UK and Europe, and Mindscape in the United States for the Amstrad CPC, MSX, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum ports of Gauntlet. It was developed by Gremlin Graphics. Many of its levels were entries in a competition throughout Europe in which ten winners were awarded prizes, a Gauntlet T-shirt and a copy of the program for their computers. The contest was announced in the instructions of many of the ported games. The levels are presented randomly and its artwork is the side panel artwork of the arcade cabinet with only the main characters shown. The enemies were removed from the image and replaced with a pink background. Reviewers noted that the levels were much harder than those in the original game, although the consensus was that it was not quite as good as the first game or the newly released arcade sequel. Reception Commercial The game was highly profitable upon its November 1985 launch in North America, reportedly earning one San Mateo, California arcade operator $15,000 in sixteen weeks and another Canadian operator US$4,500 in nine days. In the United States, it topped the monthly RePlay upright arcade cabinet chart in December 1985, and topped the Play Meter arcade video game charts from January 1986 to March 1986; after being displaced by Sega's Hang-On in April, Gauntlet returned to the top spot in May. RePlay listed it as the second highest-grossing arcade video game of 1986 in the United States, below Hang-On, while AMOA listed it as the year's highest-earning dedicated arcade cabinet. Atari ultimately sold a total of 7,848 Gauntlet video game arcade cabinets. In Japan, Gauntlet was a commercial success for Namco. At a Japanese trade show in late 1985, the game drew large crowds and set record earnings for an Atari arcade cabinet. Game Machine listed Gauntlet on their March 15, 1986 issue as being the second most-popular upright/cockpit arcade game for the previous two weeks, below Sega's Space Harrier, before Gauntlet topped the chart in April. It went on to be Japan's third highest-grossing upright/cockpit arcade game during the first half of 1986 (below Hang-On and Space Harrier), and the sixth highest during the second half of the year. It was Japans's fourth highest-grossing upright/cockpit arcade game of 1986 (below Hang-On, Space Harrier and Pole Position II). In the United Kingdom, the home computer conversions topped the UK sales chart in December 1986. It