TSR's Dungeon Board Game

Originally released by TSR in 1975, Dungeon may be the original hack-n-loot dungeon crawling board game. If you're familiar with TSR in the 70s, it will come as no surprise that game design legend Gary Gygax was on the development team. If you're not, Gygax is one of the co-creators of the original Dungeons & Dragons RPG. Dungeon enjoyed an unusual amount of longevity for a non-mainstream board game, releasing no less than 4 revised editions between 1980 and 1992. New editions often incorporated new rules as well.

Dungeon board, cards and parts

The premise of Dungeon is pretty simple. Each player selects their hero's class (the original line-up: Hero, Elf, Superhero, Wizard) and proceeds into the depths of the color coded six level dungeon, avoiding traps, navigating secret doors and slaying monsters for treasure. Each class of hero has a preset amount of treasure they need to win the game, expressed in gold piece value. The biggest rewards are at the lower levels but that's also where the tougher monsters hang out!

Monsters and Treasure from the 5th and 6th Levels
The card artwork really takes me back to playing the game

I played this game a lot and it's no doubt responsible for getting me into D&D while I was only in junior high. I'm so old, my first D&D set was the red box Basic set, where elf and dwarf were classes! There were no races as we know them now. It came with module B2 - Keep on the Borderlands.

Here's a few comic book ads from 1982. Clicking them takes you to Flickr. You can then click on Actions > View All Sizes to actually read them.

Additional Info
Dungeon! wiki entry

Photo gallery at BoardGameGeek.com