During a game of Dungeons and Dragons, my kids get stuck into me for the ludicrous amount of enemies I throw at their level one beginner characters. This starts a conversation about difficulty levels in games and I decide to introduce the dynamic duo to the fantasy frenzy of the classic 80s retro arcade game Gauntlet. For those of you who don’t remember this chaotic mix of mazes and monsters, it throws you into a labyrinth of war as either a wizard, a valkyrie, a warrior or an elf and you end up facing off against orcs, goblins, trolls, ogres and even life-sucking personifications of Creeping Death. I used to play this at Ramsgate Pleasurama during the eighties. So we decided to pitch Dungeons & Dragons VS Gauntlet.
Speaking of Mazes and Monsters, who remembers that incredibly odd 70s film where Tom Hanks (in one of his first roles) plays the uni kid obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons? I’m pretty sure it was based on the heavily biased anti-D&D book by Rona Jaffe and centred around the legendary tale of poor James Dallas Egbert IV. This entire fascinating but ultimately sad tale (I was a huge D&D fan in my teens) was galvanised by the MADD – Mothers Against Dungeons and Dragons – parent group, which you can kind of understand when you look at the early Advanced D&D book covers: every single one of them looks like a cult manual for the rituals of devil worship. It’s really unfortunate that so many kids missed out on such a great game because of these (largely ill-informed) campaigns!
Anyway, do enjoy the video – we loved making it.
Dungeons and Dragons VS Gauntlet was originally recorded by Davey Stone and the gang during 2018. If you enjoyed Dungeons and Dragons VS Gauntlet, please consider following the blog for more content. In any case, thanks for reading.