The 1988 NES version of Gauntlet was developed and published by Tengen, and – surprisingly – it doesn’t feature the levels from the arcade original, but does its own thing instead.

Movement is a bit strange in this game, because characters seem to move more slowly when walking diagonally (than vertically or horizontally), which can be frustrating.

Gauntlet on the NES has a number of other idiosyncrasies that make the game feel weird and inauthentic, like Death moving really quickly when chasing you, and teleporters having a delay before rematerialising you (which can cause “where am I?!” confusion during play).

There’s also a map that pops up between levels, that shows your path through the dungeon, although it’s not clear which exits take you in which direction – at least not until you’ve learned the way with repeated play. The map shows you treasure room levels, and question marks indicate mystery levels.

Graphically, Gauntlet looks okay. The sprites are recognisable and don’t suffer from tearing, in spite of the large number on-screen at once. Use of colour in the game isn’t the best, but it’s okay, and the scrolling is smooth enough not to be bothersome.

NES Gauntlet has a number of musical pieces playing during levels (which the original doesn’t have), and they’re jolly, medieval-sounding and beepy – nothing particularly worthy of note, but they’re at least reasonably fitting to the game.

One very good feature of this game, is the password system, which allows you to continue where you left off. Passwords are shown between levels and can be input by holding down the ‘A’ button and pressing Start during the character selection screen. The password system is also “hackable”, if you learn how it works.

Overall: this is a playable port of Gauntlet, but it’s nothing special, and the new levels and game structure make it unique, but not particularly authentic to the original.

More: Gauntlet on Wikipedia