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Gauntlet (Arcade Game)

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About This Episode

We’re diving deep into the dungeon to celebrate 40 years of Gauntlet, the legendary arcade game that changed the way we played together. Four players, endless enemies, and that unforgettable voice: “Wizard needs food… badly.” We explore the origins of Gauntlet, the factors that led to its critical and financial success, and how it helped pave the way for the co-op games we love today. So grab a  potion, steer clear of Death, and let’s journey back to 1985. Gauntlet turns 40 – and it still rules the dungeon!

(May contain some explicit language.)

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Show Notes

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker Transcript
Jon Welcome back, Gen X Grown-Up Podcast listeners to this backtrack edition of the Gen X Grown-Up Podcast. I am John. Joining me as always, of course, is George. Hey, man.
Jon Good. Wouldn’t be a show without Moe. Hey, Moe.
Mo Hey, how’s it going?
Jon You know, in this episode, we are diving deep into the dungeon to celebrate 40 years of Gauntlet, the legendary arcade game that changed the way we played together. Four players, endless enemies, and that unforgettable voice, Wizard Needs Food Badly.
Jon We’ll explore the origins of Gauntlet, the factors that led to its critical and financial success, and how it helped pave the way for the co-op games we love today. So grab a potion, steer clear of death, and let’s journey back to 1985.
Jon Gauntlet turns 40 and it still rules the dungeon. Before we get into that, though, it is time, as always, for my favorite part of the show, fourth listener email.
Jon We love that listen. We love that you write in.
Mo Okay. Thank
Jon And this time around, the fourth listener for this episode j l who dropped us an email subject line is green machine torture okay we were talking about some kid ride on some not not too long ago so let’s see what j says long time listener and patreoner thank you j we love you for that on the rewind summertime excuse me on the rewind summertime episode just released i got the same freaking toenail assault george did on his big wheel
Mo you.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo thank you
Jon I got the sick. little big Mine was on the green machine, though. I would stand on the back of my buddy’s green machine, and just about every time he braked, it would pinch the shit out of my pinky toe.
George All right.
Jon One scorching hot summer day in the suburbs of Los Angeles, I was on the back again, and my buddy’s goal was to get the green machine up to 150 miles per hour, full brake, and turn and try to flip it to see how far it would fly anywhere.
Jon full break and then turn and try to flip it to see how far I would fly off of it.
Jon So right up your alley, George, some little little brutality going on in their neighborhood.
George right
Jon Our 10 year old physics. He said that was our 10 year old physics experiment. Problem was I didn’t fly anywhere except my pinky toe. And the one next to it got flattened in between the hot, melty black plastic, the hot, melty black plastic tire and the metal break.
Mo Ouch.
Jon Like George, toenail was nowhere to be found, and the second toe got dislocated and was at about a 45 degree angle to the left.
Mo Ow. Ooh, ouch.
Jon Still have a scar on it and a crooked toe. Every day in the shower, it reminds me of the best times of my life. yeah How about that?
Mo That’s awesome.
Jon He says, and John, the studio tour video was awesome too. Thanks for that, Jay. ah He wraps up by saying, have a great week, y’all. JL.
Mo Awesome.
Jon Let’s, yeah. That’s. You know, I hadn’t thought about that. I have a few scars that when I look at them go, I remember being a young, dumb kid and that was a great day.
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Yep. Yeah. I have one caused by, you know, those, uh, those, those pedals that are all jagged on your, your BMX bike.
George Oh yeah, the grippers.
Jon The ones that grip your sneakers.
Mo yeah
Jon Well, they also grip the back of your heel. I can tell you, I have a big scar back there from that. And it makes me think Jay, thank you for writing in. We love that you did. We appreciate it every time force listener listens, but more importantly, takes the time to write in and let us know what they think about the show.
Mo you
Jon If you’d like your email feature here on the show, it’s dropped dead easy. Just hit us up at podcast at gen X grownup.com. Read every single one of most of them like Jay’s will eventually make the show. Okay.
Jon Time to head to the dungeon for gauntlet right after this quick break.
Jon In this Backtrack episode, we are focusing on the 40th anniversary of the Atari arcade game Gauntlet. Now, if you’re not familiar with Gauntlet, you’re in the minority, but that’s okay. We’re going tell you all about it.
Jon It was released it’ almost the 40th anniversary. Here in North America, it was released November 1985. UK, just a few weeks earlier in October of 1985, was developed released by Atari Games.
Jon Now, not to be confused with Atari Incorporated, which is the parent company that divested itself of the arcade section after the crash.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon And so it’s Atari Games. They’re the ones that continue to make arcade games like Road Blasters and stuff like that. But it was it was multiple companies at that time. But it’s still Atari. um So before we get into it, we’re going to talk a little bit about the game. But before we do, I want to do a quick round robin and ask about your familiarity with the game. And I can start and tell you that in general, it wasn’t my favorite game to play for more reasons we’re going to talk about.
Jon But it was a comfort game for me, meaning if I walk into arcade and I see a gauntlet, Probably pretty good arcade because they have some of the best games out there. And certainly I would play it plenty, but never got very far in it because as we’ll talk about later, it’s kind of a quarter suck.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon So how about you, George?
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon What’s your familiarity with Gauntlet?
George Yeah, I mean, so saw it in the arcades um when I was, I guess I would have been about like 14 years old when it came out.
Jon Perfect.
George um So that’s when I was getting, quote, serious about games, you know, at 14.
