Running the Gauntlet: Atari's classic ... now and then

It always amazed me how people had enough money to play these things for hours - especially children. I had a job and couldn't afford to play for long!

"Team work is essential.

Each character has their own health meter but must use gold from a central pot to restore it. Come over all n000b and your mates are going to have to pay up, so snarf as much loot as possible so you can pay your way."

Well that sucks. One of the fun things about the original (after a while) was stunning your allies an leaving them to fight the on rushing hordes. "You don't have to be faster than the evil dudes, just faster than the slowest member of the party."

Gauntlet 4 on the megadrive will always be my favourite

I once found a mint condition half crown (~25p) in the coin reject slot of Gauntlet in the arcade at a local fair in the late 1980s. I guess someone was so desperate to keep going that they started desperately pumping in pre-decimal currency.

Wizard needs food

Why would you compare Gauntlet (1985) to Streets of Rage (1991)?

Anyhow, Gauntlet was great, I built my own mini version a few years back: http://minicade.blogspot.co.uk/

One of the few later day arcase ports for the Atari 800XL - played it to death! Graphics were a bit arse but still...

Loved the original arcade version

I first discovered Gauntlet in an amusement arcade when I was about 6 or 7 - Spirit in the sky was riding high in the charts.

My brother & I must have spent half the family holiday chucking 10p pieces into that thing. No game has come close to capturing that multi-player fun factor for me, with the sole exception of Double Dragon, which we discovered on a subsequent family holiday.

I'll be buying this, even though I have little time for games these days (family holidays are with a child of my own now), purely for nostalgia value. For full marks, they should bundle it with a port of the original arcade game.

Dandy

Gauntlet was inspired by Dandy, an Atari 800 game by Jack Palevich.

Used to play this in Chistlehurst Caves dressed in Furs wielding rubber swords ;)

Elf needs health!

I could play Gauntlet for 3 hours...

...on ONE ten pence piece.

And I don't feel sad about it at all.

Apart from bug blatting space invaders I was never into these 'killer' games but preferred slower puzzle based ones. The only thing that I ever really obsessed over was much later - Sim City {quiver}

Red Wizard has tripped over his skirt!

Hammerwatch!

For anyone interested, there's also a game on STEAM called Hammerwatch, which is pretty much a "spiritual successor" (by which there are bonus levels which are extremely similar (nudge nudge) to Gauntlet levels) and it's pretty much the same deal - choose a class, kill massive swarms of enemies, collect loot and find the secrets. I've already put 50 hours on it on steam, and it's an absolute blast when you get a few friends together.

Some things never change

Gauntlet was the only arcade game I ever "mastered". There was a machine at the store I worked at in high school, so I spent way too much playing during and after work. I got to the point that I could play for hours on one quarter. I would only die when some dumb kid would jump into my game and screw things up. Kinda defeated the whole "social" aspect of the game. Actually, I play SWTOR now, and again, it's dumb kids screwing up my game!

My flatmate used to play this...

... when we were Uni students in the mid-1980s. I never understood the bloody thing but I guess he had more patience. He's now a financial director somewhere earning shitloads. So at least I got the last laugh... no, hang on, that's not right, is it?

Pentagram on splash screen

The new version's splash screen features four icons under the Gauntlet logo, each clearly meant to correspond to one of the four characters. One of them is a pentagram, apparently meant as the logo for the wizard (still called Merlin?) What an unwise choice. The pentagram is widely viewed as a pagan or even Satanic symbol, not only by many Christians but also by many self-proclaimed pagans and "Satanists". Unnecessarily provocative and controversial, even offensive. Why do something so off-putting and sour the debut of the latest installment of a popular and fondly viewed franchise?

DON'T BOTHER RESPONDING WITH HOW IT DOESN'T BOTHER YOU, OR WITH ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANS. Both are irrelevant.

3D aspect kills the remake. there's no real need for it.

Gauntlet and Marble Madness: Proof positive that lightning can strike twice at the same place.

Atari Games (and their earlier incarnation) were just mindbogglingly good.