The D&D Computer Labyrinth Game was not a big seller, as you can see. It was expensive, and D&D hadn’t yet gone viral in the kid world. Here it is with Dark Tower in the 1981 Montgomery Ward Christmas Catalog for $44.88.
Super Simon was in the same catalog for $37.99. The non-electronic games pictured—Ideal’s Rebound, Galoob’s Pro Pinball, Perfection (scared the crap out of me when that board shot up)—were much cheaper.
The photo is alluring, but also frustrating: all of those aisles in the background forever unexplored, all of those endcaps flush with eternally unidentifiable carded toys.
(First image via Historic Images/eBay)
2 Warps to Neptune 
A friend of mine had the D&D game. We played the heck out of it, despite it not being very good. Sometimes we said to heck with the game and just built mazes of our own.
Sadly I never had Dark Tower. I’ve never even played it. I’ve long wanted to try it.
I gave Dark Tower kind of a bad rap in a post last year, but it was a cool game that was inspired by the D&D game. If I had to choose, I’d rather have Dark Tower.
If only we could create some kind of network that would allow us to trade these old board games around. They’re too expensive to buy.
My Dark Tower is still packed away in the vault somewhere. If I ever get around to unpacking boxes, I’ll probably have enough show-and-tell to start my own retro blog. In the meantime, for those who are looking for a modern Dark Tower experience, there’s an emulator app for Android called Droid Tower: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mow.droidtower
Holy crap! The emulator!
It’s only retro if you weren’t there the first time around. You were there, so it’s history.
Fair enough. Poor choice of words, then.
In some ways though, I never left.
Exactly. That’s exactly what I mean. We never left, so it’s not retro or vintage – it’s just part of us, part of our continuing history.
Sorry, the whole fashionable “geek culture” and “retro” thing is driving me nucking futs (retro cereal, retro Legos, retro cosplay). Didn’t mean to come off like a prick.
Understandable. I get pretty ticked at the current “cool to call oneself a nerd/geek” phenomenon, too. Don’t get me started on Big Bang Theory…
I got the D&D Computer Labyrinth for a birthday but it didn’t work right and I could already tell I might not want it so I got….something else…
Dark Tower? Do tell…