I did a review on Run the Gauntlet some time ago. I did gave it a rather bad score. I am still sticking to it even after I played it again for this section. I actually started to dislike it even more. The horrible controls for the game are just killing it. I actually had some fond memories about the game but it must have been the show on the telly. Also in most cases the fond memories are more about what was happening at the time of playing the game. That usually makes you think it was a great game until you actually start playing it again. Don’t get me wrong, not all games with great memories turn out to be bad.
The best thing about the game for me is the intro. “Hi, I’m Martin Shaw. This is Run The Gauntlet. If you want to see Action Sports…. This is the place to be!” It’s worth it just to fire up the game for the intro. I remember doing that a lot with the speakers on full.
Most memorable gaming moments does not necessarily mean good things. One thing I always hated, and happened near the finish just about outrunning the competitors, is when the explosion happened right when you are going over it with your speedboat, hovercraft or jet ski. Let me know if you have any Run the Gauntlet memorable gaming moments.
This week I had a go at recording Amiga games in WinUAE. I want to use some bits and pieces in some upcoming articles. Having a video to show what you are referring to is such a great asset to the story. I came across a site called Games4enthusiasts which has a great tutorial on how to setup WinUAE for recording games. I wish I came across it sooner as my first attempts on getting it working was a disaster. Even if I recorded something it was hundreds of megabytes for a few seconds and it looked horrible. Not to mention the game got really slow once I was recording it. All I had to do was to install the Xvid Codec and I was up and running.
Having a video is one thing but you always want to edit them. I needed a simple editor that will let me cut a section from the video that I want. After trying a few programs that really frustrated me I came across a program called Kate’s Video Toolkit that did exactly what I wanted. Not only that, it was really easy to use.
License to Kill
I wanted start a new section called “Most memorable gaming moments”. Moment or moments in a game that just are really special to me and I want to share. And having a video is essential in this since it will show readers exactly what I am talking about. I will upload the videos to my Flickr account and embed them in to the story. For the first entry in this new section I will have Licence to Kill. I should have this one done and posted this weekend.
Run the Gauntlet
Next up has to be Run the Gauntlet. I can hear you thinking, the intro. 🙂
NovaCoder released an Amiga AGA 68k port of SDL v1.2.3 over at
Aminet. I never tried SDL and I am not really a fan of using it. I guess seeing so many SDL ports and not “native” created stuff has put me off. But seeing the news about this port for the classic Amiga has got me thinking. I do want to create some stuff for the classic Amiga later this year so it might be worth to have a look into this.
“Hi, I’m Martin Shaw. This is Run The Gauntlet. If you want to see Action Sports…. This is the place to be!” This is how you will be greeted when you are playing Run the Gauntlet.
Run the Gauntlet Title Screen
Lucky enough they also showed Run the Gauntlet on Dutch television. Today you got massive amounts of channels to choose from but at that time we only had three public channels. They also created a Dutch kids version of Run the Gauntlet so being able to play it on your computer was wonderful. For me it has some great sentimental value. I vividly remember the times when I played this game.
What is Run the Gauntlet about?
The run the gauntlet challenge is divided into three events which are
picked at random from the many instore. Each event consists of three
segments which can be either on land, water or the hill (assult course).
Complete the challenge with the best score and you’ll be awarded the Run
The Gauntlet trophey. The vehicles you will be competing with are fast and
exciting.
During the game you will be able to control the following vehicles:
Hovercraft – Tricky to handle
Speedboats – Very fast and manoeuvrable
Jet Skis – Fast with very tight turns
Inflatables – Moderate speed
Meteors – Very fast 2 man buggy
Buggys – Fast 1 man buggy
Quads – Fast 4 wheel bikes
Supercats – Amphibious 6 wheel all-terrain vehicle
(Info taken from Lemon Amiga)
Run the Gauntlet - Select Country
It seems I suppressed some issues since after playing it I immediately feel this huge urge to scream about the shitty controls. I happen to start with the Hill which right away reminds me how awful the controls are. But soon you will discover it goes for all the parts of the game. To be honest I really wanted to stop playing the game right away. In fact that is exactly what I did.
Run the Gauntlet - Speedboat
You won’t fill up a Friday or Saturday evening with Run the Gauntlet. When I played it when I was young there surely was a moment it felt good to play, just before playing the game when it was loading up or the first 3 seconds after the start, and that must have been the memory my mind has enhanced and tricked me in thinking this was a lot of fun.
Run the Gauntlet - Jet Ski
Run the Gauntlet - Hovercraft
Below you can see some ratings from various magazines from Hall of Light.
Run the Gauntlet reviews - Hall of Light
It is strange to see a lot of high ratings for the game. I could not agree more with Stuart Campbell from Amiga Power who gave it a rating of 15%. His comments are really funny and at the same time spot on. So what rating would I give it? I am sure some people would have a bit of fun with it at first and unlike Predator it is not all the same since you got different events. But the fact that it disappointed me hugely ways heavily on the score. One thing we can all agree on is the controls which are just terrible. I think I am on par with Stuart Campbell when it comes to the rating.
The Bucket Diary gives it a rating of 15%
AmigaOS4.1 Package
It certainly is one of those weekends I am going to remember for a long time to come. People that follow my columns might have already guessed it, OS4.1 arrived. I will write a more extensive article about it which I plan to post later this week. The package arrived on Thursday and I managed to get it all up and running this (time of writing) afternoon. You can imagine that this has been some journey. What I can say is that in the end I am really impressed. Part of this column is actually written on OS4.1 (Update 4) using OWB as a browser. Sadly with the weekend ending there won’t be much time during the week for me to play with OS4.1 and the many great applications I can try now.
