As featured in Retrogaming Times Monthly issue #25, June 2006.

We've reached the end of the line, only one NES Tengen game that saw the light of day is left to be looked at - that game is Gauntlet.  In one of the most obvious home conversions Tengen could have decided upon, and one of the first unlicensed NES games ever, this arcade masterpiece was headed to living rooms across the nation.  In the arcades of the mid 1980's Gauntlet was a smash hit.  Featuring an overhead view of vast and complex dungeons filled with enemies and puzzles, there were few other games that received the same 'round the clock play.  Up to four players could adventure together, leaving and joining the quest at any time.  Take the role of Thor the Warrior, Thydra the Valkyrie, Merlin the Wizard, or Questor the Elf on an endless adventure through the Gauntlet.  Even though the levels would become increasingly more complex and enemy infested, the goal remained the same: to survive and find the exit to the next stage.

Some compromises had to be made when converting the game over to the NES hardware.  Of course the first being the limitation of only having two controller ports which cut the number of simultaneous players in half.  However Tengen got clever and worked the limitation into the backstory, explaining that the portal into the Gauntlet would only allow the passage of two mortals, forcing two of the warriors to remain behind.  Even though only two can play at the same time, all four characters are selectable.  The basic abilities of each character carry over nicely onto the NES - Thor is strong but slow, Thydra is well balanced, Merlin has weak defense but strong magic, and Questor is very fast but is also very weak.  The next change is how health is given to your character.  In the arcade each credit gave its respective character 700 additional units of health, this meant as long as you kept plunking coinage into the machine, you would live forever.  The NES version starts each character out with a specific base amount of health.  As treasures are collected the maximum amount of heath increases, starting at the first 50 treasures, then 100, then 200, and so forth doubling each time.  While this makes searching out every last bit of treasure far more important than in the arcade version it also makes the game much more difficult since every little hit and wasted step adds up.

Instead of simply replicating the stages of the arcade and having no central goal to the game, the NES version paints a fantasy backstory of the warriors setting off on a quest to retrieve the Sacred Orb.  Morak the Evil One has imprisoned the Sacred Orb in the lowest level of his Gauntlet, guarded by the fearsome Guardian.  There are one hundred individual rooms in five worlds which must be conquered in order to reach the Guardian and gain the Sacred Orb.  However it's not that easy, many rooms have multiple exits that will turn you around and send you back and forth between already completed areas.  Additionally to gain the Sacred Orb you must find your way into the eight clue rooms and uncover the special combination that will release the Sacred Orb to you at the end of the game.  If this sounds like a lot of bother - it is.  This huge fetch quest makes the overly complex ending stages of the Tengen port of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom look like a cake walk.  There is a password feature but it will only return you to the last treasure room you completed.  Yet with these changes the core of the game is still in tact.

The enemies are faithfully recreated, keys still have to be found to open doors, enemy generators still need to be destroyed to keep from being overwhelmed, the health meter constantly ticks down and survival is paramount.  It just doesn't look anywhere as good as it did in the arcade but the graphics are more than passable.  Nearly all the audio effects from the arcade are missing however that's to be expected as arcade Gauntlet had hundreds of digital sound effects and voice clips.  Instead a few nice dungeon crawling tunes play in the background however they don't seem to be stage specific.  It may all be there but it goes sour quick for one reason and one reason alone.  Gauntlet in the arcade was a game of frenzied action and quick strategy.  The NES version is riddled with slowdown that causes horrible control lag which leads to missed shots and death.  Half of the time you will constantly be killing enemies to keep their numbers down just so the game will get back to a somewhat stable frame rate.  It is because of this glaring problem that the game goes from being a vast challenge to an exercise in frustration.  Additionally player characters move slower diagonally than they do vertically or horizontally which is blatantly unfaithful to the arcade version.  Once the limited health is tacked on top of that and not being able to add extra credits for health at any time, the game simply quits being fun.  It's a shame since if the frame rate was more stable this would be an awesome adventure game for the NES.

What you're left with is a game that's a lot of fun through the first dozen stages but after that the technical limitations begin to appear which causes the entertainment factor to disappear.  Tengen gave gamers more with the NES version of Gauntlet but maybe they offered up a little too much.  Simply put, it's far too ambitious a task for someone that enjoyed Gauntlet in the arcade.  Much in the same way as with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom later on, Tengen simply drifted too far away from the arcade formula and ended up giving the player overwhelming choices in what should have been an action arcade game.  Just the same both a licensed and unlicensed version were released with only the usual copyright screen changes.  In the end Gauntlet on the NES is a strange enigma.  A game I want so desperately to just sit down with for hours and fight my way to the end, yet after getting half way through world three things have gotten so frustrating that I simply give up.  There's so much potential there but it never comes to fruition.
 

"InsaneDavid" also runs a slowly growing gaming site at http://www.classicplastic.net/dvgi

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