The phrase "Wizard needs food...badly!" could have been heard seeping from the quarter-eating 80's multi-player monstrosity known as Gauntlet. This machine had an insatiable appetite for quarters. Your character's health points were determined by the amount of quarters you fed the machine and the amount of food that your character could collect. If your health points ever reached zero, you simply put in more quarters to refresh your health points and continue on with the game. Because your character was so fragile it's health was always in jeopardy, guaranteeing that this game would go through your lunch money in matter of minutes. You can keep your SOCOM's and your GTA's. Give me Donkey Kong and a roll of quarters and I'll be happy. IMO, nothing can hold a candle to the old-school games from the 80's.

Download the Mame version of Gauntlet (right-click & save)
To play, download MacMame (for the Macintosh) or the latest version of MAME (for the PC)

Below you'll find screenshots (courtesy of the MAME version of this game) and with thanks to KLOV I present some insights to perhaps one of the most infamous arcade games from the 80's:

Manufacturer: Atari
Year: 1985
Class: Wide Release
Genre: Labyrinth/Maze
Type: Videogame
Monitor:

Orientation: Horizontal
Type: Raster: Standard Resolution
CRT: Color
19-inch Wells-Gardner 19K4900
Conversion Class: unique
Number of Simultaneous Players: 4
Maximum number of Players: 4
Gameplay: Joint
Control Panel Layout: Multiple Player
Controls:
Joystick: 8-way
Buttons: 2
Sound: Unamplified Stereo (requires two-channel amp)

Description

Up to four people can play at once, exploring dungeons and fighting monsters from a top-view perspective. Each player's character has different strengths and weaknesses. The players collect food, potions, and treasure in return for points, health, magic and power-ups.

Game Introduction

In this fantasy adventure maze game, there are four different player characters who each have different powers and/or weapons. The Warrior who wields a battle axe; the Elf who carries a bow and arrows; the Wizard who uses magic; and the Valkyrie who uses a sword and a shield.
The four players move through mazes searching for various items and killing monsters. The Warrior does the most damage. The Elf does the least damage but is the fastest. The Wizard can do the most damage with potions. The Valkarie is a good combination of strength and speed. Potions found wipe out varying amounts of enemies and enemy generators, depending on which player uses it. A player starts with a certain number of health points by putting quarters in the machine. These tick down with time and damage from enemies. Food replenishes them. Treasure counts for points. The game has no ultimate goal to be reached.

Technical

Main CPU: 68010. Sound CPU: 6502. Speech IC: TMS-5220C
The game's architecture is similar to that of the Atari System I games (e.g. Marble Madness).

This game was also released as a two-player upright whose program code differed in only a few of the EPROMs and used a different slapstick security chip.

Trivia

The player characters in the game are also known respectively as Thor (the Warrior), Questor (the Elf), Merlin (the Wizard) and Thydra (the Valkyrie).
In June 1994, Atari applied for and was later granted a patent for a "Multi-player, mutli-character cooperative play video game with independent player entry and departure". (#USRE035314)

A poorer version of this game (Gauntlet (PlayChoice)) was also available for Nintendo's PlayChoice arcade machines.

Fixes

The game has a single PCB which is exceptionally large and therefore more susceptable to traces being broken. Handle the board with care and do not bend it.
It is very common to see heavy burn-in on the right hand side of the screen. A layer of smoked lexan over the monitor will help disguise this when the power is off.

Legacy

Gauntlet
Gauntlet II
Gauntlet Legends
Gauntlet Dark Legacy