108 · GAUNTLET

• Introductions
• Based on the 1985 Arcade game GAUNTLET. WHere 4 players could play at once...in the NES version not so much.
• Overview
  • Top Down Dungeon Crawler game where you play 1 of 4 different warriors and make your way through 100 levels.
• Gameplay
  • Different Warriors
    • Thor - the brute-force character. Considered the worst by most players.
    • Thyra - Balanced Character. High Armor
    • Merlin - best magic but very slow
    • Questor - Very speedy, gets better with levels
  • Dungeon Crawling
    • Fighting
    • Mobs
    • Bases
  • Experience and Leveling
    • Treasure Room
  • 2 Player
• Helpful hints provided from a Dungeon Master type voice are missing from the NES version
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Arcade
    • Gauntlet II - 1986 (WILL COME TO NES AS 4 PLAYER)
      • The main difference from the original game is that multiple players can now choose to play as the same character class.
    • Gauntlet Legends - 1998
      • Allowed players to use a password IN THE ARCADE to save progress
    • Gauntlet Dark Legacy - 2000
      • The expansion adds five new levels, and four new character classes: Dwarf, Knight, Jester, and Sorceress.
  • Console Only
    • Gauntlet: The Third Encounter - Atari Lynx 1990
      • Same box art as NES
      • The player can choose from eight character classes to play as, including the Valkyrie and the Wizard from the original Gauntlet, as well as six new character classes: the Samurai, the Punk Rocker, the Android, the Gunfighter, the Nerd and the Pirate.
    • Gauntlet III: The Final Quest - Home Computers 1991
      • Besides the standard four main Gauntlet characters, Thor, Thyra, Merlin, and Questor, four new playable characters were available: Petras, a rock man; Dracolis, a lizard man; Blizzard, an ice man; and Neptune, a Merman.
      • The game is viewed from an isometric perspective and includes a two-player cooperative multiplayer mode.
    • Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows - PS2 2005
      • Follow-up to Gauntlet Legends and Gauntlet Dark Legacy.
      • Adds online play
    • Gauntlet: Slayer Edition - PS4 2015
      • It’s overstayed it’s welcome
• EGL
• Atari Commercial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=32&v=Oju5vAfFBDc&feature=emb_logo
• 30:58 - Sean Coughs

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 Experience the ultimate fantasy that is Gauntlet.

00:18 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. Guys, today we are playing the 1985 arcade game Gauntlet on the 1988 version for the NES.

00:40 Oh, okay. Yeah. Worth noting that they are completely different games. Are they? Yeah. Gauntlet, the 1985 arcade game, four players could play that simultaneously. That makes sense. And the graphics were way different and the levels were laid out much different. So this is a reimagining of Gauntlet of sorts. Nice. But you still get to play with two players. That's nice. I think Gauntlet was one of those first arcade games though that really welcomed itself to what would eventually become a whole genre of like beat-em-ups, you know? Yeah. Look at sort of like a hack and slash sort of thing. Did you guys ever play this game back in your childhood? I did see it.

01:21 If I saw four player games, I either didn't have enough people or I would rather be playing the Simpsons arcade game, which was also four players, you know, along with Turtles in Time and X-Men. Those are what I think of what I think of four player games, but apparently Gauntlet was like one of the first. So when I was a kid, my friend had the PS1 version of Gauntlet and we would just play two player on that.

01:48 And, you know, it was, it's a very similar game. Like the spirit of Gauntlet lives on. Is the PS1 version like a port of the arcade or is it like a new? I have no idea, but it is 3D, but it's still top down. Yeah. So what, what, what is Gauntlet, Mike? Yeah. Gauntlet, well, I'm glad you asked. I'm going to describe it similar to how Sean just did. I describe it as a top down dungeon crawler game where you play one of four different warriors and make your way through 100 levels.

02:18 Each warrior has a unique skills and attributes. Yeah. I think we should, we can talk about that first actually, if you want. Cause I thought that was the, the best thing going for it was that it, it, it has a lot of things that fans of, I don't want to just say dungeon and dragons, but fans of role playing games in general would be familiar. We're just fantasy stuff in general.

02:38 With these themes and tropes that are necessarily like your, the gameplay style is the same for all of them, but they, the way they control matters more. So have we seen it to like this, these differences to this extent, even close yet on the NES? I don't think we have. Right. With, with a variety, with being able to choose a character, a character that has such vastly different abilities and like the closest I think that we've come is picking a ship in some shmups. Right. But I just, I dumped those out of my memory. But I think that's the closest to, uh, uh, different play styles for, uh, different sprites.

03:14 Yeah. Because if you think about it, most games we've been playing ever since super Mario brothers have been power up based where you just continue to, uh, expand the character that you're playing as. And that went as far as mega man actually, uh, having like permanent power ups that you could then become the ultimate version of mega man. Yeah. When you finally get through everything. So this is the first time we're kind of being greeted with a, a choice, uh, amongst four players. You have, uh, Thor. He's the brute force character.

03:44 There's Thyra who is the, apparently the most balanced, has a very high armor though. She's a Valkyrie. A Valkyrie. Merlin, obviously the wizard. Yes. Uh, best magic in the game, but also very slow.

03:58 And Quester, who is like the ranger or maybe more of the. Yeah. He's like a thief maybe or something. See, I was thinking he could be a mixture of all those different things, but also, um, uh, like, like kind of a bard in some ways too, maybe. He's the guy in your D and D group that min max his character so that he could do a bunch of things that just don't make sense in the game. Absolutely. Uh, he's very speedy, but sucks at everything else. And the speed even a quad even happens in like health depletion is also another thing that happens to him faster.

04:33 It doesn't happen faster. It certainly feels like it. I think I was watching you guys play just a minute ago. I don't know if we're revealing that. Yeah, that's fine. Just to get a taste of the two player. Uh, I'm pretty sure it looks like, uh, Mike, you were, your health is depleting much quicker than John's. He's got a higher metabolism. Now, out of the four though, first tell me who's the coolest.

