If the life of a cut-throat Mercenary isn’t for you then it’s time to leave the wire-frame world behind and pick up either a bow, staff, sword or axe as No.#38 in the Your Sinclair Top 100 is the rather excellent Gauntlet from U.S. Gold.
Gauntlet began life as a four-player Atari arcade game back in 1985; it was quickly ported over to the ZX Spectrum – for U.S. Gold – by Gremlin Graphics – to be exact it was Tony R. Porter, Kevin Bulmer and Bill Allen, and Ben Daglish on the music. There were four different characters to pick from each with their own weapon of choice and each bringing both a strength and a weakness to the game. It was your job to crawl through the many dungeons slaying numerous varied beasts, gathering treasures and of course attempting to survive.
Here is a game that is truly brilliant on the ZX Spectrum! Of all the games I’ve played whilst running through this Top 100 I can honestly say that seeing this placed such a huge smile upon my face, as the wave of nostalgia it brought back washed over me when it loaded. Everything still looks perfect – the colours are clear, the enemy mobs spawn thick and fast, the gameplay is there in spades and you can even play two players at once! The Gremlin Graphics team really delivered something magnificent onto the doorstep of U.S. Gold. Gauntlet is amazing!
Getting the opportunity to run around the walled dungeons packed with numerous evil spitting whatnots is something all gamers should try at least once. Stop playing you expensive, shiny games and load up Gauntlet now!
Originally published July 21, 2016. Updated October 25, 2022.
