Pixel Dungeon: Mega Drive Edition

About the game

Pixel Dungeon is a traditional roguelike: a dungeon crawler where every floor is generated anew for each run, everything happens in turns, and death is permanent. The original was made by Watabou (Oleg Dolya) for phones and computers and released as free software. This Mega Drive Edition is a new version written from scratch for the console by 2 Drinks In Games. Its graphics, music and sounds come from the original and from Shattered Pixel Dungeon, the best-known free continuation of it, converted to the Mega Drive's colours, and the music is rearranged for the console's FM sound chip.

You pick one of four heroes, each with their own starting gear and skills: the sturdy Warrior, the stealthy Rogue, the Hunter with a bow, or the Mage with a wand. Then you go down. The dungeon has five areas of five floors each, the Sewers, the Prison, the Caves, the Dwarven City and the Demon Halls, with a boss guarding the end of every area. The Amulet of Yendor waits on floor 26, past an ancient god on floor 25; grab it and end the run there, or climb all the way back to the surface for a win with double score.

Along the way the dungeon is full of the original's systems: potions and scrolls whose colours and runes are a mystery until you try them, wands that recharge, rings and enchanted gear that may turn out to be cursed, hunger and food, seeds to plant or brew in alchemy pots, hidden doors and traps, shops, and quest givers such as a sad ghost, a wandmaker and a troll blacksmith. Defeating the first boss after floor 10 lets you choose one of two specialisations for your hero. From floor 10 on, a floor can be split into several connected zones, and levelling up earns points for each class's skills.

Playing it here

This is a homebrew game made for the Mega Drive: a new game by an independent developer, not a commercial release. It runs here in ClownMDEmu, a Mega Drive emulator compiled to WebAssembly. Click Play, press Enter on the title screen, choose Random run, pick your hero with Z and confirm with Yes.

The title menu also offers seeded runs (the same dungeon every time), Easy, Normal and Hard difficulty, an Endless mode that keeps going down to floor 250, optional challenges, a controller setup screen and a How to play page. Extras holds the rankings, the badges and a sound test.

Saving: the game keeps its settings, rankings, badges and your run in the cartridge's battery memory, which this site stores in your browser. Use Save & quit in the pause menu to stop, and Continue on the title screen to carry on (one Continue per save); dying ends the run. F2 and F4 also save and load the full emulator state. A gamepad works too.

Controls

The game sees a six-button pad here, and the hints on screen follow it.

Key	Mega Drive button	Action
Arrow keys	D-pad	move; walk into a monster to attack
Z	A	hit the monster you face; hold, aim with the arrows and release to shoot the bow
X	B	hold, aim with the arrows and release to throw or zap a wand
A / S	X / Y	use quick slot 1 / 2
C or D	C or Z	tap to search, hold to rest
Enter	Start	pause menu: status, inventory, catalog, journal, save and quit
F2 / F4	—	save / load the emulator state

A few things worth knowing

Rest and search. Holding the search button lets turns pass, which slowly heals you. Tapping it looks around for hidden doors and traps; dead ends and odd-shaped rooms are worth a few taps.

Identify before you trust. Unknown potions and scrolls can help or hurt. Drinking an unknown potion with full health and no monsters around is the safest test, and the catalog in the pause menu keeps track of what you have learned.

Gear can be cursed. Weapons, armour and rings you find show a question mark until they are identified, and a cursed item will not come off until a scroll of Remove Curse or Upgrade lifts it.

Keep some food. Hunger grows with every turn, and starving drains your health. Rations, pasties and even raw mystery meat keep you going.

Use the dew vial. Found early on, it collects dew drops from the grass and, once full, can save you from a blow that would otherwise end the run.

Credits and licence

Pixel Dungeon was created by Watabou (Oleg Dolya), who released the original game, with its art, music and sounds, under the GNU GPL version 3. Shattered Pixel Dungeon, by Evan Debenham, with dungeon art by Aleksandar Komitov and music by Lumine Haaristo, is under the same licence. The Mega Drive Edition, version 1.6.1, is by 2 Drinks In Games, also under the GNU GPL version 3, and is built with SGDK by Stephane Dallongeville (MIT licence). It is an unofficial fan project, not endorsed by Watabou or Shattered Pixel. We build the ROM ourselves from the source code the developer publishes on itch.io, without changes, with SGDK 2.11; the licence text, the full credits and that exact source are linked from this page.