04:54 Valkyrie. I thought that at first, actually, I went with Valkyrie just because I like the balance. Uh, I actually never played as the wizard, but now I want to. I, I, I've been watching some playthroughs of it and I kind of think it, he looks like a, like a cool, uh, I was confused as to he has better magic. I was like, well, what's the magic? Is that just his regular attack? Yeah. Does anyone else have magic? What makes his magic better than other people's magic? So then when I realized like, oh, he just has like a good attack.

05:18 Yeah. I don't know. Then what's, what's his strength stat? I was a little confused on that. Gotcha. Okay. Uh, well, I will say that, um, you know, to me, I started off playing Thor because I thought that, well, that's the base level. So to get a taste of the game, just play the, the warrior, uh, model.

05:34 The ultimate warrior. And I hated that. Yeah. He's very slow. Yeah. I hate it. Yeah. He sucks. He's actually considered the worst by, uh, like most speed runners and, and game, uh, like people who are good at gauntlet. Speed runners, especially. I'm sure. Just cause he literally just. But just like hearing, I'm just like looking at a bunch of feedback and basically like nobody picks Thor if they know what's good for them. Unless you're playing in four players, in which case somebody must play as Thor in the arcade version. Uh, Thyra, the high armor thing really only matters to new players. Apparently it's not that great if you know your way around most of the levels.

06:08 Merlin, uh, because he's so slow, it actually only helps people who know like the secret exits of the game and know like the optimal ways through things. And that's why everybody seems to recommend Quester. Whatever. Uh, apparently as long as you collect a lot of treasure chests, you'll be fine, uh, as Quester because you'll, you'll get a lot better as you level up. Is the speed just, just in order to get away from things? Yes. Or are the people requesting them speed runners? No, it's, it's also to get away from things. Cause as we'll talk about when we, when we talk about the dungeon layouts, I think being able to avoid things is just as important as being able to attack. It's true.

06:46 So Sun Tzu said that. So I mentioned that, uh, you know, collecting treasure chest is experience and stuff like that. And I think Sean just experienced firsthand how a two player mode might not be the best for, uh, cause you are fighting over the treasure chest. But Sean, do you want to get into that mechanic of experience points and the, and the treasure chests and leveling up? So, so it's basically a collect-a-thon.

07:09 Um, when you boot into this game, there aren't a lot of like, there isn't a lot of context of what you're supposed to do, but you see a bunch of treasure chests. So you're going to pick them up and then you see some food and you're going to pick that up for your health or power in this game. Um, and you're just going to go around collecting as much stuff as you can, which in turn makes you a little bit stronger every time. Uh, until you get to the exit, which is, it just says exit. And then you move on and do it again.

07:36 And, and you are just kind of dropped in there. There's no grand story or anything. The grand story is some guy that drops you into a gauntlet. Uh, is that, is that true? It is. Okay. Yeah. You have to find something that'll stop him. Like Gordax or something. That'll stop him from taking over the world or spreading evil all over the world. Or it says you, if you don't find it, at least you got a bunch of treasure.

07:57 Okay. Yeah, that's fine. It says in the manual. Treasure will be good in the apocalypse. I'm sure people will take your money. The world will end, but at least you got a lot of treasure. Uh, there, there is a whole like story of the sacred orb in the manual. That's what I meant. Yeah. And I guess that's what it, what it was. But I read like the first few lines and I was just like, oh boy, I don't really care. Like, cause it's not necessary.

08:16 There's really no need to, I don't question when I start a game and it immediately drops me in a dungeon top down. I don't think like, what's my purpose? Well, I mean, every shoot them up has had the same sort of bullshit story. So I mean, I'm going to grant this the same amount of, oh, why am I doing this as, as the others? I appreciate that at least gave something like it's, it's a nice touch. It's not needed, but yeah.

08:40 So, uh, Sean, you said Thyra, the Valkyrie is the character you played as the most or just the coolest. I mean, the character I played as the most. And how did that go for you?

08:49 I'm fine, um, in single player, but, uh, as I just found out playing multiplayer for a bit, um, maybe it's not just the character, but I think it's just the, um, the nature of the game where you want to collect treasure and your, your partner also wants to collect treasure. So there's going to be some, there's going to be some friction, uh, between how you guys play. Right. Um, but maybe that's just because I was playing Thyra too. And Joe, who did you, uh, play as? I played as, her name's Thyra. I played as her first. Uh, and then I did try, um, Quester? No, uh, the warrior, Thor. Uh, didn't like him at all. Then, uh, I tried Quester briefly.

09:31 Um, but my, yeah, for the most part, I played as Thyra. Uh, now I kind of do wish I played as the wizard though. I think he seems like he has pretty good stats now that I still, if it seems like you can maybe ignore the strength stat and use the magic stat instead, then that seems like a good deal. I could be wrong on that. So, uh, when you're greeted in these dungeons, right? Uh, the layout is very much like a big room in the legend of Zelda, right? There's a, you know, like it's like, it's like a giant room, a maze essentially with blocks that tell you, well, you can't go this way or you need a key to get through a door.

10:05 Uh, every puzzle, every puzzle is solvable, but there's also cool things like hidden exits or additional keys that you don't need. There are switches that change the layout of certain areas and breakable walls and stuff. Uh, so I think all that stuff is pretty cool and unexpected, but I, I think they could have done a better job communicating how that stuff exists rather than just smashing, uh, in like the, the hidden exits even. You just have to hit them by accident and spawn them the first time and then you know about them. The hidden exits, if you think about like Legend of Zelda, I mean, maybe there's a little bit of telegraphing in some of the things in Legend of Zelda, but some of them are, you're just,

10:45 you just have trial and error of every bush in the game until you find. You don't need to know where the hidden exits are to complete the game. So it's just a secret. And I didn't find. But I would argue real fast, just on that Legend of Zelda note, that in the dungeons themselves, there were only, uh, four walls, exact spots that you could ever try for secret exits. It wasn't like you had to bomb the whole entire wall to find the one, like you could always

11:07 check, like, is it in the center top, the center right, you know, like it was, it was easier to find those hidden things if you just had to have the bombs. I didn't know there was a rule for that. Okay, got it. But it feels like it's just the hidden exits in this game. Everything else that's hidden or secret or hard to find out is, I feel like it's, that I encountered is, uh, designed in a way that you can find it. Like the, the, the walls that are destructible always look, the, that tile looks a little different than all the other tiles.

