Emulation Camp - Reviews

Upon the release of the new MAME emulator v0.30 I thought it would be appropriate to review one of the new games previously unsupported by MAME. So I was slowly playing my way through my freshly downloaded games and I could not stop going back to an all time arcade favourite of mine Gauntlet II. Maybe it was because now I was not pumping a continual stream of coinage into the machine to keep boosting my health, but I was once again felt the overwhelming addiction that had gripped me back in the arcade many years ago.

For those of you that have not seen the game, though I doubt any loyal arcadian would scoff at the thought, Gauntlet II is a top view medieval game which can be played by up to four people simultaneously. The aim of the game is to score as much points as possible while successfully completing as many levels as possible while becoming ever more powerful and hopefully with only minimal health loss. To gain points you mainly do two things, collect treasure and kill monsters.

Now as I have been reading the faqs and other docs I have actually found that ultimately there is no end to the game, with reports of some people getting up to level 652 and as with the first Gauntlet it is possible that the levels just loop from 999 to 6.

Ok now to the characters:

Next is the monsters you will encounter in the different dungeons:

Also spread throughout the dungeons are various items and devices each of which either help or hinder your path through the dungeon:

RATINGS
Graphics	90%
Sound	80%
Music	50%
Playability	95%
Replayability	95%
Overall	82%
OTHER
Rom [314 kb]	Download
Gauntlet 1/2 FAQ
General Gauntlet Pages
Gauntlet Quest

Overall Gauntlet II was and is a brilliant and much needed followup of the original Gauntlet and it will always be one of my all time favourite games. The graphics are excellent for the time and the sound is also good, but the only music I heard was in the opening screens. The gameplay is highly addictive and the game will last many many hours before you get totally frustrated and head for another ROM.

MAME 0.30 runs Gauntlet without trouble; the sound works fine and the gameplay is smooth. And although I have not completed that many levels on the emulator I assume that it will run all the levels easily. The Multi-Gauntlet emulator runs it even faster than MAME, but it's only available for DOS.