I thought I would just dive into Gauntlet in "Normal" mode. I was okay at this, in the arcades, thirty years ago. Nothing much has changed, right?
The original game was a co-op quarter gobbler. I never saw the end until I bought the home version for the Atari ST and just kept at it until I got to the bottom. Infinite quarters, yo.
This new version of Gauntlet is pretty much different from the original in every possible way. It's still an arcade game, but now it has challenges and stuff you can buy and a coliseum mode and whatever.
Here's the merchant screen. You can't buy any of these things unless you can clear stages pretty well. You can earn extra lives as you play, rarely, but pretty much, you won't start off being able to clear stuff, and so you will die and get no gold. You'll slowly get achievements, which will give you advantages eventually, but to get those relics, you have to live.
So, after dropping into some public games and dying instantly (I thought I would be able to do some of these levels if I had some help), I restarted in "Easy" mode, and managed to clear the first stage and come out of it with a little money.
Dived right into their Coliseum mode, six stages of death, first stage, four waves of increasingly hard challenges. I've gotten to the fourth wave every time, but I think there's a strategy for dropping walls that I need to work out. Clear all six stages, and you get a cape.
It's a workout for the hands. If I can beat the game, with one character, on Easy mode, I'll feel I got my money's worth, here.
But, they could have just given the original game, with infinite quarters, and I would have been absolutely fine with that. That's all I really wanted.
