#15 – Gauntlet
(81 Points) 6 of 18 Lists - Highest Ranking – 3 #8s – ColeStratton, sarcasm made Easy, Asbestos Bill
Red Wizard needs food badly.
Advertisement:
Release Date: 1985
Just the facts/Stuff I wiki'd:Gauntlet is a fantasy-themed hack and slash 1985 arcade game by Atari Games. It is noted as the first class-based multiplayer game. Released during the emergence of popularity of other role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, the game was a sensation, being one of the first true dungeon crawl arcade games.
The players, up to four at once in the arcade version, select among four playable fantasy-based characters; Thor the Warrior, Merlin the Wizard, Thyra the Valkyrie or Questor the Elf. Each character has his or her own unique strength and weaknesses. For example, the Warrior is strongest in hand-to-hand combat, the Wizard has the strongest magic, the Valkyrie has the greatest armour and the Elf is the fastest in movement.
Upon selecting a playable character, the gameplay is set within a series of top-down, third-person perspective mazes where the object is to locate and touch the designated exit in every level. An assortment of special items can be located in each level that increase player's character's health, unlock doors, gain more points and magical potions that can destroy all of the enemies on screen.
The enemies are a vast assortment of fantasy based monsters, including ghosts, grunts, demons, lobbers, sorcerers and thieves. Each enters the level through specific generators, which can be destroyed. While there are no bosses in the game, the most dangerous enemy is "Death", who can not only drain your character's health, but is difficult to destroy.
As the game progresses, higher levels of skill are needed to reach the exit, with success often depending on the willingness of the players to cooperate by sharing food and luring monsters into places where they can be engaged and slaughtered more conveniently. While contact with enemies reduces the player's health, it also slowly drains on its own, thus creating a time limit.
Aside from the ability to have up to four players at once, the game is also noted for the narrator's voice, which was produced by a Texas Instruments TMS5220C speech chip. The narrator would frequently make statements repeating the game's rules, including: "Shots do not hurt other players (yet)," "Remember, don't shoot food!", "Elf — shot the food!", and "Warrior needs food — badly!" Occasionally, the narrator would encourage (or mock) the players in the thick of battle by saying, "I've not seen such bravery!" or "Let's see you get out of here!" A memorable statement of the game occurred when a player's "life force" points fell below 200: "Your life force is running out", "Elf needs food" or "Valkyrie...is about to die!"
To accommodate up to four players, the cabinet is wider than other standard uprights. Each player had a joystick and two buttons, one for "Fire" (ranged attack) and one for "Magic". The Magic button also started the game. After Gauntlet's release, other games started using this design, so it was a popular conversion target for newer games after it had its run.
There were some skilled players that could play an unlimited amount of time on one credit, especially with the Warrior and Wizard, and thus causing the arcades to lose money. A ROM update was released, reducing the "extra shot power" and "Extra shot speed" powerup bonus for Warrior and Wizard, and adding a new points-based difficulty counter to the game. The difficulty counter caused the game to become more difficult, in 16,384 point steps, which removed more designated food from the levels, and made the monsters respawn faster. Unfortunately, this was not well thought out, as on the default game difficulty of "4", it was almost impossible to pass levels 1-7 without dying, and level 4 was designed so that some of the food drops would block the monsters from swarming the player. This was because the game removed some of the "default" food for playing solo; on difficulty level 0, at least one food placement was removed from every single level (at low scores), and on difficulty 4, two or three food drops were removed. This made the game too difficult, even for the best players, unless they could find a machine set to difficulty 0. Instead, the game gave bonus food for three or four players playing together. (Three players gave all of the default food, while four gave extra food in random locations).
Pak's Thoughts: Gauntlet was always my favorite game to play with my brother. He liked playing as the warrior and I was always the wizard and we made quite a team. The theme song for the NES version is forever etched in my brain, and often when I'm reading a medieval-themed book and i need a soundtrack (Other people put soundtracks in their heads while they're reading, right?) the Gauntlet theme is my go-to generic medieval song. :^)