Gauntlet is the arcade game Atari Games released in 1985: up to four players choose between warrior, wizard, elf, or valkyrie and explore endless dungeons together, destroying monster generators and collecting food and keys while each character's health keeps dropping nonstop, even without taking a single hit. That design decision — constant attrition — was as influential as the simultaneous four-player co-op itself, something practically unheard of for an arcade game of the time.
Its commercial success was overwhelming and spawned a legion of home conversions across every kind of computer and console. Gauntlet is, today, one of the founding texts of the cooperative dungeon genre: any current "hack and slash" game with looting and multiplayer co-op owes it something, directly or indirectly.
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