Interesting tidbit about the arcade game Gauntlet

[JEDI]

(popular game from 1985)

https://archive.org/details/arcade_gauntlet

U could beat the game on a single quarter with warrior or wizard.
So the game designers nerfed the power-ups for those 2 characters with a ROM update.
Plus took away food if playing solo.

I could run that game for hrs and hrs on a single quarter as wizard without any of the power-ups.
But I needed the food not only for survival but also as pinch points to block monsters.

With the new ROM, you will die by level 7 thus have to pop in another quarter.

Apparently my arcade place (local bowling alley) never got the 'upgrade'.

Also, never knew you could do it as warrior as well. Thought the key was the wizards magic potions that cleared the screen at strategic places?

 

[brianmanahan]

did you make sure to NOT SHOOT FOOD?

 

[Iron Woode]

I used to play the hell out of gauntlet on my c64.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Elf needs food badly

 

[nakedfrog]

We used to walk to the local bowling alley to put quarters into Gauntlet (might have been the second one, can't say for sure after nearly 30 years...)

 

[bfun_x1]

We used to walk to the local bowling alley to put quarters into Gauntlet (might have been the second one, can't say for sure after nearly 30 years...)

Same here. Gauntlet and Tron were two of my favorites.

If you feel like some nostalgia check out the book Ready Player One. It's all about 80s gaming and entertainment. Spielberg is making the movie version but it looks like he might have modernized it a bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rqRWEv9YW8

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Interesting tidbit about Tempest: There were a bunch of cheats on the original Tempest arcade game that were put into the development game and not taken out before it shipped. It was one of the first games that let you start on an advanced level provided you had already cleared that level. If you died on level 22 you could restart a new game on level 21 and not have to play through the easy levels again. One of the cheats allowed a player to start anywhere, so you could start a new game on level 72 or 93 if you wanted. That was nice. Another gave 255 free lives on your next play and several other codes gave 40 free credits. Once you knew the codes you could literally play all day on a single quarter and you could also load the game with hundreds of free credits and then sell your place at the game. My buddy and I used to do that, play one game to get the free credits, then go for a couple of hours, put 80 free credits on the machine and sell it for $5. It was a real bummer when arcade owners caught on and swapped out their first generation games for the REV2 models with the cheats removed.