"Green elf shot the food"...
Running the Gauntlet: Atari's classic ... now and then
Rumours of a new version of the Atari classic Gauntlet at E3 took me straight back to the arcade circa 1985. I remember being dwarfed as a preteen by the fearsome presence of Gauntlet’s massive cabinet. It dominated the arcade and the rest of the machines in the room with its huge screen and impressive multicoloured keypad. …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 12:02 GMT graeme leggett
Re: Yes wasted
Wasted alright, Played enough Guantlet while at University that it put a severe dent in my lab work. Enough in fact that I had to come back and put in an extra couple of days after the end of term to pass the unit.
I won't say its the reason I failed to work enough to actually achieve a degree. It was a symptom rather than cause.
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 09:24 GMT shinanygnz
Great fun, and Gauntlet 2 was just as good. It was such sweet revenge after "so and so is eating all the food/stealing all the treasure" to wait for a shots stun other players level, stun the smegger and shove them into the room with level 3 ghost generators.
Fingers crossed this lives up to the legacy.
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 09:50 GMT I ain't Spartacus
I had the Amstrad CPC464 version. Which I think must have been simplified. I don't remember being able to block with the shield, for example, although it was a long time ago. I don't think you could play more than 2-player either. Still, I loved it, as I don't recall seeing it in an arcade until much later. We didn't have a local one, so I didn't go to them often.
My record was to waste a whole Saturday afternoon playing a game. Play a couple of levels, load more from tape, repeat. Every so often there'd be a treasure room. I got to level 87 when it happened. I had a decent number of lives left, only a hundred levels on the tape, lots of treasure rooms done, so all stacked up with nice potions for dealing with deaths Tape error. Aaaaaarrrgggghhhh!!
I don't think I ever got much past level 30 again. I wonder if the machine overheated, it was randomness, or there just weren't 100 levels on the tape?
I want to play it again. I'm amazed no-one's released it for iOS / Android, or just as a Flash game online.
Boo, no happy wallowing in nostalgia icon. Say eating Spangles and/or Wham bars, while wearing mismatched flourescent socks and listening to rubbish music...
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 17:38 GMT JEDIDIAH
Re: @I ain't Spartacus
You wouldn't want the "re-release" for Android anyways. They would find some way to muck it up and ruin it by trying to "update" it.
Emulation is really the best way to go here. You get the unadulterated original. Warts and all you end up with the thing that inspires all of our fond memories rather than a cheap imitation.
...and Han shot first.
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 12:57 GMT Loyal Commenter
I seem to remember turning the tape over somewhere around level 50, and then getting to level 100 only to be told to turn the tape back over again. Can't remember how far I got before the dreaded read error happened, I think it was somewhere around 120. Amazing to think that this was on a computer with 48k of usable memory (the other 16k was taken up by the graphics memory) and a processor clocked at 2 MHz!
I remember playing Gauntlet II on the old CPC464 too, the do'h! moment of stunning yourself with a reflecting shot...
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 10:08 GMT John Riddoch
Ah, fun...
Mine was the speccy version, with about 4 levels loaded before you had to load more from tape... Favourite for me was the wizard; top notch ranged combat, top notch magic and survivable if you played it smart and didn't let the bad guys get near.
Gauntlet Dark Legacy was also fun on the PS2 - played it a lot while laid up with a broken ankle :)
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 10:44 GMT Lamont Cranston
Re: Ah, fun...
A friend and I slogged it out on the Speccy version, making it all the way to the end of Side 2 of the tape, expecting some sort of epic reward for our efforts. Being told to turn the tape over, and having nothing happen (as the first part of Side 1 isn't level data) was crushing...
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 12:42 GMT sorry, what?
N64 variant of "Gauntlet Legends"
This was actually a pretty good 3D game in the series, available at the arcade (never saw it) and on home machines like the Nintendo. I wasted plenty of Sunday afternoons with friends and family playing this and building up my character's experience.
Only mention it because no one else seems to have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauntlet_Legends
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 10:17 GMT Lee D
Recently booted up the classic for a four-player fest with some (non-gamer) friends at a party.
The comments on Facebook the next day revolved around "Yellow Wizard, keep the hell up and stop shooting the potions!" (NB: I was red warrior, not yellow wizard").
Great fun and one of those few games that is truly endless without getting boring quickly.
