That's what makes Gauntlet special.... Infinite random levels. Once you could play, you could play indefinitely (or until the arcade shut) on a single credit. 🙂🕹️
@@NBUltra187 it does end. I save stated it on emulator and died a bunch but played it for 3 yearsom and off. Got to lvl 3500 and it ended. Shitty cutscene for that much work. Its. Quarter eater for sure.
One of my fondest memories as a kid in the 80s. Gathering my friends to ride our bikes to 7-Eleven on a Saturday morning, eating Bazooka gum for 3 cents a piece and drinking Big Gulp Slurpees while playing Gauntlet until the streetlights came on.
This was the golden age, man. Getting dropped off at the arcade with $10-20 so your parents could go shopping in peace. Kids actually had places they could gather and meet people with mutual interests. Even if you didn't have money, you could bum a quarter from a friend or watch people more skilled than you body each other in a fighting game.
Safer to leave them at home with Fortnite than going to a smokey old arcade. These arcade games were nothing but a total scam, dipswitches turned up to impossible difficulties just to rinse your money.
@@Jonlarm Thats why your kids get all emotional and don't want to go outside and socialize. Yeah being bullied by people online playing toxic games like fortnite is way better than your kid playing games and having fun by companies which led the way to all these games you are playing now. The industry is more of a cash-grab now then it ever was in the past.
I remember thinking this is the best arcade game EVER. I think it was the first 4 player I ever saw and it had a realistic voiceover. Video games will never get better than this...too bad I have to carry several pounds of quarters to keep feeding the machine....
The amount of quarters little me threw at this game... It looks primitive now but for 1985 this was a masterpiece. It was competing with space invaders, pac man, and pole position. The only game that came close to being as cool was spy hunter, but this was my favorite, as can be seen by me watching a video of it nearly 40 years later.
One of my most played games as it was out after I left college but before starting work. That summer it became the only arcade machine I mastered. 1 ten pence piece and an afternoon free in Cleveleys, played for 4,5 hours and had stockpiled so much stuff and knew every level I could have gone on forever. Long time ago....
I used to be an arcade rat and would spend hours watching people play this in the 80's. Never had any quarters myself. It's interesting though, for some reason, when I would see people flip Gauntlet, it was playing a warrior. Nice gameplay.
Not only does the game not end, it loops. Emulating, playing on the easiest setting, and using save states, I played this all the way to level 999. After level 999, it loops back to level 8 (because levels 1-7 are predetermined). It even resets how fast the thief shows up on levels. I know some people are disappointed that there's no ending, but when this game is released, endings in games weren't really a thing - it was all about the score attack. Different times, different philosophy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@daniellikahong Probably some sort of memory thing with how they programmed the software. If the place they store the level number isn't equipped to go past 99, then you get an error. I think someone actually showed this with Tetris and machine learning, basically having the computer play the NES version at speeds that no human could, just racking levels. Eventually it starts causing the functions that run the program to just malfunction because they can't handle the values that are being read.
I think there is no end to a lot of these games because they were designed to last only a few minutes for the average player(high difficulty) with the intent of getting you hooked and taking your quarters.
Sometimes when it's lunch time at work, I will exclaim "Warrior needs food, badly." Most of my coworkers are younger tho, so they just think I am an idiot. Of course, they thought that before I said it but I digress.
I used to go to the horse track with my dad in the early to mid 90’s. Towards the front of the building there was a row of old (even for the early 90’s) $.25 arcade games. Bunch of random pinball games, Pac-Man, a crappy old race game, a shooter game which the gun didn’t work, Jaust (awesome game) and Gauntlet. I would go there with my dad, and the place would be deserted. I remember hearing the Gauntlet theme play over the drone of the giant space heaters and the simulcast racing track announcer. This brought me back hard.
Absoloiutley loved this game in the eighties. There was a video game shop in york and they had one, it would be played on constantly, so difficult to get a go. When it came out for the amiga i was in video.game heaven, geeat conversion. I remeber playing the Amstrad version and even that was great.
Just have to laugh getting this video in my feed. It brings me back to the mid 80's when I pumped quarter after quarter into the machine and realized one early Saturday there was a pattern. If you reset the machine you get a magic potion @ level 8 which is a huge boost to whatever character you play and can set you up for the long game. The best character to use for this strategy is ELF due to Character Speed and Shot Speed. Then you can play all day on one quarter which I did at the arcade. I went up at open on Saturday and played until I had 1000's of health, sold the game to a kid for $15 (full potions, 1000's of health and all upgraded abilities) and went to eat at the food court, came back 30mins later and he was down to like 2000 health and I gave him $5 for the game and played the rest of the day till close. Thanks for the great memories. :D
Back when I was a kid, it seemed to me that everyone who dominated this game in the arcade on 1player used the elf. I now understand why. (and how). Thanks for uploading this!
