WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - Eye of the Beholder

Publisher: FCI/Pony Canyon Developer: Westwood Associates Release: 1994

Before they became known as the fathers of the real-time strategy genre, Westwood Studios (aka Westwood Associates, back in the day) was probably most well-known for this game. Eye of the Beholder, a dungeon-crawler set in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons universe, was their first big hit.

Set in the troubled city of Waterdeep, the game follows the exploits of a party of heroes hired by the Lords of the city to investigate an evil presence emanating from beneath the city. The group begins their quest in the sewers, where they are promptly trapped thanks to an inconveniently timed cave-in at the entrance.

What follows is a classic, PC-style dungeon crawl where monsters are battled, spells are learned, loot is collected and...well...you get the picture.

The titular Beholder is the game's final boss, Xanathar. When I was researching this entry I was interested to learn that the original PC release of the game featured absolutely no fanfare when the Beholder was slain. Instead players were treated to a blue box with a bit of text, and then dumped back out to DOS. This was rectified in subsequent versions of the game, starting with the Amiga port.

What's more strange is that Eye of the Beholder was widely praised for its cinematic intro (something that was quite rare at the time, considering games were published on floppy discs). The story goes that this was a judgement call by the game's producers – the intro took up so much space that they decided to cut the planned ending sequence, as they figured most gamers would never get to that point anyway.

It's a problem that still plagues game developers to this day: do you blow your load early and make sure everyone sees your most impressive work at the expense of a traditional climax? Or do you build to your best work over a series of hours and run the risk that a high percentage of your players will never experience the crescendo?

Like the previously-covered Dungeon Master II, Eye of the Beholder suffers from the PC-to-console controller syndrome. This game was designed to be controlled by a mouse. Everything from movement to combat requires on-screen buttons to be virtually pressed by a pointer. And doing this with a Genesis controller was a huge pain in the ass.

Luckily, the Sega CD version featured full support for Sega's Mega Mouse, which was an official mouse peripheral for the Genesis. And wow, did it ever make this game supremely playable.

There is one other interesting tidbit about Eye of the Beholder on the Sega CD. Of all the ports of the game, the Sega CD version features an exclusive soundtrack by none other than Yuzo Koshiro, the man behind the insanely great tunes in games like Streets of Rage 2 and ActRaiser. Not only that, but this was his very first CD-based game soundtrack. And, as you would expect, it's pretty damn good.