History VideoGame / TheTowerOfDruaga

* NintendoHard: Almost sadistically so for an arcade game, even by arcade game standards.. You have to make a cruel crawl through 60 floors all with monsters that can one-shot you and treasures that are mandatory for finishing the game.

* VideogameCrueltyPunishment: You can attack Ishtar and Ki instead of rescuing them and exit floor 59 without defeating Druaga... if you don't mind being sent back almost to ''the beginning of the game.''

** A handful of floors (25, 55, 59, and 60 in the original arcade version) have no treasure chest. Floor 56 in the original arcade version goes one further and gives you an ''empty'' treasure chest.

* TakenForGranite: Ki is cursed by Druaga and turned to stone.

* BlobMonster: Slimes in several colors, two years before [[VideoGame/DragonQuest those other slimes]]. Some of them even shoot magic spells at you.

** On the other hand, continuing when you haven't made the game unwinnable is quite useful, since you get to keep all of your treasures. Not only that, as proof you weren't expected to beat it on one coin, when you beat the level you died on, you get *all of your points back* that you lost on continue.

* BigDamnKiss: The Game Boy port ends, if you found every treasure, with Ki kissing Gil on the cheek. Given all the trouble he went through to save her, he sure earned it.

* TheDragon: Quox, an actial, literal dragon who appears in the game's logo. It is mentioned in the lore that it was a peaceful being born from the Blue Crystal Rod until Druaga split the Rod into three, making it split into three itself and go mad.

%%* EvilTowerOfOminousness

* BigDamnKiss: The Game Boy port ends with Ki kissing Gil on the cheek. Given all the trouble he went through to save her, he sure earned it.

* VideogameCrueltyPunishment: You can attack Ishtar and Ki, instead of rescuing them, destroy walls on a final floor (both can kill the player just like if they touch an enemy or their spells for the case of some variants of slimes and magicians, and fires from Sorcerors except if they have a Red Necklace), and exiting floor 59 without defeating Druaga... if you don't mind being sent back almost to ''the beginning of the game.''

** Very few floors don't even have a treasure.

* BlobMonster: Slimes[[note]]Which predate [[VideoGame/DragonQuest those]] slimes by two years.[[/note]] in several colors. Some of them even shoot magic spells at you.

* SurprisinglyGoodEnglish: The OpeningNarration of the first game is this for the most part, but has a slight grammatical mistake, saying that "the golden knight Gilgamesh 'weared' gold armor". The Famicom[[note]]Japanese version of the [[UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem NES]][[/note]] port corrects this.

* NewGamePlus: The Famicom, Game Boy, and ''Namco Museum Vol. 3'' ([=PSOne=]) ports reveal a CheatCode after beating the game that unlocks a hidden "Another Tower", which is another 60-floor romp with even ''more'' difficult and convoluted treasure solutions. The ''Namco Museum Vol. 3'' port exclusively also contains the "Darkness Tower", which has you traversing Floors 61 to 120 with the difficulty cranked [[UpToEleven even higher than before]] (if the first two Towers weren't enough).

* PoisonMushroom: The Potions of Energy Drain and Potions of Death, and any item after not obtaining the Balance on the previous level.

The first three games of the above list, as well as the [[VideoGameRemake remake]] of ''The Tower of Druaga'' for the PCEngine, were developed by Game Studio, the company founded in 1985 by Masanobu Endoh (AKA: "Evezoo End"), creator of the original game.[[note]]He was also the creator of VideoGame/{{Xevious}}.[[/note]]

* VideogameCrueltyPunishment: You can attack Ishtar and Ki, instead of rescuing them, destroy walls on a final floor (both can kill the player just like if they touch an enemy), and exiting floor 59 without defeating Druaga... if you don't mind being sent back almost to ''the beginning of the game.''

* VideogameCrueltyPunishment: You can attack Ishtar and Ki, instead of rescuing them, destroy walls on a final floor (both can kill the player like if they touch an enemy), and exiting floor 59 without defeating Druaga... if you don't mind being sent back almost to ''the beginning of the game.''

* VideogameCrueltyPunishment: You can attack Ishtar and Ki, instead of rescuing them, destroy walls on a final floor (both can kill the player like if they touch any enemies), and exiting floor 59 without defeating Druaga... if you don't mind being sent back almost to ''the beginning of the game.''