Jon Yeah.
Mo this is
George um I remember, um I’ll talk about some stuff later on in another segment, but I do remember the frustration with realizing very quickly that the game was only designed to continue playing as long as you kept shoveling money into it because, know,
Mo Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
George Even if you don’t get touched at all, not a single ghost or barbarian hits you or anything, your health is always declining.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George And once your health hits zero, you’re done.
Jon I know. Yep.
George So it’s literally just a timer.
Jon Yeah.
George And the timer only gets sped up when bad things hurt you. Other than that, you put a quarter in, you get a specific amount of time. And I didn’t like that part of it.
Mo you
Jon Yeah. What about you, Mel?
Mo see So this came out like right when I was going to college. So it was kind of like so it was one of those games that after came back for the summer, me my friends like, you know, we got together, went to hit an arcade.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo And it was like when the new machines that we saw there, which was pretty cool because, you know, it four player. And again, it had that, know, like we talked about little bit, had a little D&D vibe to it, you know.
Jon Right.
Mo So, yeah, it was definitely one that I played. I didn’t play. except Like I said, wasn’t my favorite by any stretch, but it was definitely unique. And, you know, it was one that we played, you know, it was like in the in rotation of games that we played.
Jon Right. And you alluded to this just a second ago. This game is a dungeon crawler and it’s hard to think about a dungeon crawling game without looking at its connection to Dungeons and Dragons.
Jon And this has a pretty solid connection to D&D.
Mo Oh, yeah. The designer, Logg, he actually, when that one of the i know inspirations for it was his son was a big D&D player. He played Dungeons & Dragons, Paper, and stuff like that. And you could definitely see it.
Mo I mean, you’re going through a dungeon, you have a ah barbarian, you have a thief, you have a wizard. I mean, you definitely can see the tie-in to Dungeons & Dragons on this one.
Jon Yep.
Mo And it was also based on this other four-player dungeon call from Atari called, I’m sorry,
Mo What was the game of the game?
Jon It’s right there. It’s called dandy.
Mo Oh, it’s called Dandy.
Jon It’s the last thing there.
Mo I thought that was an explanation.
Jon Yeah.
Mo I’m sorry.
Jon Yeah.
Mo I’ll just go back.
Jon Yep.
Mo And it was also based on this other game that he used to play on the Atari 8-bit called Dandy. Now that I’m not familiar with.
Jon Oh yeah.
Mo Did you guys play that one?
Jon Yeah.
George No.
Jon Yeah. Yeah. it We’ll talk about that a little bit more later. There was quite a bit of consternation around Dandy.
Mo and Okay.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
George Well, we should probably at least set the field with a description of the game for the five or six people who haven’t seen it or played it that might also listen to this podcast.
Mo Yeah.
George ah So Gauntlet is set within a series of top-down, third-person, orthographic mazes where the object is to kill monsters, gather treasure, and find the exit in the level.
George Good luck with that because you never know where the hell those sons bitches going to be.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon Yep.
George Uh, you get an assortment of special items that can be located throughout the level items can increase the player’s health. So there goes the quarter suck a little bit, unlock doors, award more points, yippee, and destroy all the enemies on the screen.
Jon Yep.
Jon see
George That was a magic potion that would do that. Now, uh,
Jon That’s right. Yep.
George What I find very interesting, and I talked about this in a bit-by-bit episode um a few weeks ago, you only got to see ah part of the maze at a time.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George And you’re your view would scroll as you moved around the maze.
Jon Right.
George But somebody has come up with a hack for the original code that shows you the entire maze screen at once while you’re playing.
Jon That’s right.
Jon Mm-hmm. Isn’t that cool?
Mo Oh.
George That makes it a hell of a lot of a different game.
Mo That would be a lot. Yeah.
George Absolutely.
Mo that That would change the whole game.
George Absolutely.
Jon Yeah. Now now i know where the exit is. It’s right over there.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon I can see it.
George Right.
Jon No more looking around. Well, you mentioned you’re roaming around fighting enemies, and there are a lot of different kind of monsters in the game. And they were, just like you described, Mo, Dungeons & Dragons connection, it was they were pretty D&D-ish.
Jon You had ghosts, grunts, demons, lobbers, which you mentioned, George, who threw rocks at you, sorcerers, and thieves.
George a
Mo Mm-hm.
Jon And so each kind of monster enters the level through a little generator, a little spawn house that you could also destroy.
Mo Yeah.
George werere
Jon um ah The most dangerous of all the enemies, though, was death. Literally this little black character.
Mo Bum, bum, bum.
Jon Yes, yes.
Mo Yep, Yep.
Jon Now, you can only destroy him with a magic potion. Magic potion, and you mentioned one of the pickups, it’s like ah like a smart bomb, right? It destroys everything on screen.
George yeah
Mo yep
Jon But just what’s on screen, not what’s just off screen.
Mo Oh, yeah.
Jon So they’re still going to pour in on you.
George Right.
Jon But those guys you can kill, death can only be killed after you, with one of those potions at all. ah Now, he will drain, ahead.
George Or he disappears if he drains enough life.
Mo Right.
Jon Right, right. So if he gets enough of your life, costing you enough quarters, then he’ll leave until the next time he’s needed but to to further encourage you to put more money in.
Mo So you still be alive, but…
George Right.
George There’s $2.50 out of your pocket. There we go.
Jon Yep. Yep. Thanks, Death.
Mo And you mentioned the characters in this game. I mean, you there’s four different characters you can play.
