Gauntlet Legends

"A good N64 conversion, but Midway could of done better."

Last year, Atari Games and Midway released Gauntlet Legends, a re-make of the classic 2D Gauntlet games. With no surprise, Midway has brought it to home console. Knowing that when converting an arcade game to a home console game, you will always lose some quality in both visual and audio. In the end, Midway's N64 conversion stayed close enough with the arcade counterpart and still has the action gameplay without much of slow down.

Like the classic, all of the characters are back, except Archer replaced The Elf. But The Warrior, The Wizard, and The Valkyrie all are back with a new look. This time, you can also evolve them to a beast look counterpart of themselves. For example, The Warrior will be Minotaur that still packs the same punch. Each has four attributes rating you can make your character stronger, faster, or more powerful. Upgrade your character wisely, if you have a Warrior, it is best to put more attention on Strength. While if you have a Wizard, you might want to upgrade his Magic attribute. You can save your character on a Nintendo 64 Controller Pak and you can bring it to your friend’s console and team up with your high level character.

I am pretty sure that most of you all have at least seen Gauntlet Legends on arcade. The gorgeous graphics powered by 3Dfx chipset, the smooth animation of every character and monsters on the screen at one time, constant 30 fps, and the detailed textures. Then you heard it is for Nintendo 64, now you would think the bad textures, choppy frame rates, stiff animations, and the foggy graphics. Midway has prove many people wrong about what they think Gauntlet Legends for Nintendo 64 would be. The framerate is good until if you have four members of team and up to seven monsters on the screen at once, this will hurt you sometimes when you tried to kill them but it is not like you can avoid these situations. The graphics was good enough and it is above average from other Nintendo 64 games. Though the character animations may not be as smooth as the arcade but the background is as good as the arcade. The character details are a bit bland with anti-aliasing but it is better than being blocky and pixely.

The camera system moves quickly as one tries to run faster than other does. However, it will still keep everyone in one screen. Still, you can sometimes trap members behind a wall with Death on its tail. You might need to move around to swing the camera to free him from being Death Wish.

Like the arcade, the all mighty Gauntlet Announcer is in the home console version and tells you everything from how to attack to the way out of the maze. Every character has their own personality and saying whenever they wanted to. With grunts and groans from both heroes and monsters, you can barely tell whenever your character speaks. The sound of axes and swords smashing against each other is very close to the arcade. The background music is varied depend on which world and kingdom you are in. If you are in the Enchanted Forest, the music will be moody and creepy. While if you’re in the Desert, it will have a little Egyptian-like music. If you were fighting the last boss, the music will be intense.

One thing that really made Gauntlet Legends for Nintendo 64 an easy breeze is you do not have to worry about the life expiring timer where you lose one life every second. However, this also made the game less intense and adrenaline than it should have been. It may save you quarter crunching but you would feel the gameplay would be repetitive by pressing Start button when you die in the game. Gauntlet Legends was made to be a multiplayer game when it first came out for arcade. Like its retros (Gauntlet I and II), you have a group up to four fight monsters and evils together by either destroying herds after herds of them or simply destroy the monster generator cave/hut/hole before any more will come out and go after you. Of course, there is always the alternative solution or route you can take. But I am sure everyone would like to kill these monsters and level up your character.

In sum, Gauntlet Legends for Nintendo 64 was a good title for your Nintendo 64 library. However, this may not appeal to everyone out there who owns a Nintendo 64. This game is much more fun if you play with friends than playing it alone. Not to mention have a Controller Pak to save your character. I think it is best to rent it first and then if you can not beat it in 3 nights, you might as well as buy it and invite your friends to play together. (if you have any.)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/29/00, Updated 08/07/01