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The
final part in the Gauntlet trilogy was to be a 3D affair, the
perspective owing more to Pacmania and 3D Ant Attack then the
previous overhead offerings.
The
game features some awesome graphics by Martin
Holland and Hadyn Dalton, including some incredible character
selection screens. The scrolling is smooth, and the game is quite
awesome and faithful to the original classic.
The
music is also awesomely created by Tim and
Geoff Follin, in the same league as the awesome Ghouls
and Ghosts tunes.
The
game was due for release in the Summer of
1991 after some well recieved reviews. The game suffered
massive delays when the programmer fell ill and US Gold couldn't
get the game off the development system and onto the tape. Something
which only the programmer could really do. All attempts failed.
Due
to the delays, Gauntlet 3 was to be eventually released onto the
Kixx label, but unfornately this
never happened either, as they could just not get the game onto
tape. It all worked fine on disk though.
Martin
Howarth
contacted GTW briefly a few years ago, and mentioned that he did
not suffer a breakdown of any sort. Again, Martin got in touch
with GTW recently and confirmed that what really happened was
that he was made redundant by Software Creations, and after that,
Software Creations had problems trying to master the game onto
tape.
Martin
didn't move onto any other platforms after this, and sadly got
left behind. However, after a break from programming, Martin got
back into it, and now works at BarCrest. And very soon Martin
will be talking a bit more about work on Gauntlet 3 to share with
you. So watch this space!
There
is also however a remarkable story that Gauntlet 3 did sneak out
in very little form... very likely in an evaluation form for people
who were part of their software club at US Gold. However, the
game was only on disk, and no-one has claimed to have a tape.
So
you can all still play it, though its not friendly with all emulators,
so be warned. Tried and fully working in the latest version of
Vice. And now thanks to Jazzcat we have added the original disk images (uncracked).
A
great finale, sadly never fully sold in a nice glossy box...
Frank.
(Additional
source credits - Martin Holland, Martin Howarth, Ian Osbourne,
Mat Allen, Quapil, Jazzcat)
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