C64 Game Memories - Revisited 30+ Years later Gauntlet

Released in 1986 by US Gold, this was the official C64 version of the popular arcade game Gauntlet. I remember many a day spent with three other friends playing this multi-player dungeon game so it was a no brainer to get this on the Commodore.

On the Commodore version you could play 2 players together and I must have spent hours on this rather than homework back in the day!

Just like the arcade version you can choose from 4 different heros - Thor (Warrior), Thyra (Valkyre), Questor (Elf) or Merlin (Wizard) which each have slightly different characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. Eg Warrior had strong attacks but was slow and had poor magic levels whereas Wizard was the opposite. Elf was the weakest, but also the fastest.

I always tried to choose Valkyrie, which was not the best at anything, but could do everything adequately.

Gauntlet was a top down dungeon game where they idea was to escape to the next level against a ton of fast enemies which came in a variety of forms. Your health level decreases constantly so you cannot mess about and faster every time it touched an enemy. It then gets rejuvenated on the next level.

With 2 players it gets very tactical where one player would defend one corner whilst your team mate would take out anything on the other side. On the C64 there were 512 levels but I don't think I ever made it past 100 myself.

For an 8-bit computer the graphics are excellent for what they are, although I later got this on the ST and they dont compare well. Gauntlet spawned many similar games both before and after its actual release, the only one I remember playing was Rana Rama. Infact that may have come out before Gauntlet did.