11:30 So you start to pick up on little things, like one might be like a little smaller or have little cracks in it. Um, and then there's, uh, you know, switches on the ground that it'll, the first time you see one, it's just there easy for you to access. So you could step on it and see, oh, when I step on one of these switches, it changes these things. And that encourages you to explore other switches.

11:49 So I never felt like it was like unfairly, there was something secretive that I needed to know that I couldn't find out. I do think that there is some, uh, issues with, uh, how it actually displays sometimes like the hidden, not the hidden wall, the breakable walls look a little too similar to unbreakable walls and the switches on the ground look a little too similar to traps on the floor. So I would avoid the switches and accidentally, uh, fall into these traps just because I thought they were a switch or I thought it was a trap.

12:23 So I think they could have done a little better differentiating these things. Yeah. I guess, I mean, everything has room for improvement, but yeah, it didn't bother me. And you also have, uh, bombs that you can collect as well. Uh, and I think those can help play a role in, um, while they're also play a role in damage to mobs and stuff like that. There's also this whole, um, breakable wall thing too with the bombs that I think, um,

12:49 I think can happen. I thought that you just had to attack it and it would just go away. Got it. So it wasn't just, you didn't need a, there was never a time where you needed a bomb to get through. I think they're more for crowd control. Crowd control. Right. Which is something we should talk about right now because they, crowd control is something you have to do at the very start of the game. Uh, you know, it does kind of ease you in at the very first level, but it's not long after that you start to realize that the spawn points, which are these skull bones are the thing you need to eliminate and not so much like the actual enemies on the screen.

13:23 Yeah. Let's talk about that. So as you go through the levels, they're always a different sprite. Like sometimes they're like a pyramid thing. Sometimes they're a pile of bones. Uh, but those are the spawn points and they spawn a lot of enemies. Like this is the most enemies I've seen in a game, uh, on this, on this system so far. And it does visibly slow the game down too. After a certain point, I was actually surprised at how many it took before it started to slow down, but it is disappointing that the slowdown is actually beneficial.

13:52 In a way, yeah. Um, it does get a little annoying, but anyway, um, the, so you shouldn't just be attacking these mobs that just keep running in front of you. You have to, if you're going to make any progress in this game, um, and if you're not going to just run out of life because that acts as your timer, then you have to push your way through and stop them from spawning or just run past them entirely.

14:15 Yeah. It is, you, it is satisfying to like attack your way through them to get to their, like their hub or their base and destroy the base. And then no, all I have to do is destroy what's left on the screen and no more will come at me, but they are literal hordes of enemies. Like you were, you were running through crowds and crowds of these enemies. And the, and the mobs that are the, uh, the base hubs, those skull bones, they take a few hits to get, uh, to break down. So there are still enemies spawning that will attack you as well. So you have to kind of manage between the two, which I think is fine. I think the bigger problem I have is a lot of times the placement of the, uh, of the bases

14:55 and the, and the like weird layout of the walls around it kind of lead to these like funnels that you have to kind of like fight your way through by design. Yeah. But I would argue that it was a bad design because it just essentially, it doesn't pose any real challenge. It slows down your time to get to the base. And then because you had to, you know, because you can shoot anything in front of you and it won't really take any damage unless it's also getting closer to you is as long as you keep your distance and just keep shooting, it's a matter of time until you get to the base. You're not really posed with an actual challenge. You're just posed with a time waster.

15:31 Yeah. I mean, I guess that's, I mean, it's, I don't think it's a fun challenge, but I do think that it is challenging, um, to, to do this in an optimal time. Right. I did notice that there were some times where like the enemies were spawning around a corner and because of that, it was hard to kill them at a rate fast enough where I felt like safe to go in to their base, which I don't think was a bad thing. I actually think it made me think about like, stop and think like, how can I approach this? Like there's, and you, the times that I encountered, granted, I didn't beat the game or anything.

16:03 So there might be stuff later that gets harder, but times that I encountered, I always felt like there was a way that I can, it sometimes took me a while, but I could find like, oh, like maybe if I come at them this way, I could, I could kind of almost strategize a little bit in a, in like a plan of attack and how to get there. One other tool that you have is unless you're playing as the warrior who can't do this, you can attack through the diagonal walls and sometimes that will line up with these bases and you can deal with them from a distance and then go around when there are less of them and it's harder to, it's easier to mow them down, I guess. Right. Yeah. So there is some strategy.

16:41 Yeah. Is there enough between puzzle solving and puzzle solving is used lightly here because we're not actually like flipping switches that actually like determine outcomes to other things. It's just, you know, making your way through each dungeon room is, is the mixture of puzzle and combat balanced here? Is it, is it too focused on combat? Should there have been more puzzle solving?

17:37 Are we, are we okay with this gameplay loop experience because of the amount of levels, the a hundred different levels that you have to go through? I think for what it's trying to be, I'm okay with the, you know, I, I, it's, like you said, it's not really any puzzle puzzles, but it's, for me, I just felt fun to explore and then have these enemies attacking me. It's like, it really encouraged exploration.

17:58 Granted, admittedly, as much as I love the game, I don't know if I would want to do a hundred levels of it and probably get stale at some point, but for the, I mean, I think I did like 25 levels of it or something. I was still having fun. You know, I was still enjoying it. I have other issues that maybe we'll get to after this, but, but, but yeah, I was okay with it. I don't, I just thought it was, it was an interesting, different enough thing that where you're just kind of exploring a dungeon either by yourself or with your friend. That was cool. Um, I, so I think that this game does not focus on, this is not a game that's supposed to focus on, uh, puzzles. It's, it's basically a hack and slash with projectiles.

