Atari 2600 Game
Produced by: 20th Century Fox
Model Number: 11009
Rarity: 5
Rare
Year of Release: 1982
Programmer: John Marvin
Remember to take the Treasure from all eight Lairs on each level to get bonus charges for your Ring and Wand. Avoid combat with wandering Monsters that might waste Hits and weapon Charges. Don't waste time in the Corridors, but seek out the Lairs and take all the treasure you can. Keep the joystick pressed forward if you want to use the Sword, for it will close the distance between you and the Monster. When you're running low on Hits and Charges, try to make it out of the Crypts by ascending the Up Staircases to the surface. Be brave, be quick and trust in your luck. Good Hunting!
Tips from the designer, John Marvin
Crypts of Chaos was one of the first titles ever to be available for the Atari 2600 that used a 3-D first person perspective. Of course this 3-D looked terrible, and wasn't actually 3-D, but it was a first step towards real 3-D graphics on a console system.
This is an adventure game with some RPG elements to it. The object of the game is to explore the mazes within the "Crypts of Chaos", while killing monsters and finding treasures. There were 8 different monsters to battle, many assorted treasures to find, and a vastly complicated maze to explore. But the game had one big problem, everything looked the same. All the hallways looked exactly the same, which means you had to make careful maps, and keep track of your movements exactly, to keep from getting lost. This game would have been much better on a slightly newer system, or if it just had some way to be able to tell the various rooms and passages apart.
Collectors Information
This game is valued at around $20 USD. Games with boxes and manuals are worth more. The box to this game was the standard black 20th Century Fox box, and it bore a sem-realistic picture of a pair of adventures dressed in white who are apparently battling some unseen enemy. That picture looks like it could have been pulled directly from an old AD&D manual.
This title was also sold by Xante in a few small local game outlets. These cartridges are Smurf blue, and have a label that came from a dot matrix printer. This version of the game is rated at 10 on the Atari Rarity Guide scale, and is very valuable.