Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - Tower of Mystery [Model MT7175]

Unreleased prototype. An early working title was 'Dungeons and Dragons III'.

Based on the original Intellivision version that became Tower of Doom. However back when the 2600 port was being developed, the Intellivision version's gameplay was still being defined. So it's unknown how close to Tower of Doom the finished version of ToM would be. However according to the Blue Sky Rangers, both versions shared a number of features including a map view for exploration, close-ups for battles, a scrolling line of text that imparted information and commentary from on-screen characters.

Tower of Mystery was so complex in fact that it needed a 16K board with 2K of onboard RAM (something almost unheard of at the time). Of course even with this extra memory the 2600 version had to be watered down slightly, and as a result the game only contained eight different rooms but this was still quite an accomplishment on the 2600. Tower of Mystery also allowed the player to enter their name, a first for any 2600 game.

A 1984 press release catalog stated this was under development for release in 1984. Unfortunately, Mattel Electronics closed in January 1984, one month before the scheduled completion of the game. The game was one of only six Atari titles officially still in development at the time of the closing. All that survives is the demo shown at the January 1984 CES in Las Vegas, and later at CGE99. Unfortunately, due to copyrights (TSR is now owned by Wizards of the Coast), the ROM for Tower of Mystery cannot be released to the public.