How can a game be too difficult to complete with a max power password, walkthrough, save states and slow motion? I made it to stage 82 as the valkyrie before running out of hp. My password brought me all the way back to stage 63. Apparently those treasure rooms in the water world with the stupid random teleporters and fake exits did not update my password as I was never able to find the exit in time, despite repeated attempts save state scumming. No way am I replaying stages so I looked up a password to use and skipped the last few combination rooms. I did make it to the hydra boss and killed it but lacked enough hp to get past the rest. I only had about 200p hp and 2 potions when I reached the boss, despite playing as optimally as I could and save state scumming to erase unnecessary damage. I certainly could have optimized it better and won but the game was lucky I continued with that looked up password.

I vaguely recall playing either this or Gauntlet 2 back in the day. It was probably the genesis version, probably 2 player with my cousin. I liked the concept of this game but there were so many annoying aspects that ruined my enjoyment. The 1 projectile on screen limit sucked hard and I hated when I missed a shot down a long corridor and had to wait precious seconds before I could shoot again, often taking damage too. Missed opportunity to differentiate the classes by having number of allowed projectiles and projectile speed be stats. 1 slow moving projectile makes sense for the warrior while the wizard should be pew pewing near light speed bolts all over the place. Valkyrie and elf somewhere in the middle of course. Or at least allow multiple projectiles after a power potion or score level, or make melee combat far less suicidal. Other things I did not like: having to acquire the combination to the final stage, random teleporters, invisible walls, fake exits, and time limits including the passive hp loss. There should have been more permanent upgrades to find (like changing the hp loss over time into regeneration), or even temporary weapons and armor. Still the amount of content for a NES game was fairly impressive. Oh and it took me an absurd amount of time to get to the password input screen, including having to look up how to do it. Even then it was way harder than necessary when it should have been the 3rd option after 2 players. Way harder than necessary sums up this game well.

6.5/10

Omg I love the UI in this so much! So well-built for a group of kids to eat away at their coins at the arcade ha. And the narrator is great (the Sound and Look are the best parts indeed).

As I play it though it clearly was about collecting money... (which after all, was the point of an arcade was it not). Can revive with coins, can get health with coins and so on. I really don't like that Health depletes with time, but I suppose I could see that as a sort of timer mechanic. There is no set ending

I kept thinking this reminds me of something, especially with Level 2 with that utter onslaught of Ghosts with their simple pathfinding waiting behind the door. I knew what to do. But how? Then I remembered! Dandy! You can very clearly see that this game was built off Dandy (quite literally). And just like with Dandy, I don't love the lure-the-enemy-then-spam-attack gameplay. That time gameplay, to me, doesn't feel so much hard as it does tedious. And so I stopped after clearing Level 2, despite having plenty of health and 2 Potions accumulated. I'm sure the gameplay gets more complex later, but it's clear it'll be based around that tedious mechanic. (btw the piles of bones things are spawners for the enemies so kill those ASAP)

Tbh Dandy deserves more credit than it gets for spawning this franchise... I'm excited for the later iterations of Gauntlet though!