Jon Yep.
Mo um There was a a warrior named Thor.
Jon Right.
Mo Go figure.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo ah Merlin, the wizard. No imagination again.
George Right.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo Thyra, a Valkyrie, because they probably couldn’t think of a Valkyrie. And Quester, an elf, again, because they probably couldn’t come with a better name. but they were
Jon yeah
Mo And they said the names are actually on the cabinet artwork. But when you play the game, they’re just called like wizard and Valkyrie, they never actually said the names, which I thought was were maybe because different countries or something.
George Right.
Jon Oh, right.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo But each character, one thing that was kind of cool is that each character was different and you had to play them differently. you know
Jon Mm-hmm.
George Sure.
Mo you know The Barbarian was very strong attack. you know The Valkyrie, could take a lot of damage. you know The Thief, I think, was the fastest one. And the Wizard had like the ranged attack thing.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo And it really was a game that if you get people to play all four the characters, that was your best shot.
Jon Yep.
Mo you know, because then you could cover like a whole variety variety of different situations and stuff.
Jon Right. Well, full compliment. Exactly.
Mo hmm.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah. So do you guys have a favorite character? How about you, John? Did you have one?
Jon Yeah, I always was the wizard. I always liked to be the wizard because everybody attacks from a distance anyway.
Mo Hmm. Interesting.
Jon But the reason I liked to play the wizard was because his magic was the best. He had strongest magic, so it but it would affect a little more than what’s on the screen. And that meant that people playing with me would let me pick up the magic potion because they knew I could use it the best.
Mo yeah
Jon And so it kind of, people would protect me because I had all the potions and they would let me have the potions because that character was… it could use them better. So it was kind of, I guess it was a little self-serving that I picked the wizard. it was just because when I played with multiple players, but I was able to play the wanted.
Mo How about you, George?
George Uh, Valkyrie all day long. Number one, she was sexy.
Jon Really? Yeah.
George Number two, she had the best armor. So her quarter suck was less than everybody else’s.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo True.
George So I always played her and I often played on my own. i mean, every now and then you’d meet somebody in the arcade that would want to play with you.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo yes
George But most the time it was a four player game that you ended up playing by yourself.
Mo yeah it happened a lot yeah my favorite was probably the um the i’m sorry my favorite was definitely Thor the warrior just because he was the easiest to understand know just go there and attack that’s all you had to do know and try to and and try to get to like to the spawners and try to destroy those you know
Jon A lot. Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Jon Yeah. Right. And
George Right. Yeah.
Jon And I think, I don’t know if other guys can or not, but he could do hand-to-hand combat. He could just walk into guys.
Mo Yes.
Jon Now, they can still shoot him, but he can just walk up and do like like melee damage.
George yeah
Mo And to start pounding up. Yeah.
Jon That was pretty cool. So we we have a pretty good campaign here, the three of us, all different characters.
Mo Yeah. So that was my favorite. Yeah, really.
Jon So we just don’t have an elf. Yeah. ah Now, one thing that I talked earlier about, you know, warrior needs food badly speech synthesis and not just little noises like Hubert and not just a quick one off, you know, come play the game.
Jon It was laced throughout the game. It had a narrator that would occasionally say things. Now, the guy I learned, I didn’t know this. The guy’s name was Ernie Fasilius. He was the guy who did the voicing.
Jon So we’ve we’ve all impersonated him our whole lives and didn’t know the guy. But he makes statements that repeat the game’s rules like, shots do not hurt other players. Or, remember, don’t shoot food.
Jon Elf shot the food. Things like that. And he would occasionally comment on the game. and By the way, if the editor is worth a damn, he’ll put some of these voice samples in here. We have a crappy editor, so I hope he can find some of these samples.
Jon He’ll say things like, I’ve not seen such bravery. Or, let’s get you out of there when a player’s life force is low. And it’s… Something about having a narrator, it made you feel like you’re in a movie a little bit.
Jon Like somebody is out there going, oh, good job. You did this kind of thing. And it was this encouragement that would keep pushing you forward. And who hasn’t gone, oh, it needs food badly. That was a common, you would always hear because you’re always running low on health.
Mo Yeah.
Mo Yeah. And it’s also good because you tend to get wrapped up in your what your character is doing. So it was nice to get these like horrible clues like, oh, crap, there’s other people I need help. Yeah.
Jon Right. Moe was screwing up. He shot the health. He just told me that.
Mo Yeah.
George You know, originally this came out, of course, as we’ve talked about, as a four-player cabinet, but later on they did develop a two-player cabinet as they realized that it was harder and harder to get four people to shovel quarters into the game, especially four people who didn’t know each other because…
Jon Yeah, huge.
Mo Oh, really? Hmm.
George even though we might have gone to arcades with friends in the early eighties, you’re talking about the mid eighties when this came out, I think fewer of us went to the arcades with a group of people at that point.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Mo easy
Jon Maybe, yeah.
George I think we were more likely to go by ourselves and maybe if we were lucky, meet our friends there, if it was a local hangout. um But if you were just going there just to play some games for a little while, you just didn’t know the people. So a two player cabinet made sense.
George They made 7,800 of these cabinets and shipped them.
Jon Wow. that’s That’s healthy. That’s pretty healthy.
George Yeah, and there’s still quite a few out there today.
Jon Yeah.
George We see them every year when we go to free play conventions like Free Play Florida or SFGE.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Right.
George So Gauntlet is a it’s a pretty robust cabinet.
