Sounds From The Past: Gauntlet

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, Thygocanberra and I spent way too much time (and coins) playing Gauntlet.

This arcade game was released by Atari in 1985 and was the first 4 player arcade game. The genius of the game was that the players engaged as a team against the computer enemies on screen. If a player's character was killed, and the other players were still going, it was possible to feed in more coins and come back to the game. What a brilliant recipe for long play sessions and 4 times heaps of coins for the machine.

The players, up to four at once in the arcade version, selected among four playable fantasy-based characters; Thor the Warrior, Merlin the Wizard, Thyra the Valkyrie, or Questor the Elf. Each character had his or her own unique strength and weaknesses. The Warrior was strongest in hand-to-hand combat, the Wizard had the most powerful magic, the Valkyrie had the best armour and the Elf was the fastest in movement.

I have managed to locate some of the original sounds from the game. These include the origin of the now famous "who shot the food?" and the still spooky sound as a player's lifeforce is running out.

Don't shoot the food!:

Dontshoot food

Valkyrie needs food:

Valkneedsfood

Someone shot the food:

Someoneshotfood

Finding treasure:

Treasure

Lifeforce is running out

Lifeforce

Death sound:

Deathsound

I'm sure these sounds are still embedded in Thygocanberra's mind!

Comments

[Thygocanberra]

OK - you guys should make the app for this and my all time favourite - 'Pengo'

They were simpler times when Paul was living at Aquinas college...

[PythonMagus]

I never played the game (but I can just tell that YodaYellow wants to looking at the beautiful facial art on the wizard). You should be able to get that game on Linux. People quite often port classics like this onto linux. I can see the ROM on several sites and emulators are available too.

Let me know if you want to have a go.