Swords & Serpents is the 2nd Intellivision offering that I’ve set out to play and review; the first being Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Cloudy Mountain. It was written by Brian Doughtery and published by IMAGIC.
I played Swords & Serpents using the Nostalgia Intellivision emulator and it took me roughly two to three hours to beat. The game requires quite a bit of dexterity or joystick action from the player.
This Intellivision version of Swords & Serpents is frequently mixed up with the more famous NES Swords & Serpents. They are two completely different games and the only thing they share in common is that they both have the same title.
Here is the backstory we’re dealing with:
The manual that comes with the game is fairly well done but the coolest thing within its pages is a map of the first level of the dungeon.
Let’s first address the elephant in the room. The one player version of Swords & Serpents is quite different from the two player version. In the one player version you have no choice but to take on the role of the Warrior Prince as you battle alone. You have no access to any of the magical spells in the game and thus you can’t make use of the scrolls that you find scattered throughout the dungeon. In the two player version the Warrior Prince and the Wizard Nilrem join forces against the Sinister Serpent. Player two, playing the role of the Wizard, starts with one magical spell and gains access to all of the other magical spells found scattered throughout the dungeon levels. The following spells can be acquired by the Wizard as he journeys through the Sinister Serpent’s Fortress:
- Freeze
- Fireball
- Heal
- Fast Feet
- Invincible
- Destroy’s Walls – needed to reach the end of the game
- To Chest
- Invinc-Wiz
- To Knight
In a single player game, it is a bit of a disappointment that you cannot choose whether you want to play the game as the Warrior Prince or as the Wizard Nilrem. You miss out on a large part of the game by not being able to acquire and experiment with the spells in the game. In addition, you can only make it to the very end of the game in 2 player mode. I was shocked to discover this and uncovered one of the more bizarre gaming stories to date revolving around this issue (more on this later).
Your ultimate goal is to make your way through the Serpent’s Sinister Fortress and make your way to the Sinister Serpent itself ( a big dragon ) that resides on the fourth dungeon level. On each dungeon level is a black key and you’ll need to find the key on that level to unlock the stairs leading to the next dungeon level.
The dungeon is shown in an overhead view and your Warrior Prince is represented by a white knight icon. When you’re hit your icon turns from white to gray. If you get hit again you die. You begin the game with 9 lives and should you lose all 9 lives then the game is over. There is a magic lamp on each dungeon level. When you touch the magic lamp your knight icon can be healed from gray to white.
Monsters spawn randomly and the deeper you move into the dungeon the more rapidly they spawn and attack. The two types of creatures that you encounter are the black knight and red sorcerer. The red sorcerer can fling fireballs at you from afar. The only way to deflect the fireball is turn towards the attack and deflect the fireball with your sword. A red sorcerer can rapidly spawn near you, fling a fireball at you, and fry you to a crisp faster than you can blink.
The picture below depicts your white knight battling a black knight and in the background there is the chest on the 1st dungeon level where you store your treasures and there is a scroll in the background as well. This is right near the beginning of the game.
Your goal is to find and collect treasures on each level and then return them to the chest near the beginning of the game. For every 300 points of treasure you return to the chest, you get an extra life. You can only carry 6 treasures at a time which forces you to go back and dump your stash before exploring further. Some of the treasures include a helm, a shield, a lyre, a cross, and other assorted objects.
Once you get to the third dungeon level and especially the fourth the game requires a lot of fast reflexes and a lot of button smashing to survive.
Once I made my way down to the fourth dungeon level I found the gigantic evil dragon surrounded by a ziggurat.
The enemies were coming at me fast and furious. I fought them off and made my way to the dragon but I could not move beyond it’s breath of fire. I then deduced that there must be another way in to face the dragon rather than this head on conflict. I laboriously made my way around this mighty ziggurat; facing dozens of enemies and death around every corner as I did so. I made my way around and there was no apparent way in. I then reflected that I must have missed something on one of the previous dungeon levels. That there must be some kind of magic item that I missed that allows me to walk through the dragon’s fire. I spent at least another hour backtracking through my maps to no avail.
I then began to fear that perhaps there was a bug in the game or that perhaps my emulator was not working or that I had set the emulation up incorrectly. I started to peruse the internet and what I discovered shocked me.
In a 1 player game I truly did reach the end. You can discover the dragon but there is no way to combat the dragon nor is there a true end game other than to collect as many treasures as you can without losing the game. So in this case you want the highest score you can acquire.
The only way to get into the ziggurat where the dragon resides is in 2 player mode. Player 2, the Wizard, must cast Destroy Walls at the base of the ziggurat. This allows both the Warrior Prince and Wizard Nilrem to move inside. Once inside the ziggurat there are two more treasures you can collect and then they can also view the author’s initials. You still do not get to battle the dragon! I mean you’re going through the Sinister Serpent’s Fortress for crying out loud. You get down there and discover you can only look at him? That’s incredibly underwhelming.
There is a great story on the message boards about two kids who stayed up all night playing the game. They reached the point that I had and were greatly confused. They found the author’s name in the game manual, Brian Dougherty, and found his telephone number in the directory. They woke him up in the middle of the night and asked him how you defeat the dragon. He told them there was no way to defeat the dragon. They had run out of room / memory on the cartridge and his initials were their only reward. The story goes that they unloaded on him and called him every name in the book and then hung up on him. The entire story can be read in greater detail HERE
I have to admit that this is a very bizarre story. I know of no game this early on that was basically unfinished or had its ending compromised in some way. I’m 57 years old and I’d like to wake up Brian Dougherty myself in the middle of the night after going through all of that.
Despite my complaints, I DID enjoy the game. It was a bit more of an arcade experience but the movement and controls were great. I enjoyed the arcade action in this game more than I did in Intellivision’s Cloudy Mountain game. The dragon graphics on the fourth level were pretty awesome for the time and the sound in the game was great as well. The clink of metal when your sword clashes with the sword of a black knight and the “whooshing” sound the fireballs made when the red sorcerers flung them at you all sounded very cool. I was not ok with the fact that the single player version didn’t allow you to play a Wizard and I was definitely not ok with the fact that I could progress farther into the game in 2 player mode than I could in 1 player mode. These things aside, I have now enjoyed both of the Intellivision games that I’ve played using an emulator. I can see why it was a fan favorite in the early 80’s and why every child wanted one (but many could only afford an Atari).
Next up on the docket is Super Quest.
Until next time…