Gauntlet

In the arcade version, up to four players can choose from four playable fantasy characters: Thor the warrior, Merlin the wizard, Thyra the Valkyrie, or Questor the elf. Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, the warrior is strongest in close combat, the wizard has the most powerful magic, the Valkyrie has the best armor, and the elf is the fastest. After selecting a playable character, the game takes place in a series of mazes from a bird's eye view, where the goal is to find and touch the specified exit in each level. Each level has various special items that increase the character's health, open doors, earn more points, and potions that can destroy all enemies on the screen. The enemies are various fantasy monsters, including ghosts, grunts, demons, lobbers, wizards, and thieves. Each of them enters the level through specific generators that can be destroyed. While there are no bosses in the game, the most dangerous enemy is "Death," which can not only reduce a character's health but is also difficult to defeat. As the game progresses, more and more skill is required to reach the exit, with success often depending on whether players are willing to cooperate by sharing food and luring monsters to places where they can be more easily fought and killed. Contact with enemies reduces the player's health, but it also slowly decreases on its own, creating a time limit. When a character's health reaches zero, that character dies. The character can be revived on the spot with full health by using a game credit (i.e., a coin) within a certain short time window after their death. This allows even less skilled players to continue playing indefinitely if they are willing to keep using coins.