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Warrior, Valkyrie, Wizard, Elf, and a Couple of Legendary Bards

The idea of the Gauntlet games always appealed to me as a kid. It had that exotic-yet-comfortable classic fantasy vibe, featuring swords and sorcery, Valkyries and barbarians, and hordes of evil minions to slay in the name of justice (probably, I never paid too much attention to the storyline), but it combined this with a heavy dose of good old-fashioned, co-operative multiplayer. The venerable series takes an arcadey approach to dungeon crawling, with its fast-paced, projectile-based combat, maze-like levels, and constantly dwindling health reserves designed to suck up your coins, and leaves concepts like party management and stat wrangling to the likes of Wizardry and SSI’s Gold Box series of stuffy D&D games.

In 1993, a game called Gauntlet IV was released exclusively for the Sega Mega Drive. Developed by M2 and published by Tengen, it served as a sequel as well as a remake, providing a port of the original game as its “Arcade Mode”, and adding in a unique “Quest Mode”, where players could purchase items and access limited character levelling.

The controls are tight and it’s satisfying to lay waste to hordes of enemies. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, though.

The game is good; a very competent translation of Atari’s original title with plenty of added content and four player multiplayer available across Arcade, Quest, and Battle modes. The tried-and-tested Gauntlet gameplay survives intact and the twists put on the formula by M2 are welcome. The graphics are fine, if a little dull (the dragon bosses added in Quest Mode are very flat and barely-animated), the digitised voices are kind of a mess but have a janky charm, and there’s enough content to keep enthusiasts occupied for weeks. A sterling game, but unremarkable by the stellar standards of the Mega Drive’s top titles. Here in 2025, Gauntlet IV is all but forgotten, and it’s no real surprise, as there isn’t a whole lot about the game that makes it stand out.

Well, apart from the fucking incredible music, that is.

That’s right – this isn’t one of my retro reviews, this is a love letter to one of the most overlooked soundtracks on Sega’s 16-bit banger factory, as when it comes to perfectly-realised musical accompaniment, Gauntlet IV is (in my opinion) right up there alongside the three big S’s, Sonic the Hedgehog, Shinobi, and Streets of Rage. The soundtrack was produced by a pair of musical wizards; Hiroshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata, whose best-known works include Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII, and combines Conan-style, bleak, heroic fantasy fare with atmospheric electronica to masterful affect.

It may not look like much, but by the four elemental towers does it sound great.

If you look up this soundtrack on YouTube or some other soundtrack-storing app or website, you’ll find that the first five tracks consist of a somewhat generic-sounding main title theme followed by four tempo-shifted versions of a rather grating “Treasure Room” song. You’d be forgiven for writing off the soundtrack as forgettable, uninspired plinky-plonk at this point, but I advise pushing on through, as 16-bit, dark fantasy masterpieces await the determined.

For the last part of this article, just for fun and to indulge myself a bit, I’m going to pick out some of the musical highlights and attempt to flex my creative writing muscles to describe the atmosphere each tune evokes to me. If you read this, perhaps check out the soundtrack and see if it takes you to the same magical places.

Whisper of Phantom

A lone traveller crosses a barren swamp where once a great battle was fought. The warrior’s heartbeat pulses, gripped with fear as he peers into the unnatural darkness, the shapes of twisted trees and the shattered remnants of ancient fortifications looming like spectres from an unnatural mist. Hulking scavenger birds peer from their gnarled perches and unseen creatures skulk in the muck and fog. A lonely pipe or flute plays a distant, unsettling tune that calls to the ghosts of warriors that still haunt this place, the notes occasionally threatening to bring a tone of hope, but always descending into loss and loneliness, perfectly suited to this forsaken, haunted land.

Sortie

A hero returns home from a triumphant victory, the high walls of the city topped with rows of baying admirers and draped with shining pennants. The hero has triumphed through strength of arms, and his servants bring carts loaded with treasures from another land and decorated with grizzly trophies of an ancient and hated foe. The people are elated, foreseeing a time of wealth and plenty, but every great victory comes at a cost, and an ominous, orange sun sets as the mighty gates close behind the hero’s retinue, painting the city’s walls in a blood-red glow. Tonight, though, is a time for rejoicing. They can worry about the future tomorrow.

