''Gauntlet'' is a clone of '' Defender'' written by Chris Terran published in the UK by

Micro Power Micro Power was a British company established in the early 1980s by former accountant Bob Simpson. The company was best known as a video game publisher, originally under the name Program Power. It also sold many types of computer hardware and so ...

. It was released for the

Acorn Electron The Acorn Electron (nicknamed the Elk inside Acorn and beyond) was a lower-cost alternative to the BBC Micro educational/home computer, also developed by Acorn Computers Ltd, to provide many of the features of that more expensive machine at a p ...

and

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an empha ...

in 1984 and the

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for ''Colour Personal Computer'') is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the S ...

in 1985.

Gameplay

The player controls an X15 spacecraft, protecting canisters from the hostile ''Reeg'' forces. In the game, Reeg ''landers'' search the landscape for canisters. If a lander grabs a canister and makes it to the top of the screen, it turns into a ''mutant''. The player must shoot the enemy ship to release a grabbed canister, but if it falls too far, then it's destroyed on impact. There are also other ships such as ''cruisers'', which when hit, unleash ''buzzer'' ships. The player has smart bombs available which destroy all on-screen enemies. On the higher levels there are additional enemy ships such as ''mine layers'' which are capable of launching ''killer'' ships, unless the player can destroy them quickly. If the player allows destruction of all canisters, then a hoard of mutants attack and the landscape completely disappears.

References

External links

Gamespot entry for Gauntlet (Micro Power)

Advertisement for the game in the November 1984 issue of Electron User

Working at Micro Power / Program Power
– mentions how Chris Terran came to write Gauntlet
Gauntlet covers, and a gallery of Micro Power and Program Power Covers
1984 video games Amstrad CPC games BBC Micro and Acorn Electron games Horizontally scrolling shooters Micro Power games Single-player video games Video game clones Video games developed in the United Kingdom {{8bitcomputer-game-stub