21 replies to this topic

[The_Laird]

Rather than go more off topic in the 7800 sound thread I thought it was better to start another one so we can discuss it more.

So here is what we already know about the missing port of the classic Atari arcade game Gauntlet:

• It was developed in England by a company called Graftgold who also did Jinks for the 7800 as well as the 8-Bit home conversions of the game.
  
• It was previewed in a UK games magazine called ACE that was published by EMAP and they gave a very favourable early impression of it.
  
• The game was likely to have been a very large cartridge as it is know that the game featured the digitised voice from the arcade game. A sample from it was actually used on the title screen of Jinks.
  
• The game was said to be finished when it was for whetever reason cancelled by Atari, most likely due to the size of the cart and dwindling 7800 market.

I was thinking about how we could maybe track this game down and remembered that Retro Gamer magazine did an interview last year with some of the programmers from Graftgold in a feature on Hewson, who published alot of their games and had early associations with them. If I find the article it might be possible to contact these people and find out if any of them worked on it, know who did or even in some kind of miracle have code for the game.

[tz101]

If it could be done on NES then there is no good reason it could not have been done better on 7800.

[TrekMD]

Gauntlet would be an amazing game to have on the 7800! I had lots of fun playing this at the arcade we had on campus when I was in college. I always loved the voiceovers: "elf, shot the food!" Many people believe that Dark Chambers came after Gauntlet but it is the other way around.

Dark Chambers

[The_Laird]

TrekMD, on Sat Jan 8, 2011 3:28 PM, said:

Gauntlet would be an amazing game to have on the 7800! I had lots of fun playing this at the arcade we had on campus when I was in college. I always loved the voiceovers: "elf, shot the food!" Many people believe that Dark Chambers came after Gauntlet but it is the other way around.

Dark Chambers

Yeah Dark Chambers is a version of Dandy which was the game that inspired Gauntlet

[TrekMD]

So, who's volunteering to bring this to the 7800? Groovy? Where are you? Kidding!

[GroovyBee]

TrekMD, on Sat Jan 8, 2011 3:41 PM, said:

So, who's volunteering to bring this to the 7800? Groovy? Where are you? Kidding!

Nah! I have other plans...

[The_Laird]

TrekMD, on Sat Jan 8, 2011 3:41 PM, said:

So, who's volunteering to bring this to the 7800? Groovy? Where are you? Kidding!

Nobody needs to convert it again if its still out there to be found

[TrekMD]

The_Laird, on Sat Jan 8, 2011 3:57 PM, said:

TrekMD, on Sat Jan 8, 2011 3:41 PM, said:

So, who's volunteering to bring this to the 7800? Groovy? Where are you? Kidding!

Nobody needs to convert it again if its still out there to be found

Groovy, I'm sure you DO have other stuff to work on!

[Eckhard Stolberg]

The_Laird, on Sat Jan 8, 2011 2:50 PM, said:

So here is what we already know about the missing port of the classic Atari arcade game Gauntlet:

• It was developed in England by a company called Graftgold who also did Jinks for the 7800 as well as the 8-Bit home conversions of the game.

Are you sure about that? In his introduction to the Stella mailing list Peter Pachla said he was working for US Gold in Birmingham when he ported Jinks to the 7800. IIRC he also mentioned in a different post that he never saw a 7800 version of Gauntlet in his time at US Gold (until 1989). He only used the samples because they already were available in a format suitable for 8-bit systems from the other ports of Gauntlet.

[Underball]

GroovyBee, on Sat Jan 8, 2011 3:53 PM, said:

TrekMD, on Sat Jan 8, 2011 3:41 PM, said:

So, who's volunteering to bring this to the 7800? Groovy? Where are you? Kidding!

Nah! I have other plans...

"Not Gauntlet"

"Nontlet"

[The_Laird]

Eckhard Stolberg, on Sun Jan 9, 2011 7:46 AM, said:

The_Laird, on Sat Jan 8, 2011 2:50 PM, said:

So here is what we already know about the missing port of the classic Atari arcade game Gauntlet:

• It was developed in England by a company called Graftgold who also did Jinks for the 7800 as well as the 8-Bit home conversions of the game.

Are you sure about that? In his introduction to the Stella mailing list Peter Pachla said he was working for US Gold in Birmingham when he ported Jinks to the 7800. IIRC he also mentioned in a different post that he never saw a 7800 version of Gauntlet in his time at US Gold (until 1989). He only used the samples because they already were available in a format suitable for 8-bit systems from the other ports of Gauntlet.

Very sure, it stated in the magazine that Graftgold were doing it. The magazine was late 89 at the earliest but I think it was from 1990 as I clearly remember that I only got the magazine because of some Lynx coverage in it and I didn't get a Lynx until 1990. You said until 1989 so if the game was done in 1990 he wouldn't have seen it.

