History:
For its time, Deadly Towers was well received and was a best selling title in 1987 for America. It mixed action with RPGs which was fairly new concept at the time. It was praised for its power-up system and save feature.

Story:
You assume control of Prince Myer who must collect and destroy seven bells as well as seven towers and ultimately defeat the the villain Rubas. The story in the intro is surprisingly well written if it weren't such a wall of text that scrolls too fast.

Gameplay:
Time was not nice to this title because it is now considered to be one of the worst titles for the NES; however, with good reason. The game is very difficult for beginners because of measly amount health to start you off and a tedious button-mashing battle system.
The battle system starts you off with a weak sword you can throw. You can only throw the sword once it disappears. This entails continuously mashing the attack button as close to the enemy as possible. Battling becomes a chore because of this. It's also very easy to get killed in a matter of mere seconds.
In order to actually get far in this game, the player must find a wide-variety of power-ups that are hidden in labyrinths that are overwhelming in size; the entrances are hidden too! Power-ups can make your character walk faster, attack stronger and more much more. Once these power-ups are obtained, you actually feel more powerful than the pathetic character at the start. A big issue in the game is the high difficulty curve the player starts off at. In order to get stronger, it takes a lot of trial and error to get the power ups without the use of a guide.

Graphics:
The graphics in the game are detailed but monochrome. Some of the enemies really look stupid; some are just dumb blobs. The isometric quality of the graphics are really only redeemable part about them.

Music:
The music was worked on by Yoshinobu Kasukawa and Junichi Mizutari. The music for the intro, password screen and ending are the best music you'll hear for the entire game, and the music you'll hear the least unfortunately. Due to some lazy programming, whenever you exit a room, the music starts up again from the beginning. It appears that this was taken into consideration for the soundtrack because a lot of the tracks for this game are short loops. Some tracks are awful but there are some really great tunes too, while they last. The themes have a very old-timey nature to them which does fit well. But the themes are definitely not the best you'll find of the system by far.

Conclusion:
The Japanese title, Hell's Bell, got the game right. It's far from a masterpiece but isn't complete utter trash as many people make it out to be. It's a game worth a play if you like a challenge but you will definitely need the aid of a guide if you want to get far.

If the same music is used in the previous and next rooms, it will resume playing instead of playing from the very beginning.

Patches for both (U) and (J) versions.

Deadly Towers (U) [!].nes
CRC32: 25225C70
MD5: F90D8365CD2A8E733E2280444B139D45
SHA-1: D59DA5BF52D5ECF5F407B70FF1C32B99235676D9

Mashou (J) [!].nes
CRC32: 454F371C
MD5: 1F5E60AAE28F24FA47E0927C49C3D17F
SHA-1: A246C3A39405E770AFDC6B0DE3EDD9937180177F