the crown, whichever comes first.

Reception

Reception
Review scores Publication Score Electronic Fun with Computers & Games TeleMatch 1 (highest)

Electronic Games stated in 1983 that "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons ... proves to have been worth the wait". The game received an award in the category of "1984 Best Adventure Videogame" at the 5th annual Arkie Awards, where the judges noted that it was "the first videogame version of the role-playing game that has entertained millions for many years".

German gaming magazine TeleMatch gave the game a very positive review, giving it a one out of six, which is the highest on their rating system, and also stating: "In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons everything just makes sense. If you find yourself interested in other - and I repeat: inferior - so-called adventure games on other systems, you will find that this game is the Non Plus Ultra". Electronic Fun with Computers & Games gave the game four out of four, stating in their review: "The graphics are terrific. The dragons look a lot like Godzilla ... each creature has its own distinctive behaviour and charm", but expressed their disdain for the lack of a proper ending.

Levi Buchanan, in a classic Dungeons & Dragons video game retrospective for IGN, wrote that Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is a very basic adventure game similar to Adventure, and "uses so little of the license in game that you can almost see that as more of a branding deal than anything". He concluded by saying: "Even though it has so little to do with the actual D&D universe, this is still an entertaining retro game worth checking out".

In a retrospective review of Cloudy Mountain in Black Gate, Ty Johnston said: "All in all, that original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game for the Intellivision was loads of fun with what then were considered flashy graphics. It still stands up today for limited play, and it would be worth your time to search out, especially if you are a fan of classic gaming consoles in general and the Intellivision specifically". In 1995, Flux magazine ranked the game 31st on their "Top 100 Video Games".

Legacy

In 2018, an updated version of the game, simply called Cloudy Mountain, was announced for release exclusively for the Intellivision Amico.

External links

• Entry on Intellivision Lives
• Game Manual
• MobyGames is a commercial database website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes over 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. Founded in 1999, ownership of the site has changed hands several times. It has been owned by Atari SA since 2022.

Features

Edits and submissions to the site (including screenshots, box art, developer information, game summaries, and more) go through a verification process of fact-checking by volunteer "approvers". This approval process after submission can range from minutes to days or months. The most commonly used sources are the video game's website, packaging, and credit screens. There is a published standard for game information and copy-editing. A ranking system allows users to earn points for contributing accurate information.

Registered users can rate and review games. Users can create private or public "have" and "want" lists, which can generate a list of games available for trade with other registered users. The site contains an integrated forum. Each listed game can have its own sub-forum.

History

Logo used until March 2014

MobyGames was founded on March 1, 1999, by Jim Leonard and Brian Hirt, and joined by David Berk 18 months later, the three of which had been friends since high school. Leonard had the idea of sharing information about computer games with a larger audience. The database began with information about games for IBM PC compatibles, relying on the founders' personal collections. Eventually, the site was opened up to allow general users to contribute information. In a 2003 interview, Berk emphasized MobyGames' dedication to taking video games more seriously than broader society and to preserving games for their important cultural influence.

In mid-2010, MobyGames was purchased by GameFly for an undisclosed amount. This was announced to the community post factum , and the site's interface was given an unpopular redesign. A few major contributors left, refusing to do volunteer work for a commercial website.{{Citation needed|date=June 2025} On December 18, 2013, MobyGames was acquired by Jeremiah Freyholtz, owner of Blue Flame Labs (a San Francisco-based game and web development company) and VGBoxArt (a site for fan-made video game box art). Blue Flame Labs reverted MobyGames' interface to its pre-overhaul look and feel, and for the next eight years, the site was run by Freyholtz and Independent Games Festival organizer Simon Carless.

On November 24, 2021, Atari SA announced a potential deal with Blue Flame Labs to purchase MobyGames for $1.5 million. The purchase was completed on 8 March 2022, with Freyholtz remaining as general manager. Over the next year, the financial boost given by Atari led to a rework of the site being built from scratch with a new backend codebase, as well as updates improving the mobile and desktop user interface. This was accomplished by investing in full-time development of the site instead of its previously part-time development.

In 2024, MobyGames began offering a paid "Pro" membership option for the site to generate additional revenue. Previously, the site had generated income exclusively through banner ads and (from March 2014 onward) a small number of patrons via the Patreon website.

On February 13, 2025, Freyholtz stepped down as the site lead to move onto new projects, leaving operations to Tracy Poff, a veteran coder on the site, and Atari staff.

See also

• IGDB – game database used by Twitch for its search and discovery functions

External links

• Review in Electronic Games