It's Critter Time!

Japanese arcades were known to have communal notebooks that people could write in to share strategies, secrets, tips,jokesz and whatever else. This was a common practice and what allowed games like Tower of Druaga to be cleared.

Well, this forum is our arcade and this thread is our notebook. Let's work together to clear the Tower of Druaga.

Let's establish some rules. I'm sure a lot of people here already know a lot of the tower's secrets. I know a couple myself (though I've forgotten most of it). I'll start us off with a couple of basic things but I'd like people who haven't played before to have a chance to discover things for themselves at least a little bit. So please, do not post secrets earlier than they might come up naturally. Also, please do not look things up elsewhere and post them here. If you're posting a strategy or tip or secret, it should be something you figured out yourself (with, of course, the information that's already in this thread). Also, let's try and only play the arcade version. I think the NES version is more or less the same but the Game Boy and PC Engine versions have different content so it might cause some confusion!

If you want to play the arcade version there's many different ways. There's MAME, which you can find shit for an internet library. There's fightcade, and if you need to find druaga for that then you can google "fightcade json" (idk who this Jason is but they're very helpful). There's Namco Museum on the Switch, Namco Museum Vol. 3 on the Playstation, Namco Museum DS on the Nintendo DS, Namco Museum Virtual Arcade on the Xbox 360, Namco Museum Mini Player (which is a tiny multicade cabinet thing??? never heard of it before today), there's Arcade Archives: The Tower of Druaga on PS4/5 and Switch...there's probably more. It's insane how many ways there are to play Tower of Druaga.

Anyway, I'll start us off.

So the basic "hidden" mechanic of this game is that you get treasures with special abilities for clearing certain secret objectives in each stage (at least I think there's a treasure for each stage, maybe not).

Stage 1 requires killing 3 slimes. This gives you the mattock, which allows you to break some walls sometimes, maybe. I know you can break walls with it but I have not figured out if there's specific walls or a specific input or a specific amount of uses or what. I've broken walls before! I just don't really know how.

Stage 2, again, requires killing 3 slimes (I think). Maybe 2 need to be black slimes, maybe not. The treasure here is winged boots which makes you walk really fast. You NEED these in order to get around the different stages in time. It like triples your speed or something, it's insane.

I got to floor 5 on the run I ran before making this post. I missed the stage 3 treasure because the knight was hanging out past both the exit and the key and I think he's part of the objective but I can't be sure. I couldn't go back to the rest of the stage because I had the key and the only path back was over the exit door. I also couldn't figure out the treasure for stage 4 but if memory serves it has something to do with the mattock, maybe.

Anyway that's what I've discovered so far. I really love the game but most of what I've played of it is in the tg-16 version (which, again, is different from arcade in many significant ways) so I'm not very deep into the real shit. Let's figure it out together, though!!!

We're definitely too spoiled on Druaga for this but fully supported. The switch Namco Museum collection actually has a guide for every floor (so presumably you'll avoid that!) but I actually really like the "real" Namco Museum on the PSX version since it has a larger inventory section on the screen. Once you get a lot
of treasures in Druaga it can be tough to keep track normally. Good luck to all Druagaheads

Okay so I figured out floor 3. You gotta the knight. He's weird but not too difficult. Just move back and forth on him with your sword out. I'm not really sure how a knight kills you but he probably can. When you kill him you get a potion that seems to act as an extra life. I died while holding it which caused me to lose the potion but I didn't lose a life.

I still can't figure out how to get the treasure of floor 4. I've mashed buttons against various walls hoping to trigger the mattock, I've killed all the enemies. Idk. Nothing is happening.

Floor 5 is a bitch though. I keep dying there because there's sooooo many wizards lol. I know you can block their beam if you don't have your sword out so I just need to work on my reaction times.

Out of sheer coincidence, I picked up a copy of Namco Museum Volume 3 for PS1 last week. I've been able to figure out the first three floors, but floor 4 is stumping me. I remember Namco Museum DS saying something about using the mattock to trigger its treasure, but I'm stumped on how exactly the thing works. Namco Museum volume 3 mentions something about the sword, but it also breaking on an "outside wall" (the same game mentions issues of NG magazine talking about "Braboman" so make of that what you will)

Awesome idea for a thread!

I know that some of the floors are insanely obtuse, good luck on figuring out the tower's secrets! I've read guides a few times, but I have forgotten a good chunk of the game, so I might do a bit of work here too.

sadly i also have too much prior knowledge to properly participate in this thread, but i just wanna poke my head in and say it's really cool and im gonna be reading with great interest..!