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Shad0WeN

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  1. The Cyan Rosary Necklace ("A Dark Cloud Hangs Over You") will restore life force to maximum but is also cursed and causes monsters to spawn constantly. The effect seems permanent & the only way to negate it might be with certain scrolls that remove curses.
  2. Have something interesting to add that I didn't see unless I just missed it: The standard healing rate seems to be 1/4 shield every 16 heartbeats. The Novice character is double that at 1/2 shield every 16 beats. Most notably the Barbarian seems to heal at 1/4 shield every 2 beats, so 8 times the normal rate. So while the Barbarian is somewhat weak to start relative to most of the other characters they become significantly more powerful the more their max HP increases. They can also survive longer when life force has become depleted because the accelerated healing rate slows down the HP decay due to hunger. This makes quaffing a Superpower Flask a more viable strategy for temporarily staving off death from starvation. edit: I'm also curious as to what happens to the HP regeneration rate with the Barbarian if the Ring of Rapid Healing and/or the Rosary of Rapid Healing are also used and the potential implications it could mean as far as starvation goes.
  3. Hah. Of course it's on like the one page I didn't think to read. Didn't realize there were tips & tricks on the Walkthrough page. Good stuff!
  4. Just wanted to say thanks a bunch for putting all that info together in a guide of sorts. It's the best resource that I have managed to find for the game. One thing I would add is that there is a tactic/exploit of sorts that can be used to pass through traps unaffected. Basically a trap won't trigger as long as another sound effect is currently playing. That means you can do something like cash a treasure from your inventory and run through a trap while the sound is still playing or alternatively get into a battle with a monster right next to it, retreat, and use the residual music/sound effects in the same way. Very useful for when transporter trap is in a bad location for example.
  5. So I tried hooking my old Intellivison II up to my Vizio HDTV (using a simple RCA to Coax adapter at the console end) but the video exhibits vertical jittering that is rather annoying so I gave this a shot. I can get it to stop by adjusting one of the potentiometers in the RF modulator but only for as long as the system is powered on. Once it's turned off and back on again its back to the same jittering issue. I may keep playing with it to see if I can find an adjustment where it's more than just a temporary resolution but I guess it may just be that this TV won't want to play well with it no matter what I do.
  6. That's awesome! I am jealous lol. Did you know the art used on the front cover wasn't even created for Thunder Castle? It believe it was meant as a promotional piece for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin but supposedly was never used, so when INTV Corp. published Thunder Castle it was 'recycled' and became the box art. It makes sense since other than the dragon none of those creatures appear in the game.
  7. Meh, taking another look at it it seems like you may be right about the difficulty levels feature. If what it mostly does is just skip ahead a certain number of levels/screens then to me that's not a real difficulty setting. It's just a shortcut. A proper solution to me would carefully tweaking the different variables amongst each set of levels from the beginning on a per selected difficulty basis, and with the way the game is designed there are 4 sets of 3 levels. Dumping you ahead on Level/Screen 10 when you select "Knight" for example is not my idea of implementing a true difficulty setting. Which is presumably what it did in the video since there is only 1 black bat on this level (as in the original game). I didn't realize that the guy had switched to Knight difficulty (which is the hardest according to this post) about halfway through so thanks for pointing this out. I should have paid closer attention when skipping ahead. So upon second glace at this point of the video, I swear he might even be slightly faster than the red dragon, though there is very little time to say definitively. Then on the next level (11) he is definitely faster than the Yellow Wizard (which is the opposite of the original game) and about the same speed as the Red Wizard, which is significantly faster than you in Thunder Castle at this point. Then in the dungeon level at the end of the video there are 2 clear instances where the player is faster than even the Orange Demon so that can't simply be chalked up to the use of the necklace they picked up. It also seems like the knight's energization duration has been increased as well though that's tougher to judge as in the video there is no sound from the game. Indeed it does. Good points all around. Oh and on the higher levels in Thunder Castle even the green enemies become about the same speed as you. Anyway from what I'm seeing based on the evidence in this video (and as someone who has played Thunder Castle extensively on every set of its levels) this debunks any notion that Mystic Castle is in any way more difficult. If anything it looks like the opposite and the difficulty has been noticeably nerfed/reduced, in particular with what seems to be the knight's increased speed in general. Which is fine if the goal is to make the game more accessible or whatever, but let's just get it right.
  8. Interesting. Personally I've always found the Dungeon levels to be more problematic due to the number of enemies (i.e. three demons vs two wizards). Also, as much as this is a skill-based game I'd be lying if I said that some random elements didn't affect the difficulty. For example the maze layout (to a lesser degree), though sometimes I think this may just come down to one's personal level of familiarity or comfort. Then there are the more significant ones in my opinion. Like your starting position in a maze and that of the enemies (and the rat if in a Castle level). Obviously where the red skull appears in a Dungeon level, especially at the beginning. The timing of the opening/closing of the gates in the level relative to your starting position, as well as relative to each other as you play the level. In my experience these can be significant factors that can either seem more benign or conversely, really work against you. RNG does play a bit of a factor.