* VideogameCrueltyPunishment: You can attack Ishtar and Ki, instead of rescuing them... if you don't mind being sent back almost to ''the beginning of the game.''

* BlobMonster: Slimes[[note]]Which predate [[Franchise/DragonQuest those]] slimes by two years.[[/note]] in several colors. Some of them even shoot magic spells at you.

** The Return of Ishtar has an "ATTRACT ROOM", but nothing really resembling a gameplay demo sequence.

%%* EvilTowerOfOminousness:

* BlobMonster: Slimes[[note]]Which predate [[Franchise/DragonQuest those]] slimes by two years.[[/note]] in several colors.

The first three games of the above list, as well as the [[VideoGameRemake remake]] of ''The Tower of Druaga'' for the PCEngine, were developed by Game Studio, the company founded in 1985 by Masanobu Endoh, creator of the original game.

* BlobMonster: Slimes in several colors.

* TheDragon: Quox. It is mentioned in the lore that it was a peaceful being born from the Blue Crystal Rod until Druaga split the Rod into three, making it split into three itself and go mad.

%%* EvilTowerOfOminousness

* GuideDangIt: In each level of the game, there is a treasure which requires a unique and unguessable without [[TrialAndErrorGameplay trial and error]] action. Even after working this out, some of the items are harmful, which again can only be discovered with trial and error. Some of them are required to make other items non-harmful. How do you figure that out? Guess... Avoiding the treasure isn't an option, either, as most of them are needed to complete the game. Oh, and there wasn't a guide when the game was released.

* InvincibleMinorMinion: [[WillOTheWisp Will O'Wisps]].

* NintendoHard: Almost sadistically so for an arcade game. You have to make a cruel crawl through 60 floors all with monsters that can one-shot you and treasures that are mandatory for finishing the game.

** In ''The Return of Ishtar'', Ki herself will go down in one attack from anything. Gil has health that [[CastFromHitPoints drops]] each time he kills an enemy.

* StalkedByTheBell

* TrialAndErrorGameplay: The first game is possibly the most extreme example in the history of video games. The steps for acquiring the items on each level are so hilariously non-intuitive that one could be forgiven for labeling it an UnwinnableJokeGame.

''The Tower of Druaga'' is a 1984 arcade game released by [[Creator/NamcoBandai Namco]], about a knight named Gilgamesh (or "Gil" for short) who has to climb a monster-infested tower in order to defeat the demon Druaga and rescue Ki (pronounced "Kai"), a shrine maiden in service to the goddess Ishtar. It is infamous as the high-water mark of [[http://strategywiki.org/wiki/The_Tower_of_Druaga player-directed cruelty]] in videogames -- the acme of the old school style where videogames existed to challenge and defeat the player.

Various {{Shout Out}}s and {{Bonus Dungeon}}s based on the game can be found in the TalesSeries and VideoGame/SoulSeries, and ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos'' has a {{Homage}} level that calls back to this game. Also, characters from the series appeared in ''VideoGame/NamcoXCapcom'', with Gil and Ki acting as a playable unit, and Druaga appearing as a boss.

* EvilTowerOfOminousness

* GuideDangIt: In each level of the game, there is a treasure which requires a unique and unguessable without [[TrialAndErrorGameplay trial and error]] action. Even after working this out, some of the items are harmful, which again can only be discovered with trial and error. Some of them are required to make other items non harmful. How do you figure that out? Guess... Avoiding the treasure isn't an option, either, as most of them are needed to complete the game. Oh, and there wasn't a guide when the game was released.

* LostForever:
** The treasures under Guide Dang It. Uh oh...
** Use a Copper or Silver Pickaxe too many times on the same floor or use any Pickaxe on the outer walls of the floor and it's gone forever, sometimes disallowing you from acquiring the better Pickaxes later in the game.
* MissingSecret: Very few floors don't even have a treasure.

* OneHitPointWonder: You have a HitPoints value, but you can't actually see it. It's also only used for fighting enemy Knights and Lizardmen; slimes, magic spells, and whisps all use OneHitPointWonder logic.