MAME -> Gauntlet 2 (Gauntlet Boogaloo)

As with all the great sequels, they're exactly like the first, but with a few new tweaks, and Gauntlet II follows firmly in that tradition.  Somehow a sequel to Marble Madness was never called for, go figure.  Many of the levels of Gauntlet I and Gauntlet II are quite similar, especially the first one.  There's just something about being able to jump to level 8 that's too compelling of a choice.



Level 2: Stun tiles, force fields... kinda boring
Intro to lobbyists... lobbers

Level 3: "It", acid puddles to make sure you spend PLENTY more quarters

Level 4: moving exits, super sorcerers, moving walls, death much faster!  Also, have to wait longer to get key doors to disappear

level 5: poison potions... shoot them!  Reflecting shots, singing/moving walls, ... something else

Level 6: electronic voice says "Let's see you get out of here."  And for good reason!  All the walls are invisible!!!!!!

level 7:

level 8: transporter charm... which means you can't pick up anything either!  Boo.  Also, mugger intro

level 9: hmmm!  Looks like a similar level from Gauntlet 1!

level 10: Green fuzzy walls!  I can't take it!!!
10 super shots... also, looked similar to Gauntlet 1 level

Treasure room: I hate these now

level 11: fuzzy brown walls!  I can't take it!  Also, Warriors apparently can't shoot anything surrounded on four sides by walls... diagonally, that is...

level 12: first appearance of transporters, apparently.  Looks a lot like level 8 in Gauntlet 1!  First red dragon.  Also, they seem to have invented telefragging

L13: ...nothing new, I guess

Treasure room: I hate these now

l14: extra food added for 3 or 4 players... because there's already plenty of ways to hemorrhage health points.  Take that DRAGON, for example!

l15: Repulsiveness - at least, to the enemies.  More 10 power shots!  Love those thingies... except when they destroy treasures 'n stuff.

l16: moving exits again. phuck.  There's a long hallway filled with keys, and a golden potion at the end of it... for whatever reason, I want to get that potion.

l17: power shots are too powerful.  They destroy unshootable food, chests... everything!  Everything except walls!

l18: meh.  At least it wasn't a Gauntlet 1 level

treasure room: exits move around.  Perfect

l19: traps galore.  12 chests at the end! love it!

l20: shots now hurt other players... guess I should work on getting some!

L21: Invulnerability... interesting definition of it.  It means you lose 300 health points, but at a regulated pace.  Terrific.  Also, it seems to look like a Gauntlet 1 level...

l22: oops!  Left too early

treasure room - dang!  It was actually like a normal Gauntlet 1 treasure room! 

l23: shots now hurt other playears.   Damn.  I'm playing by myself like an idiot.
Lemme guess.... the red dragon's guarding the real exit.  Big surprise.... not the case!  Also a big surprise

l24: Has anyone EVER found the hidden potion?

l25: don't be greedy... guess I'll never get to that secret room.  Oh well.  C'est la vie
...wow!  Thought I'd never get out of there!

l26: now that DEFInITELY was a Gauntlet 1 level, just flipped on its proverbial head

treasure room: hoh boy, here we go.... jeebus, but I hate that little blue thief.  Room: lattice of chambers with trap tiles

l27: another G1 classic

l28: meh.  but lots of those super shots!  well, just 20

l29: super-fast monsters!!!

treasure room: lucked out that time!

l30: tip: stall to open doors.  I ought to try that sometime!
See, this level is designed so that you have to use reflecting shots to get the monster generators.  Maybe that works with more than one player, but here's the thing: you have to get up close to the monster generators to destroy them, on account of the monsters it generates blocking the way!!!!!!!!!!!!!

l31: this level's tip: add coins fo rextra health... already thought of that.  Ooh!  The guy burped when he et some food!  Love it.
Fast demons 'n $#!t... stuff.

damn.  left too early

l32: another G1 classic

l33: meh

l34: keys galore

treasure room: what could go wrong in here?
lots of stun tiles here..  At least I got a couple keys.  You get to keep those.

l35: 4 corners... a death in every corner, and a potion to kill them

l36: ...must've been meh.  already forgot

l37: kinda simple!  Great place to collect keys.  Seriously, check the right side; other unlocked door side.  It's all open.