Jon Yeah.
George It was well put together. It was also very profitable.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
George You guys know I like the money end of things. So ah launched in 85 North America.
Jon Right.
George And it’s hard to get stats for how profitable a cabinet is because there’s two different ways, right?
Mo yeah
George It’s profitable to Atari when they sold it to a game center, right? To an arcade. That’s one way it’s profitable. But then the other way is how did that arcade make its money back through putting quarters?
Mo Yeah.
George Well, they didn’t report those to anybody, right? i mean, not like, okay, 500 quarters came out of Qbert this week or whatever, but…
Jon right
George A couple of um arcade operators did note that in the first few weeks, ah one in California got $15,000 in quarters in 16 weeks.
Jon Oh.
George So damn near $1,000 a week.
Mo Jeez.
Jon Wow!
Mo That’s like 60,000 plays.
Jon if If they bought that machine, it might have paid for itself even.
George I, you know, I mean, that was kind of the point now that’s good, but a Canadian operator did 4,500 dollars in nine
Jon Holy crap.
Jon Yeah.
George days
Jon Hmm. Yeah.
George I think he’d made a good purchase with that cabinet.
Mo Yeah, i think so too.
Jon Yeah, good money. Good money, yeah. It’s, is like you said, it’s well-built. It’s also, because it’s so big, often it is like the corner or the end cap of aisles, so it’s very visible.
Mo Yeah.
Jon It’s out there, because…
George Or right in the middle.
Mo Yeah.
Jon You’ve got to find a place to put that damn thing, right?
George Yeah.
Jon It’s enormous and it’s very, very visible. Yeah. Okay. All right. So now we have a handle on what Gauntlet is. If you were catching up now, you know what it’s all about. We get back. We’re going to talk a little bit more about that dandy reference we talked about. and And if the high scores even matter, stick around.
Mo So I mentioned in the last segment that it was also based on a game called Dandy that I wasn’t that familiar with, but you kind of alluded there was more to that story.
Jon Right.
Jon There is, yeah. there’s There’s lawsuit potential in the story even. so So after Gauntlet got released, this software developer named John Palovich threatened the lawsuit asserting that the concept for Gauntlet was based on his game he wrote called Dandy.
Mo Hmm.
Jon Now, you’ve probably never heard of Dandy. I was an Atari 8-bit nerd, so I absolutely played Dandy. i was It was among the games I pirated.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon Absolutely it was.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon So Dandy is… so My big Atari 800 had four controller ports in the front. So you could play four people at one time on some games if they supported it.
Jon Dandy was written by John Pelovich to support four people. It was a top-down view of a little smiley face navigating a maze, shooting monsters that had spawn points, picking up health.
Jon You could play four people at once. It’s Gauntlet!
Mo Yeah. okay.
Jon He published it through an Atari program they had called APX, the Atari Program Exchange. It’s where we got games like Caverns of Mars and Salmon Run.
Mo oh okay
Jon It was homebrew authors, basically. People who write in programs on their home computer, they would send them off and submit them to Atari. And if they liked them, they would give them a little light distribution. right So Atari got a free game. You got some recognition, a little money and a prize.
Jon So he’d written this and sent it to Atari in good faith. And then Gauntlet comes out. So he he released this in 1983. three
Mo Oh, wow. Okay.
Jon Two years later, Gauntlet came out and it’s so, it’s for players. It’s top-down maze. It’s shooting monsters. It’s picking up food. It’s all that. So there wasn’t ultimately a lawsuit because he had a relationship with Atari and working through the Apex program, the APX.
Jon So it turns out the conflict was settled with no suit being filed. But Atari Games, doing business at as TenGen later, ah they allegedly award Palovich a gauntlet game machine as an apology.
Mo okay
Mo Is that all he got? Mm hmm.
Jon Well, maybe more. I don’t There’s no lawsuit.
George I mean, if he put it in an arcade, he might have made $15,000 in weeks, you know?
Jon Maybe they came to an agreement.
Jon No kidding. You make your money back.
George So maybe…
Jon Yep. Yep. So, yeah. So Ed Logg claimed writing Gauntlet. He was clear. It’s hard to argue he was not inspired by Dan. He said that he absolutely, he played on his Atari 8-bit computer, so clearly he did it.
Jon In fact, Ed Logg is credited with a special thanks on all versions of Gauntlet through 86. and then removed on credits later, as late as 2007, though.
Mo Really? Yeah. Hmm.
Jon ah No one references Log as having involvement with it because there’s a little tarnish on who invented it.
Mo yeah
Jon So rather thanking Log over and over, they just said, yeah, it was never really argued in court. We’re going to not thank anybody as the originator, but we all know the history. So that was it. Dandy, by the way, later got reworked by Atari and published for the 2600, 7800 8-bit computers as a game called dark chambers which you’ve probably heard of it’s been a lot of re-releases lately from Atari it’s been a lot of compilations it’s a dungeon crawler very much like Dandy and like Gauntlet so yeah so it’s really interesting and it’s it’s nice that it didn’t come to a lawsuit but I’ve had to feel bad that the guy didn’t get more of a settlement or at least nothing that was reported it would have been nice maybe maybe so yeah
Mo Right ah but Maybe he did We just didn’t didn’t publicize it Maybe
George Yeah.
George Well, one of the other things we like to do with video game discussions on these podcasts, we like to talk about high scores and ah high scores were a way that 1980s kids tracked how good they were with a game and
Jon Yeah.
