Monday, November 10, 2008

GAUNTLET WAS TOTALLY AWESOME, SO WAS BEING TWELVE AND HAVING LOTS OF QUARTERS

Gauntlet in the arcade was pretty dope. (The home version on the NES shown on the TV here, not so much.) Kill stuff in a top-down dungeon with four of your friends. Heck yeah! (It also spawned some nerd references that you may hear some lame nerd say at some lame nerd party.) I mean look at dude shown here. He's positively stoked! From this photo of the happy, slappy, red-headed nerd shown above, it looks like the Elf never managed to shoot the food in his household, nor does this fiery haired barbarian appear to need food badly. It was a obviously a very merry Christmas for everyone's favorite Harkonnen that year.

I grew up pretty much in love with stupid video games. Going to Spaceport (the totally rad, dark, dank, and scary arcade that used to exist at the mall) with 5 bones in quarters rattlin' in the pocket of my faux Jams was the shit. Then there were the home systems, which I played to death. To death. I dreamed in videogame. This love affair continued for years, through college to present. Sitting down and having day become night, then night turn to day (just like in Simon's Quest!) was not uncommon. I spent a whole winter session in college playing the sweet bejeebus out of Doom and Doom II whilst earning myself cavitites at the hands of roll upon roll of Sprees. Then I started getting all lame and old and motion sickness began to set in during certain games. Nowadays it's pretty rough to play any type of 1st person game. Which sucks, because all the interesting ones seem to be of this genre. Oh well, I'll just have to break out the Dramamine if I wanna try to play Fallout or that new zombie Left 4 Dead game. Stupid brain.

Anyways. I ask: Why did you love/hate Gauntlet?

30 comments:

Fiend Without A Face said...

Shooting the Valkyrie in the back to hear her scream was always funny (to me). Also, shooting food or potions whenever someone other than myself was going for them was good for a laff.

Yeah, I am kind of an ass...

Chris Horse said...

The fact you HAD to keep pumping quarters in regardless of how good you were was pure evil genius on the manufacturers part.

Double Dragon ate more or my quarters than Gauntlet. It was something about those whip-wielding, bushy-haired women, bordering on dyke in their amorphous outfits that got me.

Or were those guys?

PS: Roll Dons Roll!

Anonymous said...

That's funny Go-go. I figured you ate more quarters than Double Dragon and Gauntlet combined. "Shake him, he jingles!"

Gauntlet love: Yelling at friends to keep up with the Elf and yelling and trapping the slow-ass Wizard in a corner where he couldn't follow you in the telly-port mazes.

Gauntlet hate: Standing at the 4-man open sided version of the game with 2 people you knew and invariably one douche who both smelled like he shit his pants, always shot the food, and seemed to have an unlimited supply of quarters from his mom's purse.

Oh Gauntlet, why!?!

L. Vetock said...

Go-Go needs food-------badly.
Jerm says "Don't shot your friends."

Anonymous said...

Shameless Plug:

In @2 weeks you will be able to relive your childhood dreams in the refinished basement of Hamiltions where a shiny new "used" gauntlet machine will reside thanks to Tron.

Tron needs banana cognac...badly.

Anonymous said...

fack...I spelled the name of my own bar wrong...I'm so tits on a bull.

Ack Ack Ack said...

I'm so in the refinished basement of Hoolihans in two weeks!

Ack Ack Ack said...

Or was that TGIFridays? Or Hunkeltons?
Hamhill the bar? I'm confused now.

Dibs on the shitty wizard.

Ack Ack Ack said...

HAMILSHUNS!

Fiend Without A Face said...

Hammy's!

Will there be a Tron machine, for Tron?

Fiend Without A Face said...

Hamma Slamma.

Fiend Without A Face said...

The Hebrew Hamilton?

Fiend Without A Face said...

Dibs on pissing Ty off by shooting the potions.

Anonymous said...

Ham Sammich? Get an enclosed Discs of Tron Machine in there stat Murph. Faux jews demand it. It will prevent some people from hooking up any more customers by the throat.

Anonymous said...

Discs of Tron = Balls!
Hot Hand of Tron = Win!

BTW, Cairo & Stu sometimes y'all form the reatrded version of Master Blaster.

Tron, still just tryin to figure out who runs Bordertown...

Ack Ack Ack said...

I thought Master Blaster was a great game. Challenging, but not retarded.

Anonymous said...

I meant the retarded dude that had the midget ridin his shoulders in Mad Max Beyond THUNDERDOME!

Sometimes you really disappoint me.

Ack Ack Ack said...

Jeeze, you really think I missed that?

And how can you retard what is already retarded? Double retarded Blaster?! Master would never be able to control his precious manslave.

Fiend Without A Face said...

I was kinda hoping one of us would be a tank that the other would come out of in the smaller stages.

We do fight frogs, so the allusion is apt.

Anonymous said...

I remember once Will was visiting in our sophomore year at Delaware so you and he came up to my room to find Ethan. I had just woken up and starting talking about this song I couldn't get out of my head, not even in my dreams. I started humming it and you said, "That's the song that plays in the Mysterious Forest." You knew I'd been playing Link's Awakening on my Gameboy pretty much non-stop (since I'd been annoying you for clues on how to beat the bosses for awhile) but it was still impressive how quickly you identified the music of one particular area in a game you hadn't played in quite some time.

I remember that Doom-laden Winter break. I was in your room annoying you for like the whole month.

I also have trouble with the first-person games. Which sucks because all my beloved Zelda games are like that now. I miss the old school overhead view.

Remember when we'd play Ice Hockey on my Atari? I'd hear you jingling your way down the hall and I'd get the cartridge ready. Or how you'd come to my room just to play Alien 3 on my Super Nintendo. Good times.

I have no Gauntlet memories to share.

Anonymous said...

Murphy, if I find a Jungle King/Hunt machine, can I add it to your colleciton?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeSpSZS9pKY

I loved the hell out of this game.

Guantlet was awesome, paper boy money goes to arcade every month, it was terrible, also to that crappy mousetrap clone that was as the local yogurt shop.

Oh, and Discs of Tron was ass, ass I tell you, nothing but ass.

Anonymous said...

You guys are old as shit.

Thats all I got for now.

Unknown said...

this post pleases me. that is all.

Anonymous said...

Jungle King is a strong positive!

Loves me some slaying of the picsalated crocs!

Fiend Without A Face said...

How have I never heard of Jungle Boy/King/Hunt, even in the busted-ass arcade and laundromat wilds of Idaho?

Goat said...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230306069139

JakeLandis said...

Tron this should be your very next bar purchase. Yes even before restocking your coke and JD.
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j312/Jake82_2006/256px-Contra_flyer.jpg

Anonymous said...

The best evar. Required. That is all.

Fiend Without A Face said...

Zaxxon and/or Rampage.

katherine said...

Completely not Gauntlet related, but...

There was a Space Port at the KoP mall (pre-crazy-super-mall-ifying, back when it was just normal odd-shaped shitty mall with a Woolworth's and a place where you could get away with selling SuperPretzels and Slurpee's at a stand for 50 cents).

I could only go in and play games when my parents weren't around, as they had this idea that it was a "bad scene". I suppose they never wanted me to get sucked into the dismal world of competitive gaming.