In the final part of our rundown of the best titles ever to appear on the feted Commodore Amiga, we reach the top ten. But which paragon of software entertainment got the top slot?
4. Dungeon Master
An absolute classic of early video RPGs, Dungeon Master was released in 1987 and out-sold pretty much every other title that year across multiple platforms.
Originally developed in Pascal and intended for the Apple II platform, the two-man development team joined the FTL Games studio in the midst of their work, and soon switched to the C programming language. Dungeon Master was released first on the Atari ST, then the Amiga a year later, becoming the first ever video game to use 3D sound effects.
And that's more than a gimmick too, in-game the player really can tell from which direction danger is coming thanks to the excellent audio, especially if wearing headphones. Weird squeak coming from behind, turn about, whack away with swords and spells, hurrah: Screamer slices.
Because the game's many monsters aren't the only things which will kill you - hunger and thirst are equally deadly enemies for the unprepared. Fortunately the game festoons the player with food and drink in the early levels, and with careful rationing this can easily last through to the later levels. As a mechanic, it's a good way to stop players loitering in an area with respawning monsters and endlessly grinding skills to a point when defeating enemies becomes trivial. Although, veteran players will be aware of certain rooms with nearby water sources, and respawning monsters that turn into food when killed.
Dungeon Master was innovative not just for its sound, but also its gameplay and certain mechanics. At a time when most RPGs were turn-based, Dungeon Master was real-time, with players moving around a tiled maze one step at a time, and stamina and mana dictating how frequently they can attack. Also, levelling up is achieved simply by using abilities, rather than by killing monsters and receiving experience points.
And most skills can be improved out of combat too. Get your ninja continually to throw items in the direction you're headed when you run out of inventory space, and she'll be an unstoppable death machine by the time you find the end boss. Similarly, don't just restrict your mages to casting fireballs and acid gobs when you're facing nasties, get them to do it any time their mana pool is full, and they'll soon be launching magical destruction at anything in your path.
The game inspired a large community of fans which still exists to this day. One fan, Paul R Stevens, spent six months of full-time coding to re-build it in C++, then released both it and the source code for free.
Its sequel, Chaos Strikes Back, is also great. The recent Legend of Grimrock series is a direct homage to the original Dungeon Master games, being basically enormous graphical upgrades
