1985 was an iconic year in pop-culture history, bringing us many, many creations that are still celebrated today. As well as the albums, television shows and movies that went on to stand the test of time, the mid-eighties was also a formative era for video games, in terms of both coin-op arcade machines and home computing. And one game which landed triumphantly in the sticky-carpeted amusement palaces of 1985 was the legendary GAUNTLET...
This was the top-down, four-player, hack-and-slash dungeon crawler that set the bar (not to mention the template) for an entire genre of video game. A stunningly simple concept (collect treasure, kill monsters = accumulate points, ad infinitum) was given longevity by nature of its collaborative play, and 118 randomised maps (after the first seven 'trainer' levels). If other friends were playing then the game wouldn't end when a player died, and even before that happened then the grim reaper could be staved off by simply inserting more lovely, shiny coins. Not only was the game easy to grasp and addictive to play, but the cabinet itself also took up to four times the money of a single-user title - an instant hit with arcade owners, too.
Yet weirdly, not a lot of ancillary product was created to market it. This is because, for the main part, in 1985 the video game product was the spin-off merch. While Star Wars had written the manual on merchandising, it was an approach applied to movies and - to a lesser extent - TV shows. Video games were adapted from movies, not the other way around. Because of this, gamers tended not to be offered the magazines, posters and t-shirts which are found in high streets today, and the high development-costs of toys made those especially scarce.
Gauntlet was a slight exception to this...
A Canadian manufacturer convinced Atari that having some toys to try and sell was better than having none at all, and four 3¾" figures were produced representing the game's heroes: Thor the Warrior, Thyra the Valkyrie, Merlin the Wizard and Questor the Elf. The design and manufacturing was basic - five points of articulation and largely flat colour schemes - but entirely standard for the style of the time. Two thing hampered sales, however. Firstly that limited development funding meant these four intrepid adventurers were produced alone had no one to battle against, but more importantly that an almost non-existent distribution network left the figures sitting in a warehouse in rural Alberta. The figures that were shipped didn't sell particularly strongly, since the ethos among gamers at this time was that plastic toys were for children and they were more sophisticated.
But viewed through a retro-lens, the Gauntlet figures were pretty exceptional. It's taken this humble collector the best part of four decades to amass them all, so here they are.
Gauntlet enjoyed even greater success when U.S. Gold adapted it for the home computer market in 1986, where the same mechanics (albeit with only two players) could be enjoyed without having to offload coins into a slot and without a dissatisfied queue forming all the while. The following year saw an expansion-pack released exclusively for these same users, and The Deeper Dungeons brought 512 new levels to small screens around the world. Never ones to give up completely, Atari chanced their arm and released four more figures - this time bringing some long-awaited foes to toyboxes:
Already wise to the fact that smaller figures were harder to sell for the same price, this range of Ghost, Sorcerer, Demon and Grunt each came with a different Lobber to help in 'army-building' against the heroes (it was also a wise pack-in since the Lobbers have always been the least popular of the game's sprites, and probably wouldn't sell on their own - even in multi-packs). Sales were slightly better this time around as figure-sculpts and paint-apps improved, but the four enemy figure packs were shipped as-is (ie without the four central characters being either retrieved from storage or re-released) and with the same poor distribution. Again, without opposing characters to actually create play-scenes against (unless the customer had been lucky enough to snap up figures a year earlier), the Deeper Dungeons line did not make a significant retail-impact.
Gauntlet II was a full-on standalone sequel which came to arcades in 1986 and home platforms late the next year. The marketing lesson by now learned, Atari put out one - borderline ceremonial - action figure to mark the occasion...
At the end of the decade and with no more games on the immediate horizon, Atari were moving into home console development and the toy manufacturer went into liquidation. No one knows what happened to the remaining stock.
As it would turn out, various Gauntlet reboots and retoolings have later surfaced over the years - you certainly can't keep a good concept down - but as for the action figures? Apparently that's still a no-goer. Some would say that the 40th anniversary year of the game would be an ideal time to finally get these toys back out in the wild; this collector would certainly agree.
In the meanwhile let's raise a glass, a chalice or a sparkling blue bottle of magic potion, and toast the health of one of the most quietly brilliant arcade games of all time:
All hail Gauntlet!
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• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
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