Gauntlet (Game)

Gauntlet is a 1985 fantasy-themed hack-and-slash arcade video game developed and released by Atari Games. It is one of the first multiplayer dungeon crawl arcade games. The core design of Gauntlet comes from 1983 game Dandy for the Atari 8-bit computers, which resulted in a threat of legal action. It also has similarities to the action-adventure maze video game Time Bandit (1983). The arcade version of Gauntlet was released in November 1985 and was initially available only as a dedicated four-player cabinet. Atari distributed a total of 7,848 arcade units. In Japan, the game was released by Namco in February 1986. Atari later released a two-player cabinet variant in June 1986, aimed at operators who could not afford or did not have sufficient space for the four-player version.