Gauntlet Game System: MAME Cheat Category: Hint Game Company: U.S. Gold Game Category: Action Hint, Cheat, Walkthrough:   GAUNTLET ======== (ROGER:) The only Gauntlet player I know of who can live indefinitely playing as the *Warrior*. Playing Gauntlet as the Warrior is very different; potions are almost useless. Anyway, my cheat allows you to strictly limit your health losses on *any* level to no more than about 200 health. It involves stalling the *walls*! If you remain motionless (or basically aimless) and stall off about 30 health, all the doors will open. Everybody knows this, and the game even tells you about it. The game doesn't tell you that if you stall off about 200 health, all the walls will turn into exits! The game designers had to include this because there are some levels which require you to pick up a key before you exit. If you are already filled up with keys, and the doors are all gone, then it would be *impossible* for you to exit, and you would starve to death. What they didn't anticipate, is that certain levels of the game which are really difficult, which would require you to take massive health losses to finish, become very simple if all the walls are exits. Or they can be effectively skipped altogether. Because the game has Monty-Hall levels with lots of food on them, you can use this cheat to only play levels which are a wash or increase your health dramatically, and cut your losses to 200 on all the really pain in the butt levels. All I need to live forever as the Warrior is extra shot power! That way, I kill everything in exactly one shot. This allows you to do precision firing and gives you a level of control over your shots that no other character can achieve. The best character to play, in the *long* run, is the elf. His magic is just as good as the wizard's and his fight ability as good as Thor's. His ability to shoot through cracks in addition to all this (when he has the power potions) makes him the best (his speed factor makes him attractive for my playing style. I like to get through the levels quickly. The faster I get through em, the faster I get points...). The Valkyrie is the worst, although some people regard this as a challenge... To manipulate the point value of Death, shoot him. Death's point value takes the following progression: 1000-2000-1000-4000-1000-6000-1000-8000, and then back to start. His value keeps from the previous game. You can kill Death painlessly by teleporting on top of him. Level 8 is the level that the previous game ended on. If you got a really good sequence of boards in a game and you want to repeat them, turn the machine off and on again after you've entered your high score. (ERIC CRABILL/DAVE HALLOCK: ) The Almost Ultimate Gauntlet I FAQ, Last Updated: 4/2/96 Authors: Eric Crabill Dave Hallock Q: Does Gauntlet I have an ending? A: No. I have played Gauntlet I to level 999 and beyond. After level 999, the next level is level 8 (it wraps around). Q: What is stalling, and what will it do for me? A: Stalling is waiting around without any activity. This includes getting hit by monsters. If you stall for about 20 health ticks will cause all doors to open. This is really useful when you run out of keys. If you continue to stall for about 400 health ticks, all of the walls will turn into exits. On some levels, in a multi-player game, it is possible to get trapped due to transporter folly. The stalling times are not adjustable options, they are hard coded in the ROM. Note that only the final ROM revision contains the code to turn the walls into exits. Q: Who is the best character? A: Gauntlet I is so easy that is is possible to play forever with any character. They are all great, but you'll want to pick one depending on your style of play. Q: What about Death? A: Death, like taxes, is inevitable. The score you get for killing death follows the cyclic pattern 1000-2000-1000-4000-2000-6000-1000-8000. Every time you shoot a death, the score changes to the next value in the pattern. Actually, since the pattern always starts at the same place when the game is powered up, the pattern is really 1000-4000-2000-6000-1000- 8000-1000-2000. The pattern saves its place from game to game, however. Death can be killed by a potion, or by squashing him by transporting on top of him. If you are really clever, you can convince the Thief to do it for you! Q: Isn't it funny that the Thief is dressed like a cop? A: Yes, indeed. The Thief is stupid but unpredictable. The Thief can only appear once on a level, and not in Treasure Rooms. Once you have put him to rest on a level, you can stop worrying about him. The worst place to be when the Thief comes is right near the start of the level, because he can pop up, grab your stuff, and disappear with little warning. Here is his modus operandi--at the beginning of the current level, the Thief calculates who is the richest player. This person is his target. Who is richest depends on each player's possessions. Extra speed is most valued, then extra armor, and so on. If no one has extra powers, the Thief will look at other things, including potions, keys, and even your lowly bonus multiplier. Once he has picked a victim, he records the victim's exact path. When he appears, he begins chasing the victim at top speed. The smart thing to do as soon as you hear his arrival is to walk in a straight line, turn around, and shoot. If there are too many monsters around, or no clear areas, you can try to kill him by moving into a position where you can shoot him before he gets to you (but you must be aware of your previous path so you can know where to expect him from). You can also squash him on a transporter. Q: How can I better control where I go on the transporters? A: First off, you always transport to the nearest transporter. There is no way around that. Other than that, it depends on which ROM version you are running. Play