There was a gauntlet machine at the arcade at my college back in the '80s. Not only did this cost me quite a few quarters but the wasted tuition of dropping classes that had to be made up later as this was way more fun then Calculus. The best time was of course when you had four players helping each other. You could control the screen to keep the bad guys controlled, protect the most upgraded player from the thief, get the lowest health player food etc. There was this one tall guy who looked quite elf like who always played elf. Saw him walking around once years later and I should have shouted to him "Hello Elf!"
Its great to see someone with the reaction speed to dodge those demon shots. I've felt like I'm too old and slow to get revenge on this game as an adult, but you've inspired me to give it another shot
I loved this game on the Spectrum, I remember I could play all day at this game and not restart. The best I ever did was go round the score board 4 times in a single game.
God this brings back memories of getting dropped off at the arcade by my mother on Saturdays for a couple hours. I loved this game. I can picture right where it was when you walked in the door.
This game whas a dream come true ;-) I was one of few people, who were able, like you, to master the game in the gambling hall.. I made a lot of money back then. Leveling the character to, let's say, 20,000 Health and sell it for 20 Bucks to people, who didn't conquer the game. I LOVE to remember these times ;-) BUT, i must admit, i used to be too much there., so i missed too much stuff in scool :-(
Atari produced a Gauntlet II conversion kit for this game. Konami also produced conversion kits to convert this game to The Main Event and Crime Fighters. In general, Gauntlet was very popular for conversions to other four player games. Atari also produced a two-player version of this game, which was released as a limited edition only, aimed at operators who could not afford or did not have sufficient space for the four-player version.
This sort of makes me think of Diablo game serious, and those Action RPG's like it, though those games are much more advanced the idea here is fairly similar long before Diablo games were made.
I remember as a teen my best friend and I going to an Amusement Park and spending hours in the air conditioned Arcade spending way too much money on this quarter gobbler. One of us would play slowly as the other ran to the coin machine to get more quarters... now I have it on my arcade emulator and see it for the devil that it was! Quarters for health, the true definition of evil!
Oh man, I learned a lot about myself at the arcade: I would play Gauntlet, but I never enjoyed it. But I wouldn't play Super Sprint, but it was very fun. I would occasionally play Super Sprint as I got older, became SUPER fun. To play it right, you pretty much keep that steering wheel spinning full speed back and forth by jerking it, haha. Kinda need a lot of stamina! Prolly why I didn't play it as a kid.
I lucked out. There was a Gauntlet machine at the convenience store by my house as a kid and you could lift the controller deck and stick your hand in to tap the quarter slot for unlimited play. Just don't let Mister Doughtry (the store owner) see you do it, lol.
That was my first ever game played on my first ever computer, Amstrad 6128, in 1988. Its monitor was green. I had already played a lot of arcades since early 80's, a lot of games during visits to friend home computers, but it was 1988 when i got my first one. A game that defined a genre. Highly replayaple. I don't know what happens in the arcade version, but as far as i remember, in the Amstrad version Death could be killed with many repeated shots. But too many ones, you had to be patient, run, avoid, shoot, repeat.
Back in 1980’s I played gauntlet in a casino arcade using warrior without anyone else playing and on one quarter I was able to play for 17 hours straight as a friend watched me to tell my other friends that I was indeed the best player out of our group.My health was up to over 50000 and it took me running through 100 levels just to kill the warrior and I ended up on level 573.Wish the had competition back then seeing I might have been able to take the championship on this game or 720 and dragons lair as well seeing these three games were mastered in my youth and it came with a cost of spending a great deal of time and money to reach the level of play I did.It would be fun to play any of these again just to see if the memory is still within.🤙🏾
The Elf is, by far, the best character. I can play the game more or less indefinitely using him, but I've never had much luck trying to do the same with the other three.
In Dungeons and Dragons Online, there is a raid dungeon called "The Shroud" (AKA "The Thirteenth Eclipse" raid) and in the first challenge, there are four skeletons near where the first portal spawns named 'Green Elf Corpse", "Yellow Wizard Corpse", "Blue Valkyrie Corpse" and "Red Warrior Corpse" as a tribute to this old classic.