18:36 Um, and so I don't think it needed them. Um, and if you're going to enjoy your time with this game, you just like that core loop of, uh, of fighting through hundreds of enemies and getting to your exit with minimal damage. So I think, no, I think this works as it is. Yeah. I would have kind of almost preferred a, uh, not like a more open, uh, area, but no, no, just like an open area in the dungeon. Like, you know, I was talking earlier about this quarters. It's not that I wanted every mob base to just be like out in the open and you have to just rush to them and try to kill them off. But I, I wish there was a way to control the mobs better than just your main attack. Like if there was eventually like, oh, now you have a hundred treasure chests.

19:20 Now your, uh, arrow spread three ways. Don't they have things like that? Doesn't like, can't like the wizard get like things that bounce off walls and don't they have power ups? If they did, I didn't. I think there are power shots. I think there, I think there are things you can pick up that temporarily give those boosts. I just meant like if, if there's any like core leveling other than just boosting your stats to make you like, oh, well now when you get to the tougher enemies, they only take two shots instead of three, you know, or something like that.

19:48 I would have preferred because there's so many enemies on the screen at once by the end of it, there's like this cool, like sweet move that takes off like, you know, six of them at a time or something like that. You know, it would make it more fun to have more mobs and enemies on the screen because now you're in more control of it than just taking down one by one by one by one until you get your way to their, to their base. And that's definitely not the gameplay loop.

20:11 It's just the part that I focus on the most because it was the thing that was least enjoyable to me about the game. I hear you. Cause it does have like, you know, the bombs that take off. Like it has like the things you're describing, but it's not on like a level up basis. It's like, you find it, you use it, you're done with it. Like it's over. Yeah. I enjoyed the game in terms of an actual like exploration meets leveling up experience of getting stronger slash figuring out your way of grinding simulator. Yeah. Exactly. Grinding simulator. Why not? Because there's also, you know, there's no right way to do the maze. You can go like up, you know, just to, we haven't talked about the map layout, but go up. It's right.

20:49 Yeah. I'm just saying like the map layout makes it look like you can just go from one block to the next. But because we talked about like different exits and stuff like that, there, there are different ways that you can go from like, oh, you're on level 71. Well, you can go jump to level 74 instead, you know? Yeah. There's different, there's different ways to do the game. So I think exploring that element of it was really fun.

21:11 Right. And just seeing your character get stronger was better. And I wish they would have focused on like more ways that your character gets stronger. Yeah. It's cool to see that map, um, that like overworld map that tells you which section of the dungeon you're in between. Cause you might be really close to a room that you want to get to. And then you realize that the exit you take actually takes you in a, you know, weird,

21:31 like different direction than you thought. And there's like a, you have to figure out the routes to get to the like desirable rooms or to get to the next, I don't know. Right. And the desirable rooms are definitely the treasure room, uh, where you can pretty much just like collect a bunch of free leveling up, uh, abilities and yeah. Yeah. And like, like what? I don't know. Okay. Like Sonic. Yeah. But it also, it also is required for something that we haven't talked about yet.

21:59 That is, uh, yeah, that is you in these rooms, you can regain all your health back to its maximum. And yes, you lose health pretty quickly when you get hit. But also one thing that I'm on the fence about is that the whole game, your, your health is ticking down like constantly. What was it? The dragon ball game that we dragon power that also did that. Yeah. I hated it in that. Yeah. It was during that. But your, your, your health is like slowly depleting and I, that I'm not, that's never a choice I would make.

22:29 Um, but I think that's when, as I think about it, I think it's just like literally just a preference and not like, I think it's just me personally. I don't like it either. It's its own style of gameplay. It has a place. I think that if they're going to use it, there should be a minimum health that you can have. Like, I don't think that you should be able to time out because I once finished the level,

22:50 got to a, a treasure room and there's no food in these rooms. So I just watched my character die in a bonus room. But if, if you can, if you get to the exit. Yeah. But you just didn't have time. I didn't have enough time to do that. Yeah. You might, you might go in there with like 30 health. Right. Yeah. Cause if you get to the exit, uh, before you're, before like a time limit for the treasure room runs out, you'll get all your health back. Just because we haven't said that.

23:13 No, that's fine. I actually, I have an easy solution to this though. If you wanted to enforce like constant movement and making sure that you don't like just stay in one area of the room and grind your way through like mob bosses, just have a timer in the room. Just be like, okay, you have 99 seconds to escape this dungeon and do that for every single dungeon room. Yeah. I think that works. Or why not? Yeah. You could do it so many different ways. I don't think that time, that health should ever be the punishment.

23:41 Yeah. Timer. I think would also bother me because then I'm not in control of it of like how much, like, whereas at least with this, like if I lose, granted, I don't care for this either, but if I lose, at least I know it's like, well, yeah, maybe I should have gotten more, probably gotten my health up higher. Whereas like a timer just feels so like they have set it and like it's out of my hands. At least like I have a little agency.

24:02 I don't know. I think that like it's additional constraints can, can make it feel more tense. And if you, you can just waltz through it at your own pace, maybe this isn't the same kind of game. But I don't think this lets you waltz through it at your own pace the way it's doing it. I know. I'm saying that the way you're describing it would let you just like take a few steps. You could just sit, sit there with a, with one of those home bases, just spewing out enemies and just like, just keep doing that. I don't know why you would. The way I'm describing it is the way it is.

24:33 I'm saying that I think the way it is where you have to go to the treasure rooms in order to get your health back is, is maybe okay. Oh, as much as I don't personally care for it. Like I think that it, um, I thought you meant, I think it's better than having just a straight time limit. Like Mike was saying is where I thought you meant no time limit and no health drain. No, because I think that like, yeah, I think we agree. Yeah. But we were just arguing anyways. But I think I agree with you because, um, I think I agree with you.