[[d2f]Iggy*SJB]

tz101, on Sat Jan 8, 2011 2:56 PM, said:

If it could be done on NES then there is no good reason it could not have been done better on 7800.

I should hope so, the NES version sucked. I can't tell you how disappointed I was when I bought the NES and that game, took it home grinning from ear to ear, and plugged it in to find out how crappy it was. I came very close to taking it back.

Much later, I was very satisfied with Gauntlet II for the Amiga. It was arcade perfect, up to the ability for 4 players(players 3&4 required a special adapter for the parallel port).

[DracIsBack]

The_Laird, on Sun Jan 9, 2011 11:14 AM, said:

Very sure, it stated in the magazine that Graftgold were doing it. The magazine was late 89 at the earliest but I think it was from 1990 as I clearly remember that I only got the magazine because of some Lynx coverage in it and I didn't get a Lynx until 1990. You said until 1989 so if the game was done in 1990 he wouldn't have seen it.

I really wish we could find that magazine again. I read the article once in a store. If I remember right, they also talked about "SUPER HUEY", which wasn't out yet. But it's been over 20 years and my memory is fuzzy. Only other things I remember were:

- the people who worked on Tower Toppler worked on Gauntlet
- They made a comment about the 7800 not having bells and whistles compared to the 16-bit computers big in Europe at the time, but referred to it as "reliable"

[Lynxpro]

[d2f]Iggy*SJB, on Sat Jan 29, 2011 10:25 PM, said:

tz101, on Sat Jan 8, 2011 2:56 PM, said:

If it could be done on NES then there is no good reason it could not have been done better on 7800.

I should hope so, the NES version sucked. I can't tell you how disappointed I was when I bought the NES and that game, took it home grinning from ear to ear, and plugged it in to find out how crappy it was. I came very close to taking it back.

Much later, I was very satisfied with Gauntlet II for the Amiga. It was arcade perfect, up to the ability for 4 players(players 3&4 required a special adapter for the parallel port).

That's good to know about the Amiga version. The ST version was also arcade perfect - from my recollection - but I don't recall if it worked with a 4 player adapter. I do know that there was a 4 player hardware adapter marketed for the ST; the game Leatherneck used it...

[The_Laird]

The ST version is 4-player and arcade perfect. Its also widely regarded as better than the Amiga version. It was very popular indeed at Jagfest UK last year.

[Lynxpro]

The_Laird, on Thu Feb 3, 2011 5:13 AM, said:

The ST version is 4-player and arcade perfect. Its also widely regarded as better than the Amiga version. It was very popular indeed at Jagfest UK last year.

I'm curious about what computer platform Atari Games used to create the actual arcade game on...

[carmel_andrews]

The ST version of gauntlet 1 (not the sequel) sent you boss-eyed...the scrolling was all over the place (perhaps they should have hired Steve Bak to do the scroll routines)

[Lynxpro]

Speaking of Gauntlet, I was just reading the entries for it and Dandy on Wikipedia and the Dandy entry reports that John Palevich worked on both the OS for the unreleased "Atari Rainbow" computer as well as on the AMY sound chip. Seems I'm going to have to hit up the Atari History Museum and one of the few websites devoted to the AMY chip that I've found in the past to see if Palevich is listed on those sites too...

[CRV]

Here's an article from Zero from 1990 on U.S. Gold, mostly about the Master System versions of Impossible Mission and Gauntlet. There's a brief bit about the 7800 and the 7800 version of Gauntlet.

[DracIsBack]

CRV, on Fri Nov 4, 2011 4:33 AM, said:

Here's an article from Zero from 1990 on U.S. Gold, mostly about the Master System versions of Impossible Mission and Gauntlet. There's a brief bit about the 7800 and the 7800 version of Gauntlet.

That's it! It wasn't ACE after all! I read it in a magazine shop that imported all these over twenty years ago. Thank you for sharing!

[bennybingo]

Is there any reason to believe that Gauntlet ever hit the prototype stage for the 7800??? If so, I would love to see a completed version of this game. One of my favorites from the arcade days!

[DracIsBack]

bennybingo, on Fri Nov 4, 2011 7:45 AM, said:

Is there any reason to believe that Gauntlet ever hit the prototype stage for the 7800??? If so, I would love to see a completed version of this game. One of my favorites from the arcade days!

Atari 7800 prototypes are quite rare (Tramiel cheapness) and have a habit of being buried for years. It's entirely possible that one was never made. It's also possible that one was, but someone has it and doesn't want to mention it for fear of having the value drop.