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Gauntlet by US Gold / Atari (1990) - Master System

I've been a fan of Gauntlet for many moons now. I first discovered it on my trusty Speccy thanks to... I can't remember what, actually. I thought it was the 'Giants' compilation but a check reveals that it only contains the second game. Oh well, I had it on my Speccy somehow anyway, and then, a little later, I was lucky enough to find the ultra awesome arcade version with simultaneous four-player support. All I needed was three friends and I was off (chortle!). A little later still and it made an appearance on my beloved Master System and I vowed to buy it henceforth.

Buying console games wasn't that easy at that time, however, as I was still at school, and by the time I could buy games for myself, Gauntlet IV had been released for the Mega Drive which was a conversion of the first game as well a new adventurey thing too. No matter how good the MS conversion might be, the MD one would be better, surely? That was my reasoning at the time, and it was very wise reasoning for it was indeed a very excellent version of the game, but as these many years of men have passed, and much that once was has been lost, my yearning for Gauntlet MS-stylee has remained undimmed by the passage of time. And now, I'm happy to say it finally graces my MS collection!

One thing that concerned me around the time of its release, prior to reading reviews or seeing the game running, was that of the sprites. Specifically, that there are many, and the Master System often finds the subject of sprites a challenge, as owners were all too aware. Gauntlet was ported to many system, and I remember even my humble Speccy coping fairly well, yet I was still... well, concerned about this version.

Happily, by making use of witchcraft or some other dark arts, Tiertex Design Studios on behalf of US Gold did an amazing job. I'm sure many MS fans remember games like Double Dragon flickering like crazy when three or more sprites were on-screen at once but, remarkably, here we have dozens of sprites on-screen at once with no hint of flicker to be found! I'm still not sure how they managed to achieve that, though I haven't really looked into it either, admittedly, but it's impressive nonetheless.

Coaxing the console into displaying all the sprites demanded by the the game isn't necessarily going to make it a good version by itself though. Another important factor in making Gauntlet splendid is the number of dungeons. The original arcade version was famous for having 100 unique levels to battle through which, splendidly, were thrown at you in a random order from the eighth example onwards. Could the MS handle that many? Amazingly, I seem to recall reading many years ago that it actually had more levels than the arcade game, not less. But how many?

This question hasn't actually been that easy to answer. I don't really have the time to painstakingly catalogue and count each unique level here. That would take months or even years to do with any certainty since they again appear at random. But I have read that the number is supposedly 125 which includes treasure rooms. How accurate this is I couldn't say, but the fact that it even has enough levels to make them difficult to count is impressive enough! As far as I can tell, everything else is here too.

So yes, that means all four playable characters, each distinctive type of enemy, their generators, keys, transporters, food, treasure, potions (special as well as normal varieties), and all the other bits and pieces the game throws at you. It's not a game with the most complicated controls but things are fine here in that regard too, and the graphics are pretty great, all things considered. The audio is a weak point - no in game music and just a few bloopy effects - but that's the case with most versions of Gauntlet. Aside from that, the only negatives I've noticed really, which are also differences to some other versions of the game, is that only two players can play at once due to the MS's lack of an adaptor for additional controllers, and also the warrior character can now shoot diagonally through wall gaps - something his hefty axes aren't normally able to do. This isn't a problem in itself but it does kind of render the other characters redundant unless you're a heavy magic user.

It's really hard to see this as anything other than a superb conversion anyway though. Stuff like MAME makes playing the arcade version easy nowadays and the version contained within Gauntlet IV for the MD is pretty much flawless, but back in its day, I don't think there could have been a finer version of Atari's classic than this one. It's certainly a technical achievement but it's just as enjoyable to play as the other versions as well. It's strange that it took me so long to add it to my collection but I'm glad it's finally on my shelf now.

RKS Score: 9/10