treausre room" made it!
L38: ah, more fake exits.. love those

l39: oh my God... they invented Sokoban!

l40: genius. .. I forget why.  Oh, right; you need that stupid transporter charm to get to secret room.  Only one!  What if you've got four of you?

treasure room: these must be getting easier or sumpthin

l41; not a G1 level

l42: faster monsters, fake exits, not G1... oh crap.  Time to do an excel spreadsh!t?

l43: meh. also the little blue tucker got me

l44: there's a lot of the level that I missed, but apparently it wasn't meant to be because where the exit is located has no way back out.

l45: stupid red dragons

treasure room: well, at least I got that little blue huckster

l46: meh.  this is boring already

l47:

l48: sort of like a similar G1 level

treasure room: just barely made it... so, why is there that 4 second countdown when it shows you the points you scored?

l49:

...;l51: subtle!  You have to keep trying the transport until you appear on the other side of it, and with the exit

treasure room: quick!

l52:


l62: actually got to a secret room!  kinda coo!  Don't know what the hell I did, of course...

l88; I feel like I could play this one forever... and I might have to, too!  Especially since I'm depending on the randomness of these stupid red transports and what not......

l78: a thousand fake exits... too bad I'm not going to remember where the real one is!

l79:

l121: Ah!  I've missed the hedge walls.  Also, I think I know how to defeat the little blue fuc... the blue thief.  Because he's a little tougher now.  If you shoot at him, he runs the other way.  Here's how to fix that: get yourself in a crowd of ghosts or some such thing; grunts, maybe.  The thief will come up through the ranks, killing grunts or other monsters for you... even Death!  What's THAT all about?  Anyway, the monster generators will make fresh monsters that walk up behind the thief, thereby preventing him from running the other way when you shoot.  Problem solved; maybe you hang on to your extra speed for a couple levels, who knows.  They love taking that one away right away, apparently

l122: I dunno....  somehow these shootable walls aren't as fun a feature as I thought they were going to be.  And somehow, the gamemakers themselves knew that instinctively as well, because Gauntlet's all about fighting the clock.  You pay 25¢ for 700 hit points, which effectively gives you 700 seconds of game play.  Now I gotta spend part of that time shooting at all the walls to see which one's a secret?  No think you!

L148: This level is taking wAY too long... WAY WAY too long...... whew!  Just finished.

l149: it says "To enter secret room: don't be fooled."  Welp, didn't make it to that secret room!  Big surprise... ah, they're overrated anyway.  The first thing they take is your speed.

l151: oh boy!  That one again with a million fake exits.  Fortunately, I got a screen cap of it... hopefully the NEXT one is in the same place....

l160: Oh, great!  The grunts now go FASTER THAN YOU!!!!!!!!!

l178 treasure room - 24 seconds!  Wow!  An upgrade!  Still couldn't do it, though.

;l190: yeah, this is a repeat level, but it's that fun one where you depend on the kindness of the strange transporters.  So far, they haven't been so kind.  What is it about those transporters and diagonal walls that makes such a toxic combination?

l209: Here's something I just noticed... you can't fight hand-to-hand with Super Sorcerers.  But I'm just a Warrior.  Incidentally, when the axe bounces off the wall back at you and hits you, how do you not lose points?  I just tried it in real life and..................

damn.  I just had to try it.  Welp, found out the hard way.  Saved states don't work for Gauntlet 2.  Probably for the best.  I have to reboot anyway.

Facebook -> Bubble CoCo

...oh!  Neat!  To be perfectly honest, I... and maybe I'm alone on this... but I was expecting something more like this...

Is that asking so much?  Apparently.

Atari 8-Bit Emulator -> E.T. Phone Home

Just a warning up front here: this isn't about the disastrous Atari 2600 E.T. game.  This is about the one for the family of Atari 8-bit computers that languishes in obscurity.  Well, I'm going to change all that with my map of... oh, crap.  Left out the middle.