Adventures of Iron

A band of stalwart warriors defend the walls of a mountain fortress as a storm descends across the walls. The fortress is a rare bastion of good in a barren and savage land, and dark hordes accompanied by furious beasts ascend the rocky slopes. Lumbering giants scale the walls with ease, only to be met by the axes and arrows of the heroic defenders, and minions of the dark gods astride snapping wyvern mounts descend from the darkened skies, but many are brought low by hurtling ballista bolts, their winged corpses crashing on the mountainside below. The tide of the battle is slowly turning. This encounter will be hard fought yet, but beams of golden light begin to penetrate the clouds.

Transparent Obstacle

A group of adventurers have been tempted into a crystalline cave by a malicious spirit. Deep inside, a supernatural light shimmers along shining surfaces, and all sense of space is lost. Powerful treasures and untold riches sit in out-of-reach places beyond thick walls of clear crystal. A jade statuette appears to move out of the corner of an eye, a spoke of radiant, near-invisible thread seems to vibrate, like the web of some unseen arachnid. A passage descends into the earth, both ominous and enticing. The adventurers gather their wits and press onwards, and from some unseen location, an unknown intelligence watches them closely through the eyes of its skittering familiars.

There you go, and I only used a thesaurus once.

A Tumble in the Jungle

As a small child with a wide-eyed interest in the natural world, I embarked on one or two trips to a place called the Tropiqaria in West Somerset. It was (and still is) a small tropical house and zoo built in and around an old BBC radio transmitter. I have two memories from visiting the Tropiquaria; one school trip during which I held a snake around my neck (they’re dry, not slimy!) and one trip with my parents where I sank a few coins into the single arcade machine that stood near the snack bar.

Over the following thirty years I would think about this game every now and then, surrounded by snakes, lizards and tropical flora as it was, but could never remember the name. It was a single-screen platformer along the lines of Bomb Jack but with a bit of a Ghostbusters vibe; the characters had vacuum guns with packs on their backs, and you’d suck up enemies into your pack and then fire them at other enemies. It was bright and colourful and whimsical, and something about it burrowed into the back of my mind and found a permanent home there.

Incredibly, by using the modern art of “Googling it” I have managed to identify this mysterious game from my youth, so I’d like to bring your attention to Tumblepop, released in 1991 and developed by Data East. Tumblepop is an arcade platformer for up to two players starring a pair of ghost hunters who travel the world, sucking up spooks and blasting them into their allies. The machine was published by Namco in Japan, a company called Leprechaun Inc. in the US, and a company called Mitchell Corporation in Europe. Despite sounding very English, the Mitchell Corporation was apparently a Japanese developer and publisher, and somehow delivered a Tumblepop cabinet to a random exhibition of tropical animals in the depths of the English West Country. Strange how things work out, isn’t it?

The Japanese stages take place during sunset, just like in Road Rash 3. Wait, it’s probably sunrise, come to think of it.

Thanks to the modern gift of emulation, I spent some time today playing Tumblepop on my desktop PC using a USB Nintendo Switch controller, and I have to say I had a pretty good experience with it, despite there being very few lizards nearby. The game definitely has an air of Bomb Jack about it, with its single-screen layouts and backgrounds featuring world landmarks, but the rainbow-hued suction beams of the magic vacuum guns add a whole extra dimension to the gameplay.

After selecting the nation they’d like to save from a simple world map, players will battle through a number of stages, slurping up a variety of enemies as they work their way towards a boss battle. The gameplay is simple and satisfying, and it’s not as tricky as a lot of arcade platformers, but it’s still easy to get caught out with so many enemies packed into the single-screen areas that are capable of attacking from above and below. As you progress through the stages, projectile-spewing baddies will begin to appear, as well as baddie-producing generator-type enemies that take a couple of hits to remove.

Each location has a boss waiting at the end of it, and the bosses tend to dominate the screen and represent an interesting change of pace. Despite each boss encounter having its own simple gimmick they all have the same solution; suck up their minions and empty the tank right in their enormous, ugly faces. Oh, don’t hold the suck button down for too long though, or your guy’s backpack will explode and you’ll lose a life. It’s a tragic and shameful way for a ghost hunter to go out.

Remember when that giant octopus terrorised New York? Yeah that was crazy.

As far as I can tell, Tumblepop was never ported out of the arcade with the single exception of a Game Boy version that was later released for the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console, meaning that outside of emulation there’s no way of playing Tumblepop in full, living colour – unless you want to track down what must now be an exceptionally rare and obscure arcade machine, that is. I wonder if the Tropiquaria still has theirs? Maybe I’ll go over there soon and check it out. Worst-case scenario; I get to see some turtles.