Guys, is there a way I can contact Ed Logg (Atari Games/Gauntlet?)

[Falkentyne]

Hi guys,

I wanted to contact the original designer of Gauntlet, to inquire about the "Prototype" version.
I'm not talking about the test 2 player version. There was another version that was released and I remember *very* distinctly running into it as a child back in 9th grade.

There were two things I remember very vividly about this version.

 

1) The Thief had an "extra" taunting sound effect that is not in the sound banks of any later version, including "intermediate release 1"

2) One infamous "all walls are blue openable doors" level was changed.

 

 

In the proto release, the thief's taunting sound was wildly different from later release. Sometimes instead of saying "hahaha, you can't catch me", he would say something like 'HAHA NAKNAK NAK NAK NANANANA-NAK !!" I kid you not. How do I remember? Because a few of my highschool friends were watching me play and heard that sound come out from the Thief and everyone just started going "WTF" and laughing their butts off.

 

The thief already says "haha' or "nahnah" in later versions, but he usually says it only if his path is blocked, after he steals from you and starts hammering you with his fists, and he usually only says something once every 10 seconds.

On the proto release, he would just spam like crazy..it was hilarious.

 

It's completely missing from the service menu sound tests on all other versions.

 

Also on the "wall =doors" level, you start off at the top left corner. In all normal and intermediate releases of Gauntlet, the first room is filled with 9 keys, then you have to wander around without accidentally touching any of the walls or half the level would open up, swarming you with ghosts.

 

On the prototype release, well....I remember VERY very vividly that that first room was NOT filled with keys!

It was filled with *FOOD*. I don't remember how many but it was probably 8-9 food.

 

Looks like all the food was replaced with keys.

 

 

 

 

The person who originally dumped the Gauntlet and Gauntlet 2 Roms--a very famous person named Eric Crabill, knew about the prototype release, but didn't have it. He was the only person who knew of its existence and was asking (way back on his Gauntlet page, where he had the roms he dumped himself--he owned a Gauntlet machine) if anyone had it.

I emailed him many years ago asking about it but he said he didn't know anyone who had it.

 

I think the best person to ask about it, or of ROM dumping for repository into MAME (which would be quite simple once the ROMS were available) would be Ed Logg himself.

that's assuming of course, that there was a board with the data still available somewhere.

 

Anyone have any ideas?

[Flojomojo]

i have an idea --

 

when someone goes into retirement

and doesn't make their contact information known

so every random rom-dumper from the internet can ask questions

about thrown-away work from thirty years ago,

take the hint.

 

You might find this interesting if you haven't already read it, though

http://pixelatron.com/blog/ed-loggs-gdc-2012-talk-on-gauntlet/

[Falkentyne]

Thank you for the link.

Although your post sounds slightly inflammatory and passive-aggressive. You didn't have to write it as a concealed flame.

 

I was friends with the person who first dumped the roms on the internet, Eric Crabill. He owned the machine, which is how he read and dumped the roms onto his website space. All credit goes to him for the assistance he gave and getting the ball rolling.

 

He sold his machine some years ago after he got married and no longer had the space for a giant, bulky and very hard to move cabinet.

 

He had a rough FAQ on Gauntlet 2 which explained some things I never knew in my childhood, namely the "kill the death with potion" point cycling system, and the 32 bit max signed integer value (2,147,483.647)--2 to the 31st power minus 1, which would reset the "food starvation" system from a bug that Atari could never anticipate (getting 2.1 million points on one quarter was impossible without a strange exploit, although it's possible to get this point total without the exploit if you can get 10,000 health before all the food is removed, and then set the death total to 8000 and hope you can reach 2.1m before all your health runs out (most likely, you have no chance; this also requires the service menu difficulty to be set to easiest=0).

 

I still have the rom edits I made with Eric's ROM editor, where I "un-nerfed" warrior and wizard (In Gauntlet 2) after they were made worthless for solo play in Gauntlet 1 Intermediate release 9.

 

I then did some beta testing for Neill corlett's starscream emulator, which was originally a "multi-gauntlet" emulator with the 68000 CPU and some registers and chips partially emulated, and was the first emulator with working save states.

 

The only person who knew about the Prototype release was Eric. No one else even knew it existed. I don't even think the MAME team knew. FYI, even the Street fighter Alpha 3 "Sample" version (the one demo'd at E3 1998) was dumped last year by the MAME team. Pretty amazing that hardware 17 years later was found intact.

Edited May 3, 2016 by Falkentyne

[Tempest]

I don't have an answer for you but I find this topic really interesting. Maybe try asking Curt Vendel? He has some coin op contacts.

 

I think one of Ed's sons contacted me through my website a few years back, I'll see if I still have his contact info. It's true that some of these old programmers don't want to be bothered, but others don't mind answering questions. It all depends on the person and you really don't know until you try. Lack of contact info isn't always an indicator either.

[Falkentyne]

Thank you. I'll keep up on this thread if you find anything. I'm a new member so I don't think I can use most features, and I don't know what I'm allowed to post here.

 

A bit extraneous, but this might be of use to people who still play Gauntlet 2:

Would there be a way to fix the "default fight power" setting not matching the correct character? Eric Crabill had an ancient rom editor which allowed you to change the default shot power, armor, speed, and one other stat and the power up bonuses. I KNOW that shot speed wasn't editable then; Eric didn't find the register or it didn't work correctly. Magic Power was changeable but I don't know if fight power was. I remember there were only four changeable powers in his beta editor.. But his editor was never finished. It doesn't seem to be available anymore. If there's a way I can post the edits I made back in 1998, I can upload them somewhere.

 

there were several batches of edited .6a and .6b roms I did.

One had the original Gauntlet 1 intermediate release (before IR9) powers for warrior and wizard (shot speed could not be changed so wizard's shot speed had to remain nerfed. Warrior and Wizard were actually playable with the original abilities, although still very, very hard; you need difficulty set to 0). Another gave Valkyrie a 0.5x buff to her starting shot power. A third gave wizard warrior's original G1 intermediate release shot power and extra shot power (to counter the heavy wizard discrimination in food and everything else), but I made his extra speed same as Valkyrie's base speed. And so on.

Edited May 6, 2016 by Falkentyne