25:01 That's not how this works. I agree with you because, um, because I do think that it's, it gives you this like urgency to get to the next level. Yeah. So I would say kudos for making a contradictory point. You know, like, like I wasn't expecting anybody to have a reason why the health should deplete and you're not even a fan of it and you just battled for it. That's what I mean. I think they also add some weight to these characters too of like, well, maybe I should choose Thor. He has 980 health.

25:28 Like that'll help me a lot more than the wizard's 800. That's 180 extra more seconds for all we know. You know, like I think that if that kind of thing is going to matter though, then maybe these characters should be balanced a little differently though too, because if you're going to give him the slowest speed at 980 health, is it really that different than the wizard having a speed of three and, um, and also 800 health? Like, like technically they can move per damage that they lose at the same rate, you know? Like it's weird to talk about it like that, but it kind of is like that. It's just like a preference to the player then. Like, how do you want to, how do you want to lose?

26:04 Yeah. And you will die. Yeah. I'm the same way with a lot of things with like time limits. I don't like them. Like personally, like in the moment, I'm like, oh shit, I'm stressed out because of the time of it. But then like, if you take it away, I'm like, well, where's the fun? Were you stressed out in Mario?

26:18 No, I think the time limit was pretty high. I never really that worried. But, but, uh, the one that that's coming to my mind, maybe it's a post-show thing. I'll go off on a rail. It's about Ratchet and Clank. We'll post. Sure. Yeah. I don't remember that being on the NES. So yeah. Uh, also just when you die, uh, you get a password, but I think I can't remember where I read this because I'm trying to find it right now. There's like a possibility that you will get a bad password. I saw it in a speed run actually that was watching earlier today. If your password starts with an A, it doesn't work or something?

26:56 Go screw yourself? That's weird. I know. I remember getting a password that I inputted and it sent me back like three rooms and I don't, I don't know if they're like checkpoint rooms. There's probably a checkpoint room. That would make sense. But there's nothing with notetates. Was it after a treasure room or something? I, maybe. I don't know. It just, it was weird that it's going to be passwords. It doesn't give you that room. Yeah. If you're going to give passwords out, just, it, just don't then. Like, no, no, I meant like for the A thing. Yeah. Like that's just spiteful. Well, no, I think that was, I assume that's a glitch.

27:31 Well, I, I, well, maybe, but like, it's a pretty heavy glitch to not notice that like, oh, you know, password didn't work that we just bumped out. Uh, you know, I, I think that's the first time I've ever heard of that. Like, you know, like imagine if Metroid, you know, after playing it for like eight hours, you get a password and then it's like, sorry, it didn't work.

27:47 Every 10th save corrupts. It would be funny though. I mean, maybe it is true if they, if it was like an intentional, like the challenge, like design, they're like, let's make it harder. Like every, every password doesn't work. I really gotta look into this, but I guess it upset enough people that somebody actually on game FAQs put out a whole password crack system of like explaining the binary equivalents to the password digits and what that would mean to the game's code. So then which passwords, like basically how to make your own passwords in this game to get different things.

28:21 So, uh, that's nuts. It says any password containing a treasure value of 2000 or greater will not work. So don't give yourself more than 2000 treasure. Cheater. And that's just the gauntlet system for you. That's gauntlet. Uh, we should talk about two player. We did it. Me and Sean.

28:37 Yeah. Uh, how'd you feel? I sort of touched on that when I wasn't supposed to, but, uh, basically it, depending on how you play and how your game partner plays, uh, it can be a very frustrating experience. Even if you're trying to be a cooperative, even if you're trying to play cooperatively, um, there's a lot of loot stealing. I would argue that we didn't play cooperative. I would argue that I should have known better. I should have known better and I should have let you get some treasure so we could go stronger together. Yeah. Um, but you didn't and you prefer to be a very selfish boy.

29:14 Um, and just throw me to the wolves. I do think that it's great that they give you this two player simultaneous option. I really expected it to be like when you die, then the other person just starts in level. It doesn't really make any sense. Yeah. Especially knowing what this series is in the future. Right. So I'm, I'm definitely cool with the way that this was set up and it was nice that they didn't make it any harder or anything like that. Yeah. It didn't spawn any more enemies. It handles two players nicely.

29:43 The, uh, amount of room you're allowed to be away from each other is pretty generous for an NES game. Considering how small your characters are, I think that that was for, that was for the better. So I give this a big thumbs up and I'm kind of surprised to see it. And granted that I didn't play, uh, cooperatively at all, but, um, I just think like the level of variety that comes into some of the later levels, having two players and a little bit of what we touched on before with like having to plan out your attack, it's kind of cool

30:10 to be able to like communicate and like decide, you know, you go over here and draw the enemies away because they do get drawn to the closest person while, you know, while I'll go in and attack the base and things like that. Like that's an interesting, I never actually played too far into this game to get like I'm dying, but that is cool. And so, uh, Ed Logg, who was the, uh, designer for Asteroids, Centipede and Gauntlet, pretty, pretty good, uh, lineup of games to be the designer for. Uh, he did an interview on, uh, the website we talked about last week, Gamma Sutra. Uh, they seem to be a good resource after all.

30:45 Um, he did an interview about all things of those games and I just wanted to cover some things he said about Gauntlet. Uh, they asked him the process for generating the mazes in Gauntlet and essentially they built out an actual maze editor, uh, on a computer that anybody, uh, that could, that was on the engineering team, it would be simple enough for them to create mazes.

31:07 So everybody, uh, on the team was allowed to like make a maze or do a layout. And that's how you get like these so many different varieties of levels and different, uh, styles of layouts. Cause they didn't just let like one person try to make a hundred plus levels. Yeah. Okay. That's cool. And, uh, another thing was that, uh, he said that he felt like the wizard was the most powerful, but he couldn't prove it.