Mo Mm-hmm
George The quintessential place to find high scores for video games for a long, long time has been Twin Galaxies. and We know there’s a lot of ups and downs with the Twin Galaxies stories.
Jon galaxies. Yeah.
Mo yeah
George Walter Day started it, and there’s the whole Billy Mitchell saga and everything.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George It’s now owned by again a guy named Jace Hall, who is a complete dick, by the way.
Jon ah
George um and Not a limp, flaccid, partial one.
Mo No, really, do feel about him, George?
George I mean, just a complete dick.
Jon Complete, not just a part of it, the whole thing.
George Yeah. Uh, yeah.
Mo He’s the whole thing.
George And I’ll say that because I went looking for high scores because like, you know, it’s one of the things I have to do research on for this. Sure enough, twin galaxies gauntlet, high score page. I clicked the link.
George You must log in the fuck.
Mo Just to see a high score?
Jon You can’t just look at the results.
George I got a, you know, not any anymore.
Mo You can’t just look at a score? um what the hell?
Jon What?
George So I’m like, okay, let me create an account.
Jon What?
George It’s probably free. No big deal. I go to create account and I’m like, okay, here’s my username. Here’s a password I choose. Okay. Yeah. You can have my email, blah, blah, blah. Check the little, I understand all the shit I’m never going to read in the EULA agreement thing.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George Button still ah not highlighted. The submit button won’t let me click it. What the fuck? They want my phone number?
Mo Why does it need your phone number?
George The hell do they want my phone number for?
Jon to To check high scores? Come on.
George Okay, fine. Here’s my phone number. Still not clickable. Like, okay, what bullshit is this page trying to like key log me or some shit?
Jon What’s wrong?
George I don’t know what the hell’s going on here.
Jon Right.
George And then I look next to email and next to phone number. There’s two buttons. verify. I have to verify my phone number and my email before I can submit to have an account on Twin Galaxies just to view high scores now.
Mo That seems a little excessive.
Jon That’s a lot of work to check I scores on gauntlet. Yeah. Okay.
George So guess what I didn’t do?
Jon Okay.
Mo Yeah.
George So I just did a little quick Google AI research. Looks like that the current high score was set by a guy named MRK, and he set it in 2016. There’s a video that was put out on the Twin Galaxies YouTube page in 2023 that shows a score points
Jon okay
George that he reached as a singleplayer game playing the wizard for almost eleven hours
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Whoa.
Mo but On one quarter, technically?
Jon that’s That’s the question, right?
George I don’t know. It’s Twin Galaxies paywall phone bullshit.
Jon That’s the question.
Jon Right.
George I can’t tell you what that means. I can’t imagine that it’s on one quarter. And I’ll tell you why.
Jon Right.
George I don’t think that’s possible to play for that long because even if you get all the food products and you don’t get touched by a single creature, which I find highly unlikely in a single player gauntlet game,
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Right.
George you’re losing life as a matter of time. The quarter to life ratio was set specifically for you to only be able to play for a specific amount of time on one quarter.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo Right.
George And to me, if you’re playing this now for a Twin Galaxies high score, what prevents you from ever finishing? Now he did reach level 311 apparently.
Mo wow
Jon Wow.
George I would never even attempt to go that high. So to me, this is less of a high score and more of an endurance challenge.
Jon Yeah.
Jon Endurance. Yeah. you And what’s odd is when I think back to gauntlet, how I never considered the high score to be a goal I was pushing toward.
Jon i didn’t check the high score.
George Right.
Mo Yeah, really.
Jon I didn’t see how close I was to it. I never remembered. Did I put my name in? Maybe if it asked me, I don’t recall. But the thing is, like you said, first, you’re on a clock, so it’s pay to win. As many tokens as you choose to put in, you can keep adding health.
Jon As long as you do that, your score never resets.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Now, if you if you run out of health and and start over, yes, your score resets, but you can keep the score running as long as you’re willing to pay for it.
George Right.
Mo And it gives you if you it gives you a couple of seconds, too, after you die.
Jon I got to think,
Mo It’s like 10 seconds.
Jon Yeah, yeah.
Mo Yeah.
George Right.
Jon yeah I’ve got to think that this high score has got to have some limit on it. One token, five tokens, ten tokens, something for a metric. Otherwise, it would be infinite. I don’t remember caring about the high score on this game even.
Mo Yeah, it’s like levels, right? You want to see how many levels you can get.
Jon How far can I get?
George How many levels you can get?
Mo Yeah.
Jon What can I see?
George Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah, yeah.
George Now, that would be an interesting metric.
Jon And they had warps. Like, you could jumped to level four or eight. Mm-hmm.
George Yeah, like if you could say how many levels completed on $1 or something like that.
Mo Right.
Jon Right.
Mo yeah Right, right.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George That would be an interesting metric. But, yeah, ah you know, so Gauntlet, not the best to look for high scores and fuck Jace Hall. So there we go.
Mo Okay. Okay.
Jon you know I remember, so, you know, I have a home arcade homemarkade cabinets that I built that that you’ve all played on my house at one time or another.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon And I had a friend visiting from out of town. He’s, oh, I love Gauntlet. Let’s play it. I’m like, you know, Infinite Quarters. He’s like, I can’t wait. And after 30 minutes, we’re like, can we quit yet?
George Right.
Jon Because when it’s infinite quarters, it’s nowhere near as entertaining. You just barrel into monsters because you don’t care, right?
George Right.
