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Gauntlet

aka: Dungeons

Description official descriptions

Gauntlet is an action game where players choose characters and fight their way through hordes of enemies that assault them on the way to the end of the level. One or two players must make their way through 100 levels of mayhem and magic.

The game features a choice of four characters to play with, each with different weapons. Thor the Warrior has a bludgeoning battle axe, Thyra the Valkyrie has a close range sword, Questor the Elf has his long range bow, and Merlin the Wizard has magical bolts.

Ghosts, goblins and even the life-draining Death are among the enemies. Enemies stream out of generators, so destroy these before tackling the rest.

Keys are needed to open the many doors within the levels, and in some situations a door will contain only bonus items, not a progressive route. Scattered magic potions act like smart bombs and clear the screen of all enemies. Beware of poison though, this reduces the character's energy level. Treasure is abundant throughout the levels and adds to the player's score.

Spellings

  • 圣铠传说 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Atari 8-bit version)

4 People

Game programmer
Graphics
Sound
Additional programming
Music

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Discussion

Subject User Date
advertisement Pseudo_Intellectual (64949) 2016-07-29 03:19:33

Trivia

Development

  • Atari arcade programmer Ed Logg wanted to do a Dungeons&Dragons arcade game because his son was a D&D fan. Logg didn't know how to take D&D into an arcade game format, until he was inspired by the game Dandy on Atari 800.
  • Tony Porter and Kevin Bulmer - programmer and graphic artist of Spectrum, Amstrad, MSX and Master System conversions - had no support from Atari at coding level. No source code was presented until they had completed the games. They worked everything out by playing the arcade version which they had in the office and could play for free.

1001 Video Games

The Arcade version of Gauntlet appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

DOS version

The DOS version uses a tweaked 256x200 pixel graphics mode and some other graphics trickery in EGA. Many VGA (and later) cards do not support this properly causing the game to hang after the character selection screen. DOSBox (starting at version 0.73) includes proper EGA emulation that allow this game to run when configured with the "machine=ega" option.

PCjr

There is an interesting note in the documentation for PCjr users:

Note to Pcjr users: If you wish to run the program in 16-color mode, the line DEVICE=PCJRMEM.COM present in the config.sys file on your boot disk must be changed to read DEVICE=PCJRMEM.COM /C instead.

This gives a clue as to how to get other Tandy 1000 graphic-mode games running on a PCjr (ironic, since the Tandy is a clone of the PCjr).

Awards

  • Commodore Format
    • March 1991 (Issue 6) - listed in the A to Z of Classic Games article (Great)
  • Game Informer
    • August 2001(Issue #100) - #64 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll

Information also contributed by PCGamer77 and Steven Don

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Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1837

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Macintrash.

Commodore 64 added by PCGamer77. Atari 8-bit, J2ME, Xbox 360 added by Kabushi. ZX Spectrum added by Martin Smith. Arcade added by Pseudo_Intellectual. Antstream added by lights out party. SEGA Master System added by Terok Nor. Amstrad CPC, Apple II added by Servo. Macintosh, Apple IIgs, MSX added by Игги Друге. Atari ST added by Belboz.

Additional contributors: Trixter, Unicorn Lynx, Pseudo_Intellectual, BdR, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa, Starbuck the Third, S Olafsson, FatherJack.

Game added June 30th, 2000. Last modified May 18th, 2023.