Description
Gauntlet is a fantasy-themed arcade game which can be
played by 1-4 players simultaneously, unique for
arcade games of its day. A player may control one of
a muscular Warrior, adept Wizard, strong Valkyrie or
the Elf archer (the character controlled is dictated
by their position on the cabinet--there is only one
of each character). Each character has their own
speciality: the Warrior is strongest in hand-to-hand
combat, the Wizard has the strongest magic, the
Valkyrie takes the least damage and the Elf is the
fastest in movement. Players must cooperate to
traverse the perils of a dungeon via a top-down
view.
The players traverse the dungeon levels controlling
their assigned character, attacking persistent
monsters and collecting gold. The players must
cooperate by sharing food and luring monsters into
places where they can be engaged and slaughtered
more conveniently. The characters continuously lose
health during gameplay, regardless of what they are
doing--even just standing and not moving. Characters
lose even more health when attacked by enemy dungeon
denizens. Besides food found in the dungeon (which
has to be shared amongst all players), players can
add health by adding more credits. Hence, this game
is a notorious credit-gobbler when it first appeared
since players desperately shoved in handfuls of
coins in order to not be ejected from the game and
run the heartache of sometimes waiting hours in line
in order to play again.
One of the game's features was the narrator's voice.
It would frequently make statements reiterating the
game's rules, including "Remember - don't shoot
food!" and "Warrior now has reflecting shots."
Occasionally, the narrator would encourage 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 dwindled to the
point where he or she was in jeopardy of dying
permanently: "Your life force is running out." Some
of the game's statements are humorously ambiguous
due to limited memory, such as "You are full of
bombs and/or keys." These catch phrases are still
repeated today among many role-playing and computer
fans, especially "Wizard needs food badly!", which
appears in NetHack, evidently as a tribute and is
the name of a song by the late Christian ska/punk
group Five Iron Frenzy.
Due to the fact that the game was designed for up to
four players to play at once, the cabinet is wider
than other standard uprights. After its release,
other games started using this design, so it was a
popular conversion target for newer games after it
had its run. Each player had a joystick and two
buttons, one for "Fire" (to attack) and one for
"Magic".
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