Jon You can just keep playing, keep fighting, keep, oh, no more credits, 10 more credits. I don’t care. It cost me anything. Without the penalty of death, the challenge of using skill is entirely removed.
Jon And so as a kid, I couldn’t afford to play that way.
Mo Yeah,
Jon But as an adult, I’m kind of glad I was limited in that way because it would have made the game less memorable, less enjoyable.
Mo yeah it was like that time when you played Rampage. Remember? we And…
Jon Yes.
George I was going to bring it up. This is just like Rampage.
Mo Yeah, was just like Rampage, where it was fun for a bit, but then when have infinite lives, it’s like, we’re the same.
Jon Yep.
Jon Ah, we’re in Detroit again.
George Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Let’s see how we can do, right?
Mo Okay, let’s…
Jon It becomes less challenge.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah. You don’t care.
Mo Or less interesting.
Jon Yeah.
Mo I mean, you know, it’s just you don’t care.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yep. So I’m glad ga was um’m glad Gauntlet was what it was. in ah In the past, I wished it was less punishing, but now in hindsight, it turns out you need that you need that punishment to keep you trying to get better at the game.
Mo Yep.
Jon Otherwise, what’s the point?
George As you might ah have been able to tell from the last segment, I have some strong opinions about this game. And i also have some strong childhood memories of going to play Gauntlet in the arcade.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon Okay.
George And the thing that I remember the most is what I alluded to earlier, that at that stage of my life, I wasn’t necessarily going to the arcade with a group of friends. I was generally going just by myself and I would end up making or meeting a friend as young people often do in those situations.
Jon hmm.
George Cause you don’t have the same hangups you do a, early 20 year old, maybe, or something like that. Uh, when you’re younger and you’re in an arcade where everybody is there to have fun, you all share that camaraderie.
George Uh, and gauntlet was a game that would bring people together that had the similar mindset of, you know, let’s play this game. Let’s do the best we can. Let’s get to level 12 or 20 or 40 or whatever we can do.
George And, um, very quickly on one occasion, I remember making a really good friend that I stuck with throughout the next two or three years worth of arcade gameplay and travel.
George And his name was Jeff. He was a super good guy. we got to know each other real well. We got our driver’s licenses at roughly the same time, a year or so later.
Jon cool
George um And we would often ah talk about how the game that brought us together, which was Gauntlet, we didn’t play together after those first few sessions because it just, like we talked about a little while ago, it becomes unfun very quick because you recognize that your skill level has nothing to do with that game.
Mo you.
Jon Really? Yeah.
George If you give me a quarter in Galaga, I can play that shit for hours But if you give me a quarter in Gauntlet, I’ve got a set limited amount of time, and it was never worth the value after those first initial plays when the game first got released.
Jon Yeah.
George So for me, I appreciate Gauntlet for introducing me to a new friend, but I don’t really like Gauntlet that much.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon Mm-hmm. can see that.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yeah. Understandable. Yeah. It changed as you got older it for you. was it it It was a facilitator, but then it was, yeah, there were more fun games and games that get more bang for your buck, too.
George Yeah.
George Absolutely.
Jon Yeah.
George What about you, Mo? You got any memories from Gauntlet back in the day?
Mo Yeah. I cause it came out, like you said, I was out of, i was away at college when it first came out and I’m still remember this. Like the so first summer we came back from freshman year college, got back with my two best friends. I hadn’t seen most of the time and who we used to hit arcades constantly.
Mo That was our thing.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo Right.
Jon Yep.
Mo So let’s go hit an arcade. And we went there and we, Gauntlet was there, which was like one the first times saw a game that all three of us could play the same time. You know, cause usually it’s,
Jon Oh, sure.
George Oh yeah
Mo It was only two players, so all three of us were able to play.
Jon Yeah.
Mo It was a little bit bittersweet, though, because it was like we kind of realized that that thrill of going to arcade was like not as ah as big as it was, you know, before you went to college. You know, who kind of yeah we kind of came back.
Jon Oh, no.
George Right.
Jon Really?
Mo We played for a while, but then we’re like, ah hey, let’s ah go get pizza, you know, and, you know, I went with it just talking.
George Right.
Mo And, you know that was actually what we want to do than play arcade games like we used to do.
Jon right that’s ridiculous that’s a waste of time maturing who does that
Mo i don’t know. Maybe we matured. I don’t know. Got older. Who knows? I know that’s crazy, but it was the thing was that I still remember distinctly that we went to arcade and gauntlet, like you said, George front and center.
Mo Cause cause it needed all that space around her for four people to play, you know, and we did play like quite a bit.
George Yep.
Jon yep
Mo And we, you know, again, we went to the arcade a few times that summer, but every time we played, every time we went back, we ah definitely played gauntlet.
Jon Yeah. Yeah, that’s great.
Mo Yep. How about you, George? I’m sorry. How about you, John?
Jon Yeah, you know, probably my ah strongest memory of Gauntlet. I mean, the things you mentioned, of course. Yeah, you meet people in the arcade and you play it and you can play with your friends all together if you happen to have friends at the same point.
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
Jon But really, it’s like a flashpoint in my mind. If I think of the game Gauntlet or I play it or anything, the immediate thing that pops in my head is a memory of for whatever reason.
Jon So, you know, Walt Disney World has… this monorail that goes between the ticket counter and, and the main park, the magic kingdom.
Mo yeah
Jon And on the way it goes through the contemporary hotel.
Mo yeah
George Mm-hmm.
