Gauntlet II
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| Gauntlet II | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Atari Games |
| Publisher(s) | Atari Games |
| Designer(s) | Ed Logg |
| Platform(s) | Arcade |
| Release | 1986 |
| Genre(s) | Hack and slash/Action game |
| Mode(s) | Up to 4 players simultaneously |
Gauntlet II is a Template:Vgy arcade game, the first sequel to the game Gauntlet, released the previous year. Gauntlet II, like its predecessor, is a fantasy-themed hack and slash.
Overview
The gameplay is very similar to the original Gauntlet, a topdown dungeon crawl supporting up to four players. The biggest difference from the original game is that players can choose identical classes, instead of being limited to a particular one for each joystick; each player is differentiated by color. Thus, instead of having a "warrior", "wizard", and "valkyrie" (for instance), in Gauntlet II there could be a "red wizard", a "blue elf" and a "green warrior".
In addition to the new "class" system, new level designs were added, including the possibility of encountering them in altered ways by having the play-field turned in steps of 90°. Other new features included the enemy "It", which upon contact would make a player "It" and draw all enemies towards him/her. The only way to release this curse is by touching another player or entering the exit, turning any level containing "It" into a fantasy filled game of tag. Other notable additions include the ability to ricochet shots off walls by means of a special pick-up, acid puddles that caused large, predetermined amounts of damage and a large dragon which would occupy multiple squares and require multiple hits to destroy.[1]
New level elements were also added, adding more variety to the original game. These included "all walls are invisible", "magic walls" which changed into monsters or items when hit, "stun tiles" which stunned the player, and fake exits.
The most valuable challenge in the game, is the possibility to find a "secret room". This can be found by doing some "quests" in the level ("don't be fooled", means that you must found the real exit first for example). The secret room contains some food and more, all the magic potions (extra shot power, extra shot speed, extra magic power, extra speed, extra armor and extra fight power).
This sequel was also the first to feature what is now known as the Gauntlet theme tune, which resembles a simplified Baroque fugue.
Port versions
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Gauntlet II was ported to many home video game systems, but found the most popularity on home computers. The ports have very few differences except their two known box arts, the ports were released in the USA by Mindscape and Europe by U.S. Gold. A port of the Gauntlet II arcade game was also available for download on the PlayStation 3 on May 3, 2007.[2] However, it has now been removed from the store.
Gauntlet II had several bugs, and some quarter guzzling features that were taken from the "Final" rom version of the first Gauntlet. The "Fight power" multiplier was bugged for the half-level players from the "Original" Gauntlet; all players picking the red, blue or yellow characters would have their fight power at either level 1 or level 2, regardless if they were supposed to have an extra "half" level (Warrior and Elf). So the Warrior would have fight level 2, which is the same as Valkyrie's, and the Elf would only have fight level 1. The only fix for this was to play the Green character, which would give Warrior and Elf two to three times fight power, and one to two times normal fight power respectively (the correct value for those characters), but would also give Valkyrie and Wizard an extra half level. So Valkyrie would have two to three times fight power (same as Warrior), and Wizard would have one to two times normal power (same as Elf). All other attributes worked as they should. This bug was never fixed.
The quarter draining feature was taken from Gauntlet 1 Final Revision, and refined a bit to be less harsh on the player (less food removed initially). Basically, the game became more difficult at every multiple of 16,384 points (2 to the power of 14; more on this binary math later). The monsters generated slightly faster at each point step, and the game would remove a small amount of the placed food. The higher your score became (on 16,384 point steps), the more difficult the game would become, with difficulty divided by the number of coins inserted. Eventually, at around 200,000 points, there would be so little food placed on the levels, that it would become impossible to gain health by clearing the levels, even if you were stacked with power ups. This would force the player to eventually die, or insert more coins to keep playing (which would reduce the difficulty).
There was a bug with the 16,384 point difficulty counter, which had to do with the binary system of number storage. In an 8 or 16 bit system, values of 0-127 are often used as "signed" values, while 128-255 may be used as "unsigned" (or vice versa), with the highest value in an 8 bit memory location being "255". Gauntlet was a 16 bit game, however even on 32 bit computers, 255 is often the highest value for some variables (just look at the Internet Protocol or IP address). Anyway, at the game score value of 16,384 x 128 (approximately 2.1 million, exact value 2,097,152), the food removal counter would "overflow" (since the number counter at 128 switched from signed to unsigned (or vice versa), calculating how much food would be removed from the levels. This caused the game to put the maximum amount of food into the levels, although the monster difficulty remained at maximum. At 16,384 points x 256 (approximately 4.2 million points), the "256" was too high of a value to be stored in a memory cell only holding values of 1-255, so this caused a complete reset to "1", making the game difficulty act as if you had started a completely new game and your score were back to "0". The frequency of the Thief and Mugger appearances were not related to score, so were unaffected by this.
Enterprising players could use this exploit to their advantage by building up their one credit health as high as possible (at least 7,000 health was needed for success), and playing up to 150,000 to 200,000 points, inserting one credit into the other three players, then having them join on a map with lots of 30 point ghosts and treasures. Then, by raising the main player's point multiplier to x8 by grabbing treasure, and stalling so the walls turned into exits, and having the other three players leave, the player could shoot 240+ point ghosts until their score became over 2.1 million.[citation needed] If this was successful, they would have bypassed the "food starvation" stage, and they would kill the other three players, and play as long as possible, and hopefully have enough health to survive the "next" starvation stage without using more credits, which would happen at around 4.3 million points. (about 19,000 health and the Death "potion" points set to 8,000 per killed Death, were needed to survive another 2 million points of food level starvation).
Some other bugs (a few which could crash the entire machine) involved getting the thief or mugger's linked list lost, by standing right next to their spawn point (the spot where you entered the level), so they attack you while they are right on the spawn. Then when you move out of the way, they move in a straight line, up to a wall, instead of exiting the level as they are supposed to do. You could sometimes go to the other side of the wall, and the monster would teleport on top of you, causing very bizarre things to happen.
Reception
| Publication | Score |
|---|---|
| Crash | 65%[4] |
| Sinclair User |  [5] |
| Your Sinclair | 8/10[3] |
| The Games Machine | 93%[6] |
| Publication | Award |
|---|---|
| Sinclair User | SU Classic |
The game was not received quite as well as the original, however, Sinclair User said it was "A corker. Fast action and superb gameplay make Gauntlet II probably the first sequel worth the cash".
References
- ^ http://www.arcade-history.com/?n=gauntlet-ii&page=detail&id=939
- ^ http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/gauntlet2/index.html
- ^ http://www.ysrnry.co.uk/articles/gauntletii.htm
- ^ http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=Crash/Issue49/Pages/Crash4900094.jpg
- ^ http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=SinclairUser/Issue070/Pages/SinclairUser07000029.jpg
- ^ http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=TheGamesMachine/Issue08/Pages/TheGamesMachine0800069.jpg
External links
- Gauntlet II at the Killer List of Videogames
- Gauntlet II at MobyGames
- Gauntlet II at Curlie
- Gauntlet II at SpectrumComputing.co.uk