The Video Game Project
A Closer Look At The Prototypes That Became Your Favourite Games!
Quest For The Rings
Quest for the Rings is a board game / video game hybrid for the Videopac. It is the first game in the Odyssey² "Master Strategy Series" and it was considered particularly innovative at the time of its release.
Ultimately it is a fantasy strategy game using the combination of a game board, tokens, keyboard overlay and the computer to play the game. The game board is used to hide the ten ring tokens with various monster tokens under the castle tokens by the Ringmaster. The keyboard overlay is used by the Ringmaster to interface with the computer when your heroes enter the castles choosing what type of labyrinth in which you will do battle. Combat is controlled by using the computer joysticks.
There are four heroes: a warrior with a magic sword, a wizard with various spells, a changeling who can become invisible and a phantom who can walk through and hide in walls. The four labyrinths are dungeons, infernoes, crystal caverns and shifting halls. The four monsters are orcs, bloodthirsts (bats), tyrantulus (spiders) and dragons.
Gameplay pits the Ringmaster against up to four players. The Ringmaster controls the game by hiding the rings, choosing the dungeons and can even enter into combat. Before the game starts the hero players decide how many turns it will take to complete the quest for the ten rings either 50, 75 or 100 turns. Turns are based on castle visits and combat and if you don't complete your quest within the amount of turns you choose you lose. The hero players can start from any designated starting point on the game board and begin their quest for the rings.