around and see if you can figure it out. Look at tell tale signs like your health and the white cross in the transporter. The direction you are pushing with the joystick controls which side of a transporter you will land on. Known Bugs: I am not sure if this is particular to one ROM version, but if you transport onto the exit, you will deactivate it. I saw this on that green, "compartmental" level that has a transporter in almost every compartment. In the lower left part of the level, there is an exit adjacent to a transporter. If you are playing a multiplayer game, and unfortunate (mean?) enough to transport onto the exit, the other players will have to go seek another way out. On one ROM revision (I forgot which one) when you are playing the Wizard and you pick up extra magic power, you will also get an additional regular potion. Now that I think of it, this must be ROM version 2. It is possible to stop the clock in the treasure rooms. Sometimes this takes several tries. Start with a single player game, but put a credit in another player so it can be joined-in at any time. Just let it sit idle for now. When your player enters the treasure room, quickly find the exit so you have enough time to coordinate the next step, but don't exit yet. Now enter the exit. While your player is "swirling" in the exit, join in the other player. This timing is critical; if you are too late, you will join in on the next level, and if you are too early (before the swirling) it won't work. Sometimes, the game won't let you join in and responds with an annoying buzz. You have to try again on the next treasure room. If it works correctly, the new player will have the treasure room all to himself and the clock will not be counting. This works in multi-player games, too, but you join the new player in at the time the last active player has exited. On ROM revision 3, it is possible to use this technique to do something that I thought was not possible. There is a level with pink walls that looks like this (bottom of level): | | | P| P = you, the player +------------------------------+ | | | | <-- closed area with food, potions | | +------------------------------+ If you stall long enough for the walls to turn into exits, and move your player into position P, you can use the "stop-treasure-room-clock" trick to join another player in, who will appear in the closed area. Have another player ready to join in. After stalling, move to position P and exit to the right or bottom. When you are swirling, join in the other player. The new player will appear in the closed area and he can pick up all the food and potions. When you get to higher levels, and you start getting "Players Can Now Go Off Screen" in the Treasure Rooms, you can go off screen while playing by yourself if you are the Elf with extra speed. The Treasure Room that lets you do this is the one what scrolls left-right perpetually (I'm sure you know which one!). Just keep running, you will go off screen and eventually come back on the other side. There are several Thief related bugs; I have seen these, but I don't know how to reproduce them. One bug deals with the Thief getting squashed on the transporters. Another is when the Thief will steal your stuff and not run away, but sit there and beat on you. No, I'm not talking about when you get in his way as he runs off, he just never runs away. There are some transporter-related bugs in ROM version 2 which were fixed in version 3. If you have version 2, try dying while you are transporting, and see what happens. The best way to play with this is to get on a level with many transporters, and have the health per coin set to 100 to make it go faster. Have two players active, and have the dying player get on the transporter when his health is 1. If you time it right, he will come out on the other side, dead. However, one of the following things can happen: The game will reset. There will be a body at the destination (can be visible or invisible), but since you are dead, you can't move it. Monsters will beat on it, and it will scream. If you join in again, with the same player, what ever happens to the dead body will also happen to you. This includes getting hit by monsters and getting pushed by another player (try running in the same direction as you are being pushed for turbo!) Oh, but the fun doesn't stop here! I have done the following with Wizard and Warrior dead bodies. It does not seem to work with Elf or Valkyrie corpses... Do the die-on-transporter trick with the Wizard or Warrior, but make sure you have some other players active, too. Try to get the dying character's body to be transported into a location where you can push it from the left (i.e. no walls, etc. on the left side of it). With one of the remaining characters, move to the left side of the dead one and push right. If nothing happens, then you will have to try again on another level, or keep killing players and try on each new body. If it works, the dead player will die again (you will hear the death scream of that player) and one of three strange things will happen. If you get this far, you will see some bizarre shit! The first thing that can happen is the center-of-gravity scrolling will stop working. It will behave like there is a black hole in some corner and the maze will not scroll anymore. Another thing that happens is that the monsters 'freeze' and do not move anymore. Yup, they just stand still. The third thing I have seen happen after you join that player in yet again is that the players who were active are suspended (it says "Press Start") and whoever you joined in with will start the level over. After playing for several levels, the suspended players will magically re-appear. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Source: MAME v0.33 Strategy Guide - Compiled by Phanatik URL: http://members.tripod.com/~phanatik/index.html