Gauntlet (NES)
Gauntlet is a fantasy dungeon crawler and shooter developed by Atari and published by Tengen for the NES in 1987 with a PlayChoice-10 version released in 1988. Unlike the original arcade game which plays forever, the NES port has a rudimentary story and ending. This game is part of the Gauntlet universe.
My brother and I got this game used around 1990 and played it through nearly to the end, however, we missed most of the secret rooms, so we could never get into the final stage. I really loved the game when I was younger, but now I see a huge amount of flaws in it. Nothing insurmountable, but it would take a fair amount of work to make this game less tedious.
I stumbled upon a useful bug in this game. If you get stunned, the countdown continues to count even if you press select to see your stats, and, by the time you get back to the game, the countdown is over, and the enemies never get a chance to hurt you.
Contents
Status
I own this game. I beat it on 2019-09-22 with help from a walk through to find the entrances to the secret rooms.
Review
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| 5 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 6 |
Best Version: 50%
— This section contains spoilers! —
Good
- The game competently takes most of what was good with the arcade version and brings it over to the NES, but creates an actual victory condition.
- The graphics are pretty decent for the NES. The large character images at the beginning of the game look great, and I like how there are multiple backgrounds in each new world.
- The game has fantastic music composed by Hal Canon.
- Being able to choose a character from a group of different choices is always nice in any game, and their differences are significant here.
- The various permanent power up potions are a great idea.
- Giving each world its own look and feel was a nice design choice.
- Basing a player's level on the amount of treasure they've collected is an interesting touch that actually makes it worthwhile to grab the loot, unlike many games where score is unimportant.
- Having health restoration being based on a successful exit of the treasure room is a good idea as well. Players need to balance their greed with their desire to survive, just like in the common trope.
- Most of the maps have hidden tiles that can be uncovered when shot for a minor bonus or secret exit. This adds replay value to the game as these pleasant surprises keep getting uncovered in subsequent play-throughs.
- The game has wonderful cover art.
Bad
- The game is much longer than it needs to be, and you'll be pretty bored of it by the end. Many of the levels feel the same, in fact, many of them are the same, just with a different tileset.
- Death is an obnoxious enemy. While he is sometimes cleverly kept at bay by walls and doors that you must avoid opening, there are many instances where he's entirely unavoidable and exists simply to drain your life.
- The invisible walls in world 4 are overused.
- Reflective shot is actually a burden since you're only allowed one shot out at a time.
- The locked chests are a good idea, but putting bad items in them like poison and death is a kick in the teeth.
- The item alcove with no entrance in room 56 is a mean tease.
- Other than treasure rooms and secret rooms, the game randomly assigns the music. The designers missed the opportunity to add more atmosphere to specific levels because of this.
- The end boss is, like the bulk of the game, is very tedious to defeat.
Ugly
- The fact that you can only have one projectile out at a time is a nuisance early in the game, but it becomes very deadly later in the game when speedy grunts can take down hundreds of hit points in the time it takes for your projectile to leave the screen. It forces you to have to very-slowly work your way through the screens and plan your shots carefully, which is very tedious. A shot speed up bonus would help, but allowing multiple shots would solve the problem entirely.
- The later levels are staggeringly difficult. Even skilled players often die several times in world 5. There are just too many enemies moving and spawning too quickly.
- The game really shouldn't let you progress if you missed a secret room since the password is necessary in order to beat the game. You can spend hours getting all the way to the end, but if you missed the first secret room, you can't win. Mordak does warn you, but it can easily be misinterpreted as a taunt.
- Finding the entrances to each of the secret rooms is a very arduous chore. The maps from the manual give you a general idea which rooms will get you to them, but most of them require you to do a lot of research testing out where each exit goes, and finding hidden exits. If you fail to reach a secret room, you need to enter a password from a previous level (which means also keeping a password log for pretty much -every- room, and having to reenter them over and over again.
- The secret rooms themselves are a pain as well. You have only a limited amount of time to find a hidden question mark block and escape through the, often hidden, exit. On several maps, this requires finding a shootable block which is very had to do when you have so little time. Some rooms even require you to bring extra keys to succeed. If you fail to exit with the question mark block in the time limit, you need to reset from an earlier room. If you don't have enough keys, you need to reset much further back to when you have extras, then replay the levels without wasting keys.
- Near the end of the game, a lot of the exits that keep you on the path to victory are obnoxiously hidden requiring you to search the very dangerous rooms carefully to find them. This is not very fun.
- The teleporters rarely send you where you want to go, so you end up wasting a lot of time, and thereby your life, hoping they'll send you where you want to go. This is extremely frustrating, and they either should have been fixed or replaced.
- The world 4 treasure room, with its teleporters, stun tiles, and fake exits, makes it impossible to test each exit before the time runs out. Even with an elf with speed boost, you only have about a 1-in-5 chance of making it out successfully.
- I've noticed that the game sometimes gives you passwords that don't work, and I'm sure it's not a copy error, because they're pre-entered for you if you die and still don't work.
Media
Box Art
I love this game's box art. Each of the four characters is prominently featured and competently painted, and there is a sense of dangerous adventure seen in their poses. The unlicensed box art is essentially the same, only with the left and bottom edges covered over in flat gold. The painting looks a bit unfinished, but it still looks great.
North American licensed box.
Documentation
- Gauntlet - NES - Manual.pdf
Game manual.
Nintendo Power, part 1.
Nintendo Power, part 2.
Maps
Gallery
Graphic Sheet - Characters.
Comic by Zac Gorman.
Videos
- youtube.com/watch?v=WPyRbAqw73o - Speed run.
- youtube.com/watch?v=MNe97IpudZY - Two-player longplay.
