Today in Nostalgia Corner we look at Bob Holness’ DungeonBusters, the unlikely collision of populist television gameshow and high-concept video-enhanced boardgame.

Christmas morning, 1993. I am sitting cross-legged on my living room floor. My hands – unusually clean of jam and frogspawn – grapple with a hefty, rattling present. I can’t believe it. It is. It very probably is. I savour this sweet, wonderful moment and replay the television advert that has held my young, gormless mind captive for weeks. Heavy in its rotation and brutal in its allure, it’s there, screen-burned onto the inside of my eyelids.

A near-black screen, fuzzed with rural analogue interference. The sounds of ghostly winds blow across four empty seconds. Then, rising – gently rising, the noise of battle. Clattering shield and sword. Wild screams. Snapping, arcing lightning bolts. As it peaks, and the wood veneer shell of the TV set hums and sings in sympathy, Bob’s face fades in. Disembodied. Eerie. He hangs there, impassive and staring from the pregnant screen, saying nothing. Saying everything. A coarse yell lunges out from the fray, overruling the invisible mob by decibels and driving the single, waspy speaker into distortion –
“M!” it roars, reverb-heavy, “EHHHHHHHHMMM!”
Silence and black again, out of which looms the stone and gold logotype. The sound of a slamming portcullis. End.

Easy to learn yet difficult to master, DungeonBusters (or DB as it’s known to the diehards) was the game that separated the boys from the men. It then separated those boys into increasingly small sub-groups of boys until it found the ones who didn’t like different coloured foods touching eachother on their plates. A ludicrously complicated rule-set, seven twenty-six sided dice, a chaotically shifting modular board of ‘necrexagons’ and the ever-present, harrowing face of Bob judging your every move all combine to make a game of DB an arduous but ultimately rewarding ordeal. The rules of play are similar to those of many games in the table-top/board stable, but the efforts of the developers to shoehorn in elements from TV’s Blockbusters result in turn-cycles that average an hour at least. A typical short turn usually occurs as follows:
Check> Declare bonus> Roll for movement> Check> Call letter> Roll defend> Roll damage/Save letter>  Answer> Roll bonus> Attack> Cast spell (if saved letters = +6 and are valid)> Roll path reveal> Query> Shift board> Check> Roll cover advantage> Trade/pilfer> Roll heal/Cast heal if saved letters = +5 and are valid> Check> Praise Bob> End turn.
Overall, this game is a fine one, and my memories of it are fond. Of course, nobody I knew could bear to play it with me, so most campaigns were played against myself using a variety of voices and hats. Yes, just me, Old Bob and those long afternoons in a dimly-lit room. I imagine though, that getting around this initially daunting board with a couple of friends similarly interested in high fantasy, general knowledge and tightly regimented rule-structures would be a delight. Its beautifully cast miniatures, its superbly printed and illustrated ‘Buster’s Guide and its detailed, moody tiles and cards each do an admirable job of drawing a tenacious player into the world and keeping them there. For advanced DBers, an expansion set – The Gold Run – was released a year later, adding new character classes, higher-level spells and two-hundred additional question cards to the base game.
My only gripe with DungeonBusters is that Bob’s involvement is misleadingly overstated in both the advertising and box design. Though you are instructed to always have the supplied videotape running, his presence contributes little to the game aside from a sort of imperious menace. In fact, Bob neither speaks nor moves significantly throughout the entire three-and-a-half-hours and instead just glares from the TV whilst breathing heavily. To his credit, he doesn’t even blink. Not once. Absolute solid beast. Sometimes I used to wonder what he was thinking, or if he was lonely too.

Would recommend.

Stay dangerous,

OXO