AmigaWorld.NET
What is so great about the Amiga, which showed again, is the community. I had to get some help in getting it all up and running and the people at AmigaWorld.NET showed their true value. So many people tried to help and in the end it was that help that got it all to work.
CodeBench
Of course I had to try CodeBench once I had it all up and running. I am really loving it. I have not done much with it yet but what I have seen really impressed me.
My Run the Gauntlet game review should also be posted this coming week. I needed some info from Hall of Light but it was down for a couple of days so that caused a bit of a delay. Let’s hope I can free myself from OS4.1 for this.
In my previous column I talked about me going to order Amiga OS4.1 from AmigaKit. That has happened (yeah!) and now I am waiting for it to arrive. This should be somewhere next week. With having a rather long weekend it would have been great to already have it now but I am not complaining but only happy for having ordered it. I am really curious it will improve on stability compared to the Pre-Release I am running now. Hopefully I will be able to write about it next weekend. I will backup my important files so I can do a clean installation and also set up a new partition scheme.
My Amos Professional tutorials are going really well. This week alone I posted already two (the first two) tutorials. I am really enjoying this and I am already brainstorming for the next tutorial. The benefit of it all is that I learn (again) more and more as well. It is aimed at beginners but I might already up it a notch in the next tutorial. Of course everything will be (as always) easy to understand.
I came across it before but today I had more time to check it out; DLH’s Commodore Archive
DLH's Commodore Archive
If you look at the Amiga part (there is stuff for other Commodore machines) you can find scans of books, manuals, magazines, newsletters, advertisements and even images of disk magazines that came with magazines. This will keep you busy for some time.
It is about time I do another game review. Currently I have Run the Gauntlet in the planning.
Run the Gauntlet - Title Screen
Another blast from the past and looking forward to play it so I can write about it. I will try to do a some more game reviews in the coming time. All that game playing but it has to be done. I will try to enjoy it. A short column this time due to it being Easter. Back to the drinks and yes a bit Amiga as well.
Thursday afternoon around 3:00pm and enjoying a nice cold beer outside when the temperature is just a bit above the 35 degrees. This is a time when fast drinking is advised since this heat will make that cold beer a warm beer in just a matter of minutes so to speak. Good thing there is a bit of a breeze otherwise this heat is just killing you. Now would be a good time to compile my top 10 list of old school Amiga games. If you read my blog before you know I could never make a permanent top 10 list. It is more of a feeling at that moment when making such a list. Chances are I would make a few changes within a week anyway. Mostly I would be adding “forgotten” games or move a game somewhat up or down the list. If I would have to make the list right now it would look like the one below.
1 – Kick Off 2
2 – Shadow of the Beast
3 – License to Kill
4 – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Adventure Game)
5 – Run the Gauntlet
6 – Hybris
7 – Thundercats
8 – Ikari Warriors
9 – Dogs of War
10 – Pirates
Remember this is just a snapshot of my findings at this very moment. A lot of games I surely must have forgotten which will come to me at a later stage which will influence my top 10 list. Like I said before my top 10 list (or more) is never permanent.
Kick Off 2 is number one because I played this game the most. No game got played more on my Amiga’s. I did play the first version for a bit but when version 2 came out I jumped on it and never looked back. I never really played modern soccer games but I can tell you that none of them could give me the feeling that Kick Off 2 did. Anyone remember when the game just got stuck and nothing happened anymore no matter how long you waited? If you did a substitute the game would come back to life again.
Shadow of the Beast is just one of those games you showed everyone to impress them with the capabilities of the Amiga. The music, the graphics…. The first one is still the best one of all three versions. Remember you had to press and hold the left mouse button and joystick button (cracked version) after the intro for the trainer?
From all 3 versions of James Bond games released on the Amiga License to Kill was by far the best one. What I liked about it is that it followed the movie story a bit. That came in handy when I did not know what you do after I shot the harpoon into the back of the airplane. I was stuck behind it thinking I had to do this for a while to get to the next level. After watching the movie I saw he got into the airplane. After figuring out how to get closer to the airplane I indeed got into the airplane and to the next level. This is a game I really wanted to finish and did. Not many games gave me that urge of wanting to finish it as badly as this one.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Adventure Game) is one of those games you give up on a thousand times and also try it again a thousand times. A friend of mine had the PC version and together we tried to figure out the clues and get further in the game. After giving up once again you watched the movie (I remember always around Christmas) and you gave it another try. The best adventure game on the Amiga, period.
Run the Gauntlet was a game I played a lot mainly because I was also watching the event on television. Soon they also had a Dutch version of Run the Gauntlet which made we want to play the game even more. I have some really fond memories of playing this game.
Hybris was a stunning looking game for a 1987’s game. This one I also played a lot and was really addictive. It is hard to explain having Thundercats up there but for some reason this game grew on me. I played it not so long ago to see if I was not mistaken and I started to even love it more. When I played it first it did not do much to me but this is one of those games you just start to love more and more over time. I am also really fond of Ikari Warriors. My fondest memories are the two player mode. Dogs of War is also one of those games that is in everyone’s top 10 list. To end the list I have Pirates. A game I seem to play a lot during the winter season. I have some really fond memories of snow outside and having hot coco in front of the Amiga playing Pirates.
I am really a sentimental geezer. 🙂
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