The remake (which is on Steam, by the way) better live up to the original. So tired of junk remakes at the moment (Syndicate, etc.).
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 10:23 GMT Cookieninja
Did this game have an end ??
Did the game have an end, or was it a money maker for Atari by generating new levels infinitely to encourage you to pop in more and more cash for energy ??
I got disillusioned when I discovered that the press of one key on the keyboard allowed you to walk through walls in the Spectrum version. Found out by accident, and got through lots and lots of levels until I got bored.
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 12:06 GMT graeme leggett
Re: Did this game have an end ??
I think you could go round the clock - as it were - on the levels. But although you could just keep shoving 10p pieces in, the levels got harder and harder and it would be more fun to stop, die, and then start again. Though perhaps taking the shortcut to level 10.
At University there was a charity challenge where a few people played it non-stop for 24 hours.
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Tuesday 22nd July 2014 11:44 GMT cray74
Re: Did this game have an end ??
"At University there was a charity challenge where a few people played it non-stop for 24 hours."
I didn't need a charity challenge to play it 24 hours, I just needed the shopkeeper to stop chasing me out of his store because it was closing time. And for my parents to stop being stingy with advances on my allowance after the game ate my savings. Not that I had much saved when I was 11, but there was a stern talking to about fiscal responsibility that really delayed my return to Gauntlet the next morning.
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 19:56 GMT evs
Re: Did this game have an end ??
IIRC, the first 8 levels came in a preset order after that (predefined) levels would be selected randomly forever. I knew a few very good players that told me that, once they got past level 8, they could go forever without adding more coins.
Of course I also remember "Elf has been eating all the food lately."
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 10:43 GMT oblivion
"That was a heroic effort!"
Gauntlet's technology was a big deal in 1985. My nerdy friends and I had never seen the likes of it and spent hundreds of dollars plodding through the levels. At one point a friend had a small arcade in his shop with a leased Gauntlet and a couple of other games. One night after hours we picked the locks on it--not to steal the money, but being the geeks we were, we wanted to have a look at the silicon to see how much hardware was crammed into the cabinet to provide this level of gameplay. As I recall, we might have adjusted the skill level a bit to give ourselves a better chance. It was easy when coin-ops of the 80s usually came with technical manuals and operator instructions lying at the bottom of the cabinet. :)
Gauntlet IV on Sega Genesis was a pretty good clone, and "Dark Legacy" on PS2 was enjoyable. But I still like firing up MAME/MESS and taking a run through Gauntlet I and II when the mood hits me.
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 10:59 GMT c3r3al_kill3r
"Red Warrior all your powers will be lost!"
I discovered a "cheat" on the Atari ST version whereby if you pulled the disk out while it was loading and then put it back in straight away it would corrupt the room layout and you'd end up with a completely random room, blocks all over the place, sometimes rooms full of potions and food, other times rooms full of deaths. Very rarely was there an exit, at which point you would have to reboot and start again, but it was worth the agro if you got a mega room.
Nostalgia. Can't wait to have a go on this reboot!
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 11:17 GMT Nick Woodruffe
about time it was revived
I still play both Gauntlet and Gauntlet II on MAME with my daughters and even the neighbours when they pop round for a cuppa.
The game still has legs and having no ending means you just keep going until bored or passed out.
Gauntlet Legends in the arcade didn't seem to catch on and my Mame box doesn't have the horsepower to simulate it properly at the moment. Really looking forward to this new version for the PC.
Who remembers the space themed game that was also similar as a 4 player with health requiring constant 10p input? I forget it's name but in Swindon the local arcade had this and Gauntlet.
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 13:02 GMT Jim 59
Re: about time it was revived
Who remembers the space themed game that was also similar as a 4 player with health requiring constant 10p input? I forget it's name but in Swindon the local arcade had this and Gauntlet.
Sounds awfully like Quartet, a game I am often banging on about in here. Out at the same time as Gauntlet, was a 4 player sideways scroller with a space/monster theme. Boss at the end of every level. 4 players with different weapons. Also top fun on MAME.
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 11:22 GMT RealBigAl
"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."
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Wednesday 16th July 2014 13:03 GMT LucreLout
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.
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Thursday 17th July 2014 17:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
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.
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Thursday 17th July 2014 20:19 GMT GoatHerder
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!
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Wednesday 23rd July 2014 17:58 GMT Carney3
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.
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