Jon Now I’ve never stayed at the contemporary hotel, but A friend of mine who his mom worked there or something said, dude, they have the best arcade at the Contemporary Hotel.
Jon Well, I had no way of knowing that because I’d never been there other than roll through it on a monorail.
Mo Yeah.
Jon you know, I never stepped foot inside of it. He’s like, yeah, if you want to come with me, we can go. hi your mom give you some money for quarters and we’ll go with my mom to work one day and we’ll hang out in the Contemporary because there are places you can do things for free in there.
Jon It’s a hotel, you know, and kids being wild.
Mo It was Disney, yeah.
Jon And I remember, we said, where’s the arcade? And it’s a huge open area, like a cavern.
Mo Yeah.
Jon And it must have been, I don’t know, four stories tall. The ceiling, it was enormous. And the arcade was filled. And Disney doesn’t do anything halfway, right?
Mo No.
Jon So if they’ve got Galaga, they got 17 Galagas. If they’ve got Donkey Kong, they got a dozen Galagas.
Mo They all work, too. Yeah. Yeah.
George Right.
Jon they had And you would see them like they would, and you would say four Donkey Kongs around a pillar, right? They put them all together. So it’s really impressive. I remember seeing this cluster. I came around the corner of this arcade, a cluster of gauntlets.
Jon It was rare to see two gauntlets in the same arcade.
Mo yeah
Jon let alone four of them. So they had four gauntlet machines and yeah, they all had of space around them. So they’re in this big open area and they were full. There were so many people there playing gauntlet.
Mo Jeez.
Jon It was the biggest, the biggest con,
Mo geez
Jon It was the biggest collection of gauntlets ever saw in one place. It was the most people I ever saw actually on them at the same time because the hotel was full and tourists and people there to waste time, right? So that one time at the Contemporary that I spent, I mean, six hours or whatever during his mom’s work, but we got to spend time in this enormous arcade.
Jon Now, it wasn’t free. It wasn’t like free play, like something you could do, but… But there were tons and tons of gauntlets there. So when I think about it, it’s not so much the playing of Gauntlet. It’s the time that I actually saw a bunch of them together in Wild at the same place.
Jon And that was at the Disney Resort.
Jon Now, Gauntlet has a long and storied legacy. We get back from this quick break. We’re going to share a little bit of that with you before we get out of here. Stick around.
Mo Like you mentioned, John, I mean, there’s this game is has a long legacy. of
Jon Mm-hmm. It won’t die.
Mo It definitely made an impact. um
Jon Yeah.
Mo And just think about all the ports that it went to, all the different computer systems that it went to. We mentioned some of them, but they even had an MS-DOS version, if you can believe it.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo ah
Jon Terrible.
Mo yeah
Jon Terrible.
Mo Apple II, Mac, Nintendo Entertainment, Apple II, Atari ST, Commodore 64. I mean, pretty much if there was a computer system out at that time, this game was ported to it.
Jon Yep.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. And some of them were, it’s funny that it made it back to the Atari 8-bit home computer where Dandy was that copied it.
Mo e
George Right.
Mo Yeah.
Jon So it was funny. Mm-mm.
George ah You know, ports weren’t the only way that this game’s legacy has been upheld over the years, of course. If you do something right in an industry, you’re going to do it again, right? Hollywood’s always about sequels and so are video games.
Mo Yeah.
George So we get Gauntlet 2 in 1986.
Mo Yeah.
George So just one year later, they couldn’t even wait. is like
Jon Yep.
George Stick a 2 on the sticker on the outside and put some different colors on it. And there you go. We got another game out there.
Jon Go again.
George But after that, that was kind of when arcades were really starting to fade.
Mo Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jon No kidding.
George Mo, you talked about coming back from college and not really being interested in arcades.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George John, you and I met in 91. ah we were We didn’t go to arcades at all in that time period because we were in the Star Trek Club.
Jon Yeah.
George We just did stuff where? at home and that’s where a lot of these other gauntlet sequels started coming out so uh you got 1990 gauntlet the third encounter on home console you’ve got uh 91 gauntlet 3 the final quest obviously it wasn’t uh
Jon Yeah. At home with our computers. Yeah.
Jon Ah.
Jon I remember that one.
Mo you
George You got Gauntlet 4, the search for Spock or what the fuck ever that would have been. 1998, I kind of remember this one because it was back in an arcade again in 1998, Gauntlet Legends.
George And I remember seeing this cabinet and I was like…
Jon Oh, Legends! Yes, for sure! yeah
George what what’s legendary it’s the same four fucking characters what’d they do in that time period uh you then you got gauntlet dark legacy gauntlet seven sorrows in the arcade you got a 2014 gauntlet home console reboot because you know when you run out of sequels you need to reboot the franchise right and
Jon I’ve never heard of that.
Mo Remember, yeah.
Jon Start over at the beginning.
Mo Of course, yeah.
George And from there, it’s just really been just reissues and remasters and things of that nature.
Jon Yeah.
George So it’s been long storied history of ports and sequels, but at least the franchise has kept people entertained and interested for the better part of, what is this, 40 years now since this thing came out?
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon 40 years. That’s right.
Mo That’s crazy.
Jon Yeah.
George Yeah. Yeah.
Jon And we talked about how it really is an unfair game, how it’s constantly ticking down your life all the time.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George and
Jon Now, now, I don’t know. You said there’s no skill involved. I’m guessing maybe super Uber people know how to get to the food and maximize. It still feels to me like it’s it’s a losing proposition, but.