Vorrak, Level Three

...is that the third one?  I can't tell.  It's so small.  Oh, and... SPOILER ALERT: just go through the middle of the Stibnite Mine section and save yourself some of the hassle.  Love that part.  And so, that's about all she wrote.  The three levels of Rorschach...Vorrak.  We may never know if the extra two levels were added by Avalon Hill, or if the programmer of the original Zardon devised all three.  Perhaps he's out there right now, maintaining a JCobol database on a government mainframe, still waiting for that upgrade that'll never come thanks to government gridlock in D.C.  Or maybe he's now part of that stupid Paul Allen project to make another billion dollars off genome sequencing the human brain.  You know, the sexy world of video games.

Vorrak, Level Two

Oh, The Video Game Fanatic.  Can't you leave ANYTHING to the imagination?  Is there no whimsy left in your world?  Must every last detail be documented and stored on some hard drive somewhere?  Yes.  Yes it must.  For much like the "mine" depicted in Dvorak... Vorrak... it's all about data collection, and Information Retrieval.  And passing the savings on to the taxpayer.  All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredoms amused.
Speaking of which, level 2 of Vorrak looks a little bit like the first level.  So you're probably asking yourself, well, surely there's some sort of algorithm that can make the storage and retrieval of the maze shorter and faster?  Probably, but it probably didn't happen on the Atari.  There was no Zip utility as far as I know.  No simple, fast way to store something in a three-dimensional array, and they certainly didn't plan it so that you could save your game state to take it up later on during the day.  No, this was the barbaric old days where you had to power your way through a game the first time... well, then again, we did have the pause button.  Usually the space bar.  See, it wasn't all bad.  Boy, remember the first time you were able to pause Pac-Man?  Mind-blowing.  And besides, level two is so worth it, because you go from regular "Emerald" to POWER Emerald, which can get you about 100 more points!

Vorrak, Level One

All right, let's get this over with.  If there's a lesson to be learned from Vorrak, it's that security systems are pretty much useless once you learn their patterns.  Then again, that's the lesson from all them Pink Panther movies.  But isn't that the power of video games right there?  You get to be the rogue ship flying into enemy territory, circumventing the slipshod security systems of the ill-guarded lair.  Now, you take a game like "The Dreadnaught Factor"... THAT one gets much tougher with each progressive level.  Of course, The Dreadnaught Factor is programmed in machine language, and doesn't rely on Atari Basic at all.  Ever the tradeoff: Basic games are easier to program, but run orders of magnitude slower than machine language games.  It's theoretically a programmer's paradise these days with JavaScript, the perfect compromise language.
So, unlike Laser Gates, there's only you in the Player/Missile department, and there's no stopping for fuel.  Laser Gates is one of the only, and maybe it is the only, side-scrolling shoot-'em'up game where you actually have to make a stop for fuel.  All the others, you have to shoot fuel dumps in order to fuel your ship... convenient, but that never works with my car.  And I've shot up a lot of gas stations, believe me.  Nope, you still have to pump your own fuel.  What's that all about?  It's like it's some kind of valuable commodity or sumpthing.

Atari Emulator -> Wavy Navy

Oh damn.  It's one of those games where you've got different ranks for each level.  Must find out what each one is.  Welp, apparently, the highest rank you can achieve is President, much like Eisenhower did.  Of course, his Vice President, Richard Nixon, once said that there were offices out there higher than President of the United States, loftier positions to achieve and what not... I guess you'd have to think that if you left office in disgrace, with a trail of tapes in your wake.  Any political hack worth his weight in Himalayan pink salt probably wouldn't like this game, as you seem to stay at the President rank forever.  No term limits?  Lord knows we don't need another FDR!  Think how prosperous the middle class would be then!  And on top of that, you seem to have the same configuration of two mines and the occasional beeping missile.  I contend that the bomb-dropping plane's much tougher, but what do I know.
Anyway, it's Wavy Navy on disk 107... is it an ode to Space Invaders or Galaxian?  Alas, the many features and advanced graphics of Galaga were far too much for Atari to handle... Commodore probably could, the bastard.  Of course, Wavy Navy somehow lacks even the spontaneity, and organized behaviour of the bad guys in groups, of Galaxian, go figure.  And why do the planes splash into the ocean, then reappear in the sky?  Is it the same gaping plot hole / quirk of physics that they used in Pirates of the Caribbean 3?  Probably.
All right, enough of that.  On to the next game.