Quest for the Rings

Gameplay alternates back in forth between the game board and the television screen. Two players are tasked with working together to collect ten rings while navigating a dungeon and avoiding monsters. Dungeon layouts are determined by reading tokens on the game board and then inputting them with the Odyssey²'s keyboard. It was released at a significantly higher price then most other video games of the time. Contemporary reviews praised its high quality packaging and saw it as highly innovative. Retrospective reviews found it to be frustrating and better as a novelty than as a game.

• Title — Quest for the Rings • Programmer — Ed Averett • Designer — Steve Lehner • Artist — Ron Bradford • Developer — Ed Averett Bradford/Cout Design • Genre — Board game, RPG • Modes — Single-player, Multi-player • Platforms — Odyssey²/Videopac

Quest for the Rings is ideally played with three players. One player takes the role of Ring Master and hides ten ring tokens and a number of monster tokens underneath 23 castle tokens scattered around the game board. The other two players move together across the game board traveling from castle to castle. When the players reach a castle token, they flip it up to reveal the tokens underneath. The underside of the castle token contains a symbol representing one of four possible dungeon types. The castle token might also hide a ring token and possibly one of two different monster tokens. Players then use a keyboard overlay to input the dungeon symbol and the tokens found underneath into the keyboard. Players are then taken to a randomly generated dungeon on the Odyssey²'s screen. Players will have to navigate a small maze populated by enemy orcs. If the players found a ring token, they will have the collect a ring placed somewhere in the maze to progress. Otherwise they only have to escape the maze. Both players can choose one of four classes for their on screen characters: A warrior who can kill orcs with a sword, a wizard who can stun monsters with spells, a phantom that can walk through walls, and a changeling who can turn invisible. If the players found a monster token, then those monsters, either nightmare monsters or dragons, join the enemy orcs. They can only be stunned, never killed. Once a dungeon is complete, players return to the board and move on to the next castle token. The goal of the game is for the two players to work together to find and collect all ten rings before a certain number of turns have passed.

The game concept was first pitched in a meeting between Mike Staup, vice president of game development at Magnavox, and Ed Averett who had designed many previous Odyssey² titles. Magnavox had received a lot of feedback from console owning families that enjoyed using the system as a communal activity. Fathers were looking for games that their children could not beat them at and involved a little bit more strategy. Averett found the limited size of the standard 2 KB cartridges to be too restrictive to implement complicated strategy. The introduction of board game elements was intended to solve this problem. Quest for the Rings was designed by Averett, who handled the video game elements, and Steve Lehner, who handled the board game elements including the mylar sheet used as an overlay for the Odyssey²'s keyboard. Lehner and artist Rob Bradford had previously worked on the materials and packaging for the Magnavox Odyssey and Odyssey² through their marketing firm Bradford/Cout Design out of Skokie, Illinois. According to Lehner, the two of them were looking to go beyond the arcade ports and sports simulations that dominated the console market at the time. According to Averett, attempting to combine video games and board games gave them direction. Development on the game took nearly half a year. The core of the design was in creating a gameplay loop between the physical board and the computer elements. The goal was to have the state of the board affect the gameplay on screen and vice versa. According to Lehner, they were looking to create "a real synergy between the two". Averett took pride in the fact that the board game action was "a lot more than just a roll of the dice".

Quest for the Rings was first released in 1981 in North America. In addition to the game cartridge itself, it shipped with a full color instruction booklet, a game board, 23 dungeon tokens, 10 ring tokens, six monster tokens, and a keyboard overlay. The packaging was illustrated by Rob Bradford. The game was significantly more expensive than most other games at the time, retailing for about $50 compared to the standard $15 to $20. The game was planned as the first part in a trilogy of games for the Odyssey² known as the "Master Strategy" series, which also included Conquest of the World and The Great Wall Street Fortune Hunt. The series was intended to make better use out of the Odyssey²'s included computer keyboard. All three games also feature a mix of video game and board game elements. An April 1982 release was planned in the United Kingdom. It took another year for it to ship to the rest of Europe, showing up in the summer of 1983. In January 1984, the game was released in small quantities in Brazil.