31:32 But however, when the game was released in Japan, apparently it was, it was like a big phenomenon over there at the start. And they determined that if you played as the wizard or the warrior at the arcade version, you could play forever on one quarter as long as, as long as no other players joined the game. Wow. Not sure why that was, but that really must've screwed them over because the whole mechanic is to keep feeding money into the arcade machines. That's super weird.

32:00 Uh, uh, the interviewer says, uh, gauntlet didn't include final bosses or a goal besides survival. Did you worry that players would balk against playing with a video game structure such as growing template of endless, endless levels? Uh, was there a video game structure at the time at all?

32:16 And log answers. There was a considerable amount of discussion about this issue. I had this question come up often. I could not come up with a solution for those players who might have just joined or what to do with the money they have left in the machine. So I took the course of least resistance and did not provide an end to the game or a final boss to defeat. I thought he was going on like some like practicality, the design thing there and like, you know, philosophy. Instead it's, I don't know. That's too hard. Or just also like, I didn't know, I didn't want the quarters to stop coming.

32:48 So I just designed the game to go on forever. But that's the arcade version. That's the arcade version. Uh, you know, the NES version was ported by Tengen. You know, those guys who make the unlicensed NES games. Mm-mm. Uh, one thing we never talked about though with Tengen in the last episode we did with them, which was, um, uh, RBI baseball. They all have a very specific box art on the front where they take like a diamond, uh, or like a D pad and they put it in the lower left and then there's stripes going up and to the right and left. Okay. And that's just like a thing on every single one of their boxes.

33:27 Okay. I thought that was cool. Oh, okay. They have like this way of like looking, you know, cause a lot of times with our other developers that aren't Nintendo, it's hard to tell if the game is made by them or not unless you see their name. So to have a distinct look for every single one of your box arts that all follows the same design scheme, it's pretty cool when you're collecting NES games. And it's kind of like what Nintendo does. Yeah. So it's, uh, well, Nintendo does what Tengen does except for when Tengen isn't allowed to do those things by Nintendo.

34:35 You know, there's, there's no, uh, there's no interview with Tengen. About how they ported this game. They've been on the run for years. They've been on the run. It's true. Uh, I would, I would add though that it, Tengen is a subsidiary of Atari who made the arcade game. So they were definitely like not like stealing the code or like trying to make it like freehand on their own. They definitely had access to all the codes that, uh, Ed Log would have had. So they just figured out a way to port it. Yeah. I think it's a, I think it's a pretty faithful port.

35:10 Uh, I never played the original arcade, but I'm going to take your word for it. Yeah. I would say that all of the same concepts are still there. There's no stripped away features other than the inability to play as four characters at once. Uh, which is a feature that gauntlet two on the NES will get. It will be one of the, one of the few NES multi-tap games, uh, that works. That lets you select all four players. Uh, so we look forward to that one whenever it happens. Uh, then who knows? Could be the late nineties, uh, the multi-tap on the NES. Late 1998.

35:46 Well, I don't think games are the NES. I think they stopped at 94. Yeah, I know. Okay. Yeah, I know. You don't think I've looked at the list? Uh, I knew you were joking too. But since he brought up the whole thing about bosses, would you have, would you have wanted them? I think I would have expected them. But there is a boss in this game, right? There's not a dragon, three headed dragon. Never got to it. I didn't get to it, but I watched it in a, in a run through. Are you sure that that was gauntlet? And not defender one or two?

36:14 I'm pretty sure this is gauntlet. All right. I mean, like I'll, there's a dragon. I agree. Yeah. But like, as far as I know, there's just the one, like, I guess at like the very end It's the very end of the game. There is a dragon, uh, that is, looks three headed to me and it, it reminds me of, no, it just reminds me of the dragon from Legend of Zelda. You know, it was that one in a dungeon four or whatever. So not King Ghidorah. Not King Ghidorah though. It could look like King Ghidorah as well, except for it's green. Yes. Like the one in Legend of Zelda.

36:47 Uh, but yeah, that's it. You just have to, uh, you have to fight the three headed dragon, which is honestly stupid because as I'm looking at it right now, have you looked at it? Yeah. They just go into those little corners. There's a corner for you to hide in that the monster could never attack from you from because it doesn't move. But you can't attack from there. You have to come out of hiding, put yourself in a little bit of danger. No, there's no danger. It's a straight line of fire. So just make sure you. No, he'll, he'll turn his head. Who? The dragon. Dragon turns his head. But I'm saying it's just. You have to run back into the corner. You have to run back into the corner though. It's like. Peekaboo is the final boss?

37:24 It's not, it's not completely unchallenging. I would, I would argue that it could be completely unchallenging. Yeah. What I'm watching, I'm watching a wizard and a right now. Joe, why don't you play the game first? I'm watching a wizard and a, um. You didn't, you didn't even get as far as I did. I didn't, but you're, you're, you're defending things you didn't even experience. I'm telling you right now. To me, it doesn't look as, it doesn't look like completely easy. To me, it looks like the wizard can't get in there. But the, the, uh, what the fast guy. Okay. But are you watching gauntlet parentheses NES close parentheses Merlin last level and ending video? Cause that's what I'm watching and he's having a very easy time.

38:03 I'm watching gauntlet NES two player net play. I'm not watching either of those. You're losing, you're losing this battle because you have two players. See, if you just play with one. Oh, right. Well that two player, I'm just seeing, uh, I'm seeing the, the wizard's not doing anything probably because I assume he's too slow. Gotcha. But he's having an easy time here. Anyway, I think that, uh, the biggest revelation here for everyone is probably that there is a boss in this game. Do not know that. Because, um, no one gets to level 100. Uh, I don't think people knew that.

38:31 Tell me if you're, if you're a hardcore gauntlet player, did you know that there was an end to this game or did you just assume it just kept generating new levels and new maps? We're listening. Yeah. Tell me right now. Shout into the phone. Make a, make a reply podcast to us and we'll listen to it. Yeah, sure. I would, I would listen to that. Anything else guys on gauntlet?