I’m sure someone has already mentioned it but being able to play the same game with four friends / strangers was a revelation at the time. So ahead of its time. Oh and the digitised speech was the coolest sound in the arcade. Happy days. 😢
level 8 is always the make or break level with the hidden potion. Getting extra shot speed or shot power is crucial for a good long play. The wizard was my choice as the shots would alternate from 1 to 2 in damage. beefed to 2 to 3. My long run was like 11 hours at a pizza shop.
Sounds like you were on an early revision of the game. They changed it for the more common later versions to remove food if you played with less than 4 players. Made it way harder and prevented those kinds of runaway games. I loved that version though. I did a 3h stint on one once until my dad yanked me off the machine as I was 1h late for dinner! :D
@@Podbod yes, it was reduced food, hard levels it was easier to stall and let all the walls turn to exits, then it was easy to clean the level and get all the food.
The worst thing was they nerfed the wizard in G2, shot speed was decreased and damage went from 1,2,1,2 to just 1. so the Elf was the most viable as with extra magic power and shot power could clear so fast!
Für mich ist Gauntlet eines der besten Spiele aller Zeiten. Ich erinnere mich gerne an die alten Zeiten zurück. Mit den Kumpels in der Spielhalle, 1 Mark einwerfen und spielen bis die Spielhalle geschlossen wurde. Midway Arcade verkauft auf Amazon für 550 € ein Cabinet in dem Gauntlet enthalten ist. Enthusiasten können bedenkenlos zugreifen
“Elf…has eaten all the food lately” 😂😂😂 Best memory of this game was joining in with a fellow player, but as he was already Elf, I played Valkyrie. Once I got Extra Armor and Extra Fight PowerI was nearly invincible, We would plow through enemies with Elf pushing Valkyrie through walls of monsters. By the time the arcade closed about 10 hours later he had gotten 70k health and I had 30k, and even with just running through enemies the Elf died before the Valkyrie 😂
My local comic book shop had a Gauntlet machine. There was an older teenager who would play the Wizard and he could pretty much go forever on a single quarter, unless he got unlucky with the levels that came up. He always tried to stop other players from joining in and threatened to beat up the younger kids if we did. It'd throw his game off if someone else were playing and taking some of the food and getting in the way. LOL.
I used to play this at the arcades after school. I spent many a quarter on this and I loved this game. If there was a version of this arcade game somewhere I would gladly buy it.
I didn't know that 'Gauntlet' was, at it's core, based on 'Dandy'. I know a little more now... and knowing is half the battle. Thank you for posting this! :)
@@jyyybonly went on day visits and spent all day in the 3 arcades. Loved the gauntlet arcade it had loads of games in there. There was another with a kentucky Derby horse attraction where you threw a ball into holes to make the horse move. Then over the car park side you had another arcade. I only went until about 1990 as the place started to lose its investment. I think it's a dive now, perhaps it's good for camping still but that's it.
This was the only arcade game I was good at. Got banned from playing Wizard, then Elf, then Fighter and Finally Valkyrie. Could stay on all day for one 10p coin.
Crazy to think this game has level design fuckery on the tier of modern romhacks and custom levels. "Just use death on this specific teleporter to block the path back and access a shortcut on a diagonal" and "your treasure is also the barrier protecting you from enemies" is such balls to the wall kind of thinking for a game that its hard to imagine a developer of any game let alone a major company in the 80s when this tech was cutting edge and WITHOUT THE INTERNET thinking this stuff up.
Gauntlet would put more food in the levels when more players were playing simultaneously. But some games, like this one, were set to give a one player game all the food that a four-player game would get, making it easy to play forever.
One of the things that I've always noticed about long term playing on Gauntlet is that most of it is done through the Elf. Maybe a bit with the Valkyrie, but rarely with the Wizard or the Warrior.
I was born in Seattle in 1973, where I grew up. So, you have an idea as to what era I'm from. I remember, being in 7th grade when this came to the arcades, using a "Death" analogy, I used to say, "If you're within 5 feet of [undesirable girl], you'll eventually lose your health points." Talking about Gauntlet II, sometimes, "somebody could say something to you, that made you feel like you got flamed by the dragon, and lost ALL your health points."
I loved this game. I bought the full size arcade consoles for just a few hundred $$ when one of the arcades near me went out of business. I wonder if there's an emulator out there somewhere. I want to play it again.
The only bitch about playing this on PS 2 and playing one player you never got the Dragons was on level 59 and seen the Thief pop up. I know transporters can be a pain in the arse sometimes you can't get where you want to go and those levels full of exits are a real bear, And yes this game does " BITE A BIG ONE " because it has no ending just the same levels over and over and over !!