George Right.
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
Jon But so I have a couple of cheats for you from my database of arcade game cheats that you can use. Now, the good news is they’ll work 100% every time. The bad news is they cost you health to do ah so
Mo What? Oh, geez. Yeah.
Jon Yep. Yep. So mentioned on the game, there’s all these walls in the map that you have to, there are doors that if you get a key, it unlocks all these doors.
George Right.
Jon or If you touch it with, you have a key.
Mo yeah Yeah, something like that.
George Right.
Jon If, however, you having trouble finding the key, if you will stand still and not do anything for 40 health units to tick down, which is probably about 40 seconds, it’s probably about one per second.
George Hmm.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Every door disappears in the game. It’s wide open. They just insta unlock.
George Oh.
Mo We have to wait until you’re just about to die?
Jon Not die, you just have to tick down 40 health units.
Mo Okay.
Jon So you’re 40 units lower in health than you were, but it magically unlocks all the doors. No keys needed. So I remember learning that one as a kid. I didn’t know the second one, but the benefit to that one is if you have a key, you can wait for the doors to unlock on their own and you still have a key to use later.
Mo Oh, okay.
Jon So a little benefit like that.
George Right.
Jon The other one that it’s kind of… It’s kind of not worth it. So depending on like dip switches will determine how many ah health points you get it for a quarter. I feel like it was 800, 1,000, 1,200.
Jon eight hundred a thousand twelve hundred I don’t know how many would you get. But just like with the waiting 40 health units to get all the doors to disappear, if you stand still and don’t take any damage for 185 health units, which I got to guess is like three minutes, the way it ticks down at one per second, every wall turns into an exit.
Mo Mm hmm.
Mo Jeez.
George you
Jon Every wall in the in the entire maze. And you just walk into it. So if you’re sick of this particular level, if you will wait like three minutes, the exits will all just manifest instantly. You touch one and you moved on.
Jon I never found that one out when I was a kid. But I can’t imagine why you would bake that one in other than just to cost people money to try it.
Mo Well, yeah.
George I mean, i don’t think you can stand and not take damage for three minutes because if, first of all, you’ve stood there for 40 seconds and all the walls have disappeared, right?
Mo Yeah, i was wondering too.
Jon Yeah.
George So all the beasts are coming at you.
Mo So why? Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Mo I would think.
Jon Well, all the doors disappeared.
George So it’s… um
Jon Right. Right. Right. So maybe, maybe you could find a corner. It would be tricky. It’d be tricky. Yeah.
George Yeah, I mean, i don’t think… I mean, they’re going to find you.
Mo Yeah,
Jon that’s the So next time you’re there, especially if you’re at a free play arcade, does it cost you anything? Try them out and see, find a gauntlet and just stand around and see what happens.
Mo it’s true.
Jon And now, you know, there’s something to see. Even if you’re terrible, this game, if you suck at it, you never had fun with it. Try it the next time you see it. Cause you can try these two tricks out. So clear the walls. Everything’s at exit.
Jon All you gotta do. All you gotta do is nothing. It was super easy.
Mo That’s weird. Yeah, that’s odd.
Jon It is odd. Yeah. I’m not sure why you would do that, but they did it. They had it. Whatever, Ed Log. All right.
Jon right, gentlemen, I think that wraps it up for our backtrack all about the arcade game gauntlet on its 40th anniversary. I’ve had a hell of a good time chatting with you. Before we leave, I want to thank another Patreon supporter.
Jon This time is one of those upgrades.
Mo Oh, wow.
Jon You guys remember Brad B. He also goes by Zork on our YouTube channel and over on pit Discord and everywhere.
Mo Yes.
George Oh, yeah.
Mo Yeah, yeah.
Jon Now, Brad has been up and down. He’s had financial hardships and windfalls and stuff. And he often will say, man, I got to drop out of Patreon or going to drop it back to a lower number or whatever. You know what he does? Every time things get better for him, he comes back and he re-ups his membership.
Jon you know, he was at like just a dollar a month or whatever.
Mo Wow.
Jon So a couple of months ago, he came back and goes, hey, things are shaping up a little bit. I’m going to bump it up to where I feel like supporting you. Brad, nobody has to do that.
Mo That’s amazing. No.
Jon Nobody’s got to do that. You’re supporting us already. And to say, hey, I can afford to support you a little bit more. It’s so incredibly generous and humbling to me that you would think that, hey, I’m doing better. You should do better, too.
Jon What a guy. What a guy. Brad, thank you for the yeah the increase in our salary from you. We’re really grateful for that regular monthly pledge. You, like so many other members, have gone to patreon.com slash Gen X Grown Up, opened up their hearts and their wallets, set up that regular monthly pledge for as little as a dollar a month.
Jon That’s all it takes. And we’re so grateful for you when you do. means the world to us. That is then going to wrap it up for this backtrack edition of the show. Don’t worry, though. We’ll have another one coming your way in two weeks.
Jon Next week is the standard edition of our show. Until then, I am John George. Thank you so much for being here, brother.
George Yes, sir.
Jon Mo, you know I appreciate you, man.
Mo he’s fun
Jon Fourth listener, it’s you. We all appreciate most of all, though. We can’t wait to talk to you again next time around. Bye-bye.
George See you guys.
Mo Take care, buddy.
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About The Author

Mo As someone who barely manages to squeeze in as a GenXer my memories include more of the 70's than those younger GenXers. Reading and movies are my passions with some video gaming thrown in there for good measure!

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