Writing about old games these last couple of days got me thinking about some of the first games I played…
When I got my first computer, a Commodore 64, we bought it second hand, and we got one game with it. I didn’t recall the name of it, but after a few minutes with the MobyGames game browser, I found it – Equinox.
I don’t remember much about the game. I’m sure I enjoyed it at first, but then I didn’t have much to choose from 
I think it had teleporters and stuff… If anyone remembers this game, I’d love to hear about it
I also recall the first game I bought myself. I’d gone to the only shop in town which had a (tiny) selection of computer stuff, intending to buy another joystick (I’d hoped they would have the one called "The Boss")…
They didn’t have the joystick I wanted, but they did have a game which caught my eye: Gauntlet. The price was 149 swedish kronor, which is about $20…
I hadn’t heard about it then (arcades were not something we had in Sweden back then), so it was a cover that convinced me to buy the game. It was clearly a fantasy game, with a warrior, an elf, a wizard and a valkyrie…
The game itself was awesome (obviously). You would run around in dungeons killing monsters, and I don’t know how many hours I spent playing this game… But it was a lot!
I played it recently on the Xbox, with some friends, and I must say that it’s still really good fun. Sometimes, it’s the simple games that are the most fun, and this is definitely one of those…
Gauntlet was a fantastic game, I love in the arcade version the voice that says, “Green Archer needs food badly.” Wihtout it I surely would have died many additional times because it was easy to forget to check your life when a lot of monsters started attacking.
I can’t believe how much they’ve managed to screw things up in the later Gauntlet games… The first and second were great, the rest are just… bad.I think having a voice in the game which informs you about events is a great thing, and it can really make the difference between frustrating and fun. I think it’s got to do with making sure the player knows what’s going on at all times, and that is actually way more important than “immersion”.I don’t mind if I am reminded that I’m playing a games – I love playing games. But it seems like in recent years, the “immersion” thing has taken over, and because of that, we get mostly poor games.I believe that the main reason the GTA games have been so successful, is providing the player with clear objectives and directions at all times. Few modern games do it as well as GTA.
You could die while attacking Death in this game and it’d bug out, giving you something like 9999 health.Awesome old game. Used to play it for hours and hours trying to flip the game with my buddy Bill. Tag Team Gauntlet playing. ROFL