38:52 No, I don't think so. Haven't I heard this theme song before? It sounds, am I not crazy? Oh, you're never really familiar? It's from, uh, it's from pool. It's from lunar pool. Yeah. Lunar pool. Not, um. Um, what's the guy's name? Ken Griffey Jr.'s pool. Yeah. Minnesota flat. Yeah. You know what? I don't, I actually don't recognize the music from anything else. I think it just sounds like similar to other music in like the genre. Well, I'll tell you what, it got me humming it a lot. Even the beginning that.

39:24 It's good music throughout. I mean, considering it's. Rest of the music. Rest of the music out of five. Well, I didn't actually ever hear any of the music, but I thought it was really good. I love that. Joe brought in his stunt double today.

39:43 All right. Uh, I think since we have no more to say, we'll just do a couple sequels and spinoffs because you know, a franchise like Gauntlet has them. I teased Gauntlet 2 already.

39:52 Uh, it did go to the arcades as well. The main difference from the original game in Gauntlet 2 is that players can now choose to be the same character class. Whoa. So you don't have to reduce somebody to being Thor. Everybody, because there's four wizards, uh, trek through this thing. See, I don't, I actually don't like that though, because you know, you have to, you have to class up. You know, if you're going to play Overwatch, you can't be the same Overwatcher, you know? I understand. Yeah.

40:17 So. They call them heroes, I think. I call them Overwatchers. Okay. Um, then just to keep it in the arcades for a minute, Gauntlet Legends comes out in 1998 and allowed players to use a password to save progress. Really? In the arcade. Oh, wow. That's awesome. I love that.

40:37 Like, it goes against everything, right? Like, could you still put the quarter in? Yeah, you still got to play, you know, come back and play. At that time, probably a dollar, right? Like, to play, in 1998, to play Gauntlet Legends? Five dollars. The only game I'd pay five dollars for to play in the arcades is that Kentucky Derby horse racing simulator game. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's true. I had the, well, no, we, we played that together. Oh, thank goodness. Okay. Yeah, we have the cards. Yeah. That's a great game.

41:01 Nobody. And to be fair, I'm sure that the dollar for Gauntlet Legends at that time was, like, equivalent to five dollars. That's probably true, yeah. Yeah. Capitalism. Yeah. There's also Gauntlet Dark Legacy in 2000 for the arcade, and it's an expansion to maybe, like, Gauntlet Legends. I can't really tell. Yeah, it's like an expansion because it adds only five new levels, it says. But the biggest addition is four new character classes. You can play as a dwarf, a knight, a jester, and a sorceress. Hmm. So Merlana instead of Merlin.

41:36 Now on the console side, things get a little funny here. We have Gauntlet the Third Encounter. Okay. You know, Gauntlet 2 was on the NES. Where's Gauntlet the Third Encounter? The PlayStation 1. The Atari Lynx. Okay. In 1990. You notice Atari's doing okay here because they own this property. They got that tension. So, yeah, they're like, you know what? We own this property. Might as well make it on our Atari Lynx. It uses the same exact box art as the NES. Wow. Like, the game from 1988, so two years later, they just say, yeah, throw the same box art. I'm not going to design a whole new cover.

42:10 It's pretty much Gauntlet again, but you get to choose between eight character classes. So you get the Valkyrie and the Wizard from the original Gauntlet. They're making new levels too, right? Yes, yes, yes. But it's the same concept. They haven't added anything different to it other than these character classes. But listen to these character classes. You're soon going to be picking up an Atari Lynx to play this game because if you don't want to play as the Valkyrie or the Wizard, too bad you can't play as the Warrior or the Elf anymore.

42:40 Instead, you play as maybe a Samurai. Okay. What about a Punk Rocker or an Android or a Gunfighter or the Nerd? The Nerd. What's the Nerd do? I have no idea, but I've got to watch a video. Or the last choice and the one I would definitely pick, the Pirate. I do like that. I want that Pirate class, and I want to know what makes him different than the Nerd.

43:03 Treasure probably makes him happy. I like that they're just doing – that's actually true. He gets more bonus experience from Treasure. I like that they're just doing different character classes to the same Gauntlet concept. They haven't rethought it and been like, no, it should have an overarching story and just be different. This is the water levels, and these are the jungle levels. They're just keeping it the same way. So after Gauntlet, the third encounter, how about Gauntlet 3? Okay. Yeah, that's true. Gauntlet 3, the final quest on home computers. That wasn't the last one, was it? It wasn't. Okay. It comes out in 1991, a year after Gauntlet the third.

43:46 It's mostly the same, except for the new character classes are a rock man. Rock man. So not to be confused with a punk rocker. Is he a man made of rocks? He's a man made of rocks. Okay. As opposed to the punk rocker that was in the third encounter. Petrus. I don't know what Petrus is, but imagine that's some kind of fantasy species. Yeah. A dracolus. A lizard man.

44:13 Oh, I see. Okay, okay. No, no. Petrus is the name of the rock man. Okay, I get it now. And dracolus is the lizard man. Then there's an ice man and a merman. Ooh. These are great classes. I would love to play as merman. When are we going to finally get- This is like Goonies 2. Yeah. Except for the mermaid. I might explain, though. Maybe they know each other. Yeah, that's true. And finally, it's like we're almost like, when is Gauntlet Ultimate going to happen? Where you get all the classes in the original Gauntlet.

44:40 You know, like all these classes that were ever added. It's an idea. It's funny you asked that, because it's coming out next year. Great. Are you developing it? I am. Okay, fantastic. Go starting tonight. Fund my Kickstarter. I'm going to be a starter. Gauntlet 3, the final quest. It was an isometric perspective for the Gauntlet game. Two-player cooperative mode as well. Then on the PS2, this might be the version of the game Sean played. What was PS1? It was- But there is no PS1 game. Okay, it must have been PS2.

