Arcade classic Gauntlet hacked to show entire dungeons on high-res displays

Though Super VGA hardly qualifies as high-resolution these days, 1024×768 is enough real estate to show the entirety of a level in Atari's arcade classic Gauntlet—originally displayed at a fast-scrolling, zoomed-in 336×240. Replicating the original hardware with a FPGA, John Smith hacked the game to play zoomed entirely out.

I love this, and it's quite uncanny how it changes the feel of the game despite otherwise being exactly the same. The levels are smaller than I imagined, for starters, 32×32 tiles by the looks of it, and seeing it all at once makes the game feel more like a puzzle. It's cool that Gauntlet is simulating the entire level, too, even those areas that would be out of sight—it's not clear how much work Smith had to do from the description.

I've always wanted to "implement" Gauntlet as a game engine, adding in all sorts of modern ARPG features without losing the original games' frantic feel. Dip in for a 5-minute procgen run, get loot, share the level! Smith's work here makes me think such a thing could be a lot of fun. Going back and forth between levels! Weirdness!

Atari Gauntlet hacked to SVGA resolution by John Smith on YouTube.

I just now got around to recording a gameplay session of this, full details and a download FPGA .rbf file for MiSTer can be found here

Previously: Such Bravery