Gauntlet
Gauntlet was an extremely influential arcade machine that for
the first time successfully introduced Dungeon & Dragons-style
gameplay to the amusement halls. It was based on Dandy Dungeon,
an 8-bit Atari game by Jack Palevich who
didn't take it well that he wasn't mentioned in the credits. In the
end Atari gave him a free Gauntlet machine, and he refrained from
suing them.
Like Dandy Dungeon, Gauntlet could accommodate four players,
which may have been a first in the arcade business. Add to this
that one of the D&D elements featured in the game were health
points which diminished over time and could be replenished either
by eating food found on the levels, or by entering another coin,
and you can guess how much amusement hall proprietors loved it.
About 8000 units were sold.
Gauntlet was released the same year as the new 16-bit machines,
Atari ST and
Amiga, and it had quite an influence
on their respective game cultures as well. An Atari ST port was
released in 1987. Its graphics were on par with the arcade machine,
it had the digitized speech (Elf needs food badly!
) and with
a special adapter, four could play it. Like the Amiga port of
Marble Madness the year before, it
showed that these new platforms could deliver a true arcade
experience at home. Dungeon Master, the first
RPG designed for a 16-bit platform, was
essentially Gauntlet in 3D.
The official Amiga port took very, very long, so long that that
the original Gauntlet was completely skipped and only Gauntlet II
appeared on this platform, and the shareware clone Garrison,
which introduced a fifth character, the dwarf, had pretty much
cornered the market. Many Amiga gamers insist that it was better
than the original. Nevertheless it was quite influential here too,
and the popular Alien Breed series was
inspired by Gauntlet in many ways.
It had far less impact on the PC, at least at first.
Graphics
were predictably bad, sounds horrible, arcade conversions had
always been problematic on this platform. The D&D angle was
hardly a unique selling point on a platform where a wide range
of RPG series (Bard's Tale,
Ultima, Wizardry)
was available. But there were a few freeware and shareware clones
like The Black Orb, and as the PC graphics got better, the
concept became more interesting.
That not only Dungeon Master, but also
Wolfenstein 3D is essentially Gauntlet
in 3D may escape your notice at first because of the different themes.
But when you play Into the Eagles Nest, a Gauntlet clone
in a WWII setting released for many platforms, the similarities
become obvious. And the great blockbuster
Diablo is deeply indebted to Gauntlet
as well, far more than to Rogue, as sometimes
claimed.
As a final note, in 1998 Gauntlet was quite decently
remade for Windows with SVGA graphics as
Get Medieval.
Releases
Gauntlet
- 1985: Atari 8-bit, NES
- 1986: Apple ][, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, MSX, ZX Spectrum
- 1987: Atari ST, Macintosh
- 1988: DOS
- 1990: Sega Master System
- 2005: XBox 360
Gauntlet II
This was not really a sequel, more an enhanced version. Instead
of tying each joystick to a character, players were now given the
choice, so there could be a blue elf and a yellow elf for example.
Levels were more complex with multiple stairways. Otherwise it was
more or less the same.
- 1987: Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64
- 1988: Sinclair ZX Spectrum
- 1989: Amiga, Atari ST, DOS
- 1990: Gameboy, NES
Clones and Remakes
Related changelog entries:
2010-05-14,
2008-11-07.