45:11 Gauntlet Seven Sorrows. And that's a follow-up to Gauntlet Legends and Gauntlet Dark Legacy on the arcade. And it finally adds online play. Yikes. So you can play Gauntlet online on the PS2 with a broadband connection.

45:27 And the last one, Gauntlet Slayer Edition. This came out on PS4 in 2015. Oh, wow. And I just put my own note here, because I watch all the videos for these ones. I don't have Gauntlet Slayer Edition, so I just watched it. And I just wrote, it overstayed its welcome. Gauntlet Slayer Edition looks terrible. They didn't really update much. Does it have any microtransactions?

45:53 You know, that might be what the Slayer thing is about. But no, it doesn't have microtransactions as far as I can tell. Probably it's online. Nice. But it doesn't look like they've thought about how they could change Gauntlet from 1985 to 2015. So what a sad 30th anniversary Gauntlet Slayer Edition was. Oh, well. Well, it's been more than 30 years now, but we're going to determine if Gauntlet on the NES is an essential game on our essential games list.

46:26 Joe? I know there were some little flaws and it wasn't crazy at first about the time ticking down. But I think I want to throw this one an essential vote. I really like that it's bringing this co-op experience to the table that I didn't play.

46:44 But I like it. I feel like I'm very interested in playing it. And playing it single player was pretty fun. And it brought like this Dungeon Crawler Explorer style is something new that I kind of want to go back and play it. I'm not sure I'll ever play through 100 levels of it. But with the password system, provided that the passwords all work, I don't mind kind of quote-unquote saving my progress and coming back and trying it again. So I'm going to give it an essential vote. All right. It's got one. It needs two. Two? Okay. I'm just making sure I have these rules right. I almost said three. Sean?

47:22 So I'm sort of on the fence about this game because it definitely ticks all the boxes on how unique of an experience it is at this point in the NES's life cycle. But I think in order for me to put it on the essential games list, I personally have to enjoy playing it to some extent. And while I didn't hate it, and I have had some good things to say about it, it wasn't my favorite thing. So if this does become an essential game, I will not have my name attached to it.

47:57 All right. And, you know, I think a lot of people are going to think that I'm going to vote not essential because I was pretty tough on the game. But I'm tough on every game. You never know where I'm going to go here. I will say one thing that I didn't touch upon because we just didn't get there is there's this diagonal shooting that is possible but is really finicky. And you have to, like, lock yourself into it in a way where it's not accurate but it's useful to be able to do diagonal shooting. And I hated that. That was, like, my least favorite thing was when I was in a position where I needed to do that. And the best practice was just to lock yourself in a corner of blocks. Yeah, you have to, like, walk into it. Didn't like that.

48:40 So that has no sway in my essential game, but I just had to say that. Yeah, I mean, it's doing a lot of new things. And the cooperative mode was really cool to be playing two people at the same time. We did get to do that with Contra, though. And I know some people are like, oh, well, it wasn't that great in Contra. And I thought it was fantastic.

48:58 So that isn't that new. The dungeon crawling thing was more satisfying for me when I was going through the dungeons in Legend of Zelda. And so for that case, I'm kind of removed from this one. So it's not going to get there for me. But, Joe, I respect you for putting it on the list. We'll make a note that you voted it essential. I respect you, too, Joe. I respect you. You guys are very agreeable.

49:19 Even when we were disagreeing or when we agree, we speak like we disagree. You don't even know what it was about. I agree. Yeah. Cool. So do you agree that it won't be an essential game? I totally agree. I mean, I agree that it won't be, but I still wish it was. Got it. Okay. Maybe Gauntlet 2 will get there. Maybe. Yeah. If it improves. Why not? Yeah. I think for this game specifically, it seems like the arcade version would be awesome to one day get a hold of. And this NES one, the core gameplay loop didn't suck me in. And the actual combat wasn't satisfying. So that's why I took it off. I think it has a lot going for it that we haven't seen before, which is great.

50:05 But maybe Gauntlet 2 will refine that. And if you know something about Gauntlet 2 listeners, why don't you write to us on the Twitter? Don't spoil it for us. At NostalgiaCast if you think that that one might make it essential. There was a time where we were talking about other games maybe becoming essential in their later iterations. And someone was like, no, don't waste your time. The next one's worse.

50:28 I forgot which one that was. Maybe it was Akari Warriors, which definitely was true. Akari Warriors 2 was garbage and unfounded from the first one. Like it's really just like, I can't believe they're the same franchise. But we, Nostalgia, are a franchise. We do this every Friday. I hope you join us. I hope you write to us at NostalgiaCast on Twitter. Or you can write to me at Esposito Film on Twitter.

50:53 Joe and Sean are always over my shoulder. Even right now. We record, we set up our mics over his shoulder. Don't be afraid that if you tweet at me or at NostalgiaCast that they won't see it. They see it. They're always looking. Yeah. Remember that time? I've seen your tax returns.

51:12 Really? Yeah. Nice. Remember that time that we posted that Super Smash Brothers meme that had nothing to do with Nostalgia? That was Sean. Sean made that. So we are also memers. Sean's a professional memer. Sean does that for a living. You can contact me through Mike and I will make you a meme. I will make either, I'll make a meme for you or I'll make you into a meme. Yeah, there are really. For a nominal fee. There's not too many NES memes. It's true. Yeah.

51:42 Why do you think that is? I think memes as we know them are a relatively new phenomenon and maybe not have existed so much in the NES days. But Nintendo is also very litigious. They see a meme, they go right after you. Super Nintendo has some memes though. They have Big, Big Yoshi. Big, Big Yoshi? Yeah, Big Yoshi. I don't know this one. They have the Big Yoshi from Super Mario RPG. Oh, okay. Big, Big Yoshi. That sounds great. Like Big Yoshi? Yeah, he's Big Yoshi. But Big. Because he's so big. Okay. Like a sausage? No. Not like a sausage.