Gauntlet was the game that got me interested in medieval stories, games and movies. It was my first real introduction into the medieval fantasy world through a game and I was hooked. The game itself was not impressive but was incredibly difficult to beat. In order to beat the game you had to play through 100 different floors exploring for hidden treasure, exits, food, keys and monsters. And while you played you had a countdown life meter that drained as you played. Slower the beat a level the closer to death you became. Get hit by monsters and the same meter would drain. Very challenging thing to balance when you’re playing for the first time. Still, the games excels in its ability to have multiple players playing together. Depending on the version you could have up to 4 people playing together which was great.

Graphics 4/10 – let’s be honest about this one. The graphics for this game are brutal. The levels all look basically exactly the same except for the occasional wall color or floor pattern change. The characters you pick look bland after you get through the character selection screen. The monsters are limited in design and variety. The graphics are not what make this game fun though. The monotony of the graphics can be forgiven when other things are considered.

Sound 8/10 – one of the ways this game makes up for its terrible graphics is through the sound. I absolutely love the soundtrack for this game. The intro song gave me chills when I listened to it again and after listening through a few of the other tracks for the levels themselves it was like I was playing the game all over again. The level music is quiet but has an intensity to it. It isn’t overpowering or loud but the pace behind the song definitely lends to the gameplay that requires you to solve the levels as quickly as possible. Definitely a good addition to the overall gameplay style that the game has.

Addictiveness 6/10 – this is definitely a game that will make you come back for more. I remember playing the game over and over as a kid trying to solve the puzzles and progress through levels as quickly as possible. I don’t think I understood the overall goal of the game though so I quite often didn’t progress very well because I was just randomly running around and completing each level rather than trying to progress as quickly as possible. This game definitely requires a comprehensive guide if you expect to complete it in 1 try. And it is definitely more fun and easier to play with help than to try and complete it on your own.

Story 3/10 – The story is pretty basic and standard for a game like this. Morak, the bad buy, has stolen the Sacred Orb, the good thing that keeps the world safe, and if the heroes don’t steal it back then the land they live in, Rendar, will be destroyed or something. The heroes themselves are named to be Thor, Thyra, Merlin and Questor. Each one has various abilities when it comes to magic, armor, speed, shot power and hand to hand fighting. There isn’t much else to the story of the game.

Depth 9/10 – this game is LONG. There are 100 levels to it. If that isn’t a long game I don’t know what is. Each level doesn’t have to take 20 minutes to beat or anything but if you are going to be thorough and find everything there is in the level that you might need or in order to find a secret exit or treasure then you have to spend extra time searching those things out. That sort of stuff is vitally important in beating the game and missing some secrets can make the game impossible to beat.

Difficulty 9/10 – the gameplay itself isn’t what really makes this game difficult, but it can be part of it. What makes this game difficult is the size of it. 100 levels and you’ve got to find 8 clue rooms that give you part of the combination that will unlock the last level. If you can’t get all of these clues I’m not sure what happens because I’ve never played that far into the game but I imagine it means you can’t unlock the final level. Likely you’ll have to start over and play it through again trying to find the clues that open the final level. This is clearly a very frustrating mechanic that this game has. However, if all you had to do was complete levels as fast as humanly possible the game would lack this major difficulty bump that this idea gives the game.

And honestly, even without including this in the game the levels themselves can be very challenging. Your health is on a countdown timer that drops when you are hit as well. This alone makes the game difficult. Treasure rooms are the only places where health can be fully regenerated (I believe food will restore some life as well) and they only appear once in a while in the map. The map isn’t cheap on beating you like other games are. Side-scrollers can kill you off because of a bad jump. This game can kill you 3 levels before you actually die because of some bad play that you never recovered from. This is almost worse than dying instantly because you invest another 5-10 minutes into playing before realizing that the mistake you made earlier really did result in your death.

Overall 6.5/10 – I personally really liked this game growing up. It’s more of a nostalgic love for the game than Gauntlet actually being a great game. It can be a fun when played together with someone but on its own can be a pretty long grind of a game. I still recommend it to anyone who is looking to play a classic NES/arcade game but don’t be surprised if you quit out of frustration.

I'm about the same way with this game really. It isn't that great as a game, but it isn't that bad either. Still I find myself going back to it at times because of the memories I have growing up with it. It was one of my first games so of course it holds a special place in my heart.

Couldn't agree more on the graphics, and while I'm tempted to say that it's as though they didn't try with this game, I'm not entirely sure how much more they could have done with this on the NES given the sheer number of enemies and collision counts the system had to handle. It's quite possible that this game pushed the NES close to it's limits, ugly as it is.


The sound is amazing for an NES game, and I would struggle to find a game from it's time that really outdoes it. I could think of maybe three or four at the most, namely the Super Mario games (all three, though I felt 2 may have been best) and Splatterhouse - Wanpaku Grafiti , even though it was never released on the NES as we know it, but the Famicom.

Addictiveness... Based on fun alone I would give it much lower, but as I said, nostalgia included I would probably play this quite often if I still had the system and the cartridge. In fact I need to grab them up off of Amazon now that I've read this. Thanks geeo, your review has cost me $50+.

Eirinn : it doesn't have to cost you You could just emulate it like I did

And the fun is playing with a friend or friends. Playing alone really isn't that much fun.

And I would say Castlevania (since I was just playing that one too) had better music than this game.

I hadn't considered the gameplay with the number of enemies being an issue but it totally could have been. They might have originally had better graphics until they realized that the number of enemies and collision mechanics would have slowed the game down. It would be interesting to know more about that but I doubt anyone is around to talk about it.