Arcade memories - "Gauntlet" (Atari)

 

It was Autumn 1986 and the fair was in town. I was never a fan of the rides as a kid, but I always flocked to the annual St Giles' Fair in Oxford for one reason and one reason only. Arcades. 

For years the only whiff of an arcade game to be had in the centre of Oxford was the odd Space Invaders cocktail cabinet in a local barber shop (of all places) and now and again you'd find a stand-up cabinet in a chippy or a cafe. But when it was fair time there'd always be a dingily lit arcade erected out of the back of a truck and filled with the noisy wonder of whatever was popular arcade-game-wise at the time. 

Back in 1986 I first encountered Gauntlet. I'd just started college on my first faltering Bambi-like steps into the world of IT and for the first time I had money in my pocket that I'd earned myself (the mighty YTS, and a steady pay packet while you attended college and worked at a work placement). 

I remember nabbing a load of change and heading down to the fair on my bike (it was about 5 miles from home). Stashing my bike I made my way into the fair and made a bee line for the arcade trucks and there it was. 

Gauntlet was unlike any other arcade cabinet at the time, catering for not one, not two but FOUR players simultaneously. Each player took on a mythical character in the dungeons-and-dragons themed world of Gauntlet. The Barbarian, short on magic power but with plenty of combat grunt, wielding a huge axe to cut through swathes of baddies. Then there was the Wizard, arguably the most powerful character in the game with magic firebolts and the ability to clear an entire screen if he used a potion (or accidentally shot one). The Valkyrie was your atypical big breasted female warrior with a good balance of magic and combat, then there was the Elf who had a rapid shooting bow, perfect for long range combat but absolutely bloody useless in a face to face scrap. 

These characters were thrust into a seemingly endless labyrinth, tasked with defeating the bad guys and seeing how far they could get before their health ran out. It was about as simplistic as it gets in terms of gameplay, not exactly a granular RPG but it captured enough fantasy elements to make it feel fresh and new, and it also looked absolutely gorgeous, following Atari's design ethos at the time of super high quality / high resolution sprites and intricate backgrounds, coupled with glorious synthy sound effects and music. 

The intrepid band make their way through hell. Don't shoot that bottle, anyone!

 From the moment I jabbed my first 20p into this (ahh those were the days), I was completely hooked. The game was actually easy enough to lull you into a false sense of security as you progressed, and it also had the genius money-spinning game dynamic of allowing you to continue as long as you had credits in the game - so every time you stuck more coins in, you got granted an extra 700 health. Clever move Atari, and a good way to ensure that if you progressed far enough you didn't want to risk dying and having to start all over again. 

The fair ran over two days so on the second day I was back, this time with three mates. I'd been telling them about Gauntlet and telling them we could all play simultaneously (which they didn't believe). So on the next evening between the four of us we decimated the game. Pretty much everything else on offer in those arcades was ignored (and let's not forget, 1985 / 86 were absolutely GOLDEN years for arcade games) while we attempted to find out what was at the end of Gauntlet. I don't think any of us ever found out (in fact I just had to go and google to see what the last level looked like!)

At the time I remember thinking how amazing it would be if Gauntlet was converted for home gaming machines. Back then I was rocking a Spectrum and a Commodore 64 and there was only one game that came close to Gauntlet before the game was actually officially converted for just about every gaming system under the sun, the rather cheeky clone called "Druid" on the C64. 

Druid (C64) - Not at all like Gauntlet. No sireee. Nope. 

No four players, but two if you had a Golem on the 2nd joystick. Druid was very much an homage to Gauntlet and it satisfied my need for a home version of the game for quite some time. It didn't have endless armies of enemies but it had enough common elements nicked from Gauntlet to feel a lot like it in terms of gameplay and challenge. 

It didn't take long before Gauntlet made the leap home. The C64 version was absolutely fantastic: 

Gauntlet (C64) - An amazing conversion considering the power of the machine

It only had a two player mode but it was almost identical to the arcade version. Up until I traded my C64 for an Atari ST this was the best home version of Gauntlet available. 

The Atari ST version, however, was arcade perfect in pretty much every way: 

Gauntlet (Atari ST) - Utterly perfect!

...and best of all it had an adaptor that came with the deluxe versions of the game that allowed for up to four players. No mean feat to find four people to cluster around my tiny little colour telly (at the time) and play the game just as it was back in those heady days at the fair. 

By then Gauntlet II was also available, with even more levels and challenges and I hoovered it up as soon as it was released. Improving on the original with new baddies and a fearsome new final level, it was the last good version of the game. Pretty much everything else that followed with the label "Gauntlet" attached to it never quite matched up to the brilliance of those original first two games. 

Playing it again recently (via MAME) I was only meant to dip in for a few minutes but found myself completely hooked all over again. The balance of all the elements that make a scintillating and successful arcade game are all in there. It looks great, it sounds great, it plays great and it's ludicrously simple yet fiendishly challenging as each level unfolds and I still love it to absolute bits.