  9. Well judging from this video of Mystic Castle on Youtube that doesn't seem to be the case at all: On the early levels the player can be seen running faster than even the red enemies, which is never the case in Thunder Castle. The player speed in general just seems way higher. Faster and harder need not be the same thing though. From reading through this thread about Mystic Castle it sounds like the intent was to make the game a bit faster-paced and from some people's comments it actually seems easier than Thunder Castle to me, though it's unclear what difficulty level some may have been playing on or what the harder ones may be like.
  10. I got the impression that it was made easier due to the addition of difficulty levels and other changes? Anyway I've seen it before though don't know if i can bring myself to drop the $$$ on it for a modified ROM of a game that I already have.
  11. Btw there is a pdf file of the manual for Thunder Castle here: https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ALLO0GH%2D0YcLj3M&cid=71F50E381A8C0F7E&id=71F50E381A8C0F7E%21457&parId=71F50E381A8C0F7E%21237&o=OneUp And lots of other stuff here: https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ALLO0GH%2D0YcLj3M&id=71F50E381A8C0F7E%21139&cid=71F50E381A8C0F7E
  12. Oh sweet! Who signed it? Connie Goldman (she was an animation wizard and did the graphics) or David Warhol (music & programming)?
  13. Yeah the game wasn't released as originally planned due to Mattel Electronics exiting the video game industry but I believe INTV Corp (who acquired the rights to the Intellivision stuff from Mattel) released it in like 1986 or 1987 if I'm not mistaken. I can see some people being dissuaded by the difficulty or find the lack of difficultly levels off-putting but I've always enjoyed a good challenge that forces you to learn & evolve so it never bothered me. Nah, I don't have a high score since I don't play for that. If I did then I could honestly say that my high score would be infinite though. It's easy to artificially farm/leech points without making any real progress (especially in the earlier levels) and there's very much a gray area there and it's just too subjective as to what is or isn't doing so. Consequently because of that I don't consider score to be a proper measure of skill in this game.
  14. If you have the manual it covers the magic items though of course it's not something you can just slip into the hand controller like an overlay. Anyway this is how I would personally rank them in terms of best to worst: Magic Items: Grail/Chalice - Energizes the knight when activated. With the proper timing and memorization of the entrance point for new enemies on each maze layout it can be used to score a double kill on an enemy stack on levels 1-3, 5, and 6. It may be possible on level 4 as well but it seems unreliable and kind of tricky. Crown - When activated it freezes enemies for a few seconds (as well as the energizing rat in the Castle levels) and also allows you to pass through them unharmed. Key - When activated it allows the player to pass though/into a single wall tile as though it is not solid. Can be used for both offense and defense though its saving grace is using it to 'hide' in a safe spot from enemies to escape death and wait for the opportune moment to emerge. Necklace - Grants the player a short temporary speed boost when activated. Ring - Transports the player to a random tile in the maze when used. Can save you in a pinch or conversely, not really help at all. This has to go low on the list because of the unpredictable nature of it. Lamp - Extends the duration of the knight's energized state when activated. Not very useful because it has to used while energized and must be activated early enough, plus it only works once for one cycle. It becomes marginally more useful in the higher levels where the energized state duration becomes drastically shorter, though still not enough for me to prefer it over anything else. Other pickups: Candlestick - grants the player an extra life in reserve (up to a maximum of 9). Coins - Adds 500 points to the player's score. Comb - Cuts the player's score in half. Note that if grabbed at the right time this can actually be beneficial to the player in gaining extra lives since they are awarded when reaching (or repeating) specific score milestones. The point thresholds as stated in the manual are actually incorrect and they should have been 4000, 8000, 15000, 25000, etc.
  15. So I regard this as one of the best arcade-style maze games of all time and easily among my top games in the Intellivision library; it's a shame that this title didn't get more attention imo. Everything from the wall-to-wall music (unheard of at the time) to the art design and animation work is simply wonderful. That and it's a game that I have always found to be very enjoyable and boasting a surprising amount of strategic depth and complexity for something from so early in the history of video games. Back in the day I never could get past Level 9 though. Then a few years ago I picked up the Intellivision Lives collection for the Nintendo DS/3DS and my interest was rekindled. I just had to beat that dreaded Level 9, demons be damned! And so one day I finally did and reveled in the elation of my hard-fought triumph. Then out of curiosity I looked online to see if I could find recorded footage of someone else showing this as well but came up empty. So I thought well how cool would it be to be someone to do it? The problem is I just didn't have any practical means of recording gameplay, whether from the 3DS or original Intellivision hardware. But then one day I discovered the jzINTV emulator and all that changed. Fast forward a bit and here we are now. My tactics have continued to evolve as I've honed my skills in this game to new levels. For those interested or who may also have a love for this game I present to you for consumption my latest deep run to Level 15: I hope that folks will enjoy it and/or that it could serve as a learning tool for this excellent game, and perhaps people could glean new strategies from it for their own play. I have also toyed with the idea of writing a strategy guide for the game as well as I haven't really seen one out there. Hmmm perhaps one day =P
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