GAUNTLET IV

A bunch of Japanese students, including a young man named Naoki Horii, fell in love with Atari's coin-op classic Gauntlet... and a few years later, they just start porting Ed Logg's hoary dungeon adventure to the Sega Mega Drive and by doing so, created the definitive adaptation

- Words by Thomas Nickel

There is a widely held belief that Japanese players and creators are not particularly fond of Western-developed games. Needless to say, this is certainly not true. Atari's Breakout had a profound impact on the Japanese industry, the creators of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy were really into Wizardry and the 1985 arcade hit Gauntlet left such an impression on a couple of students that they decided to start their own company. That company was M2 - a studio that is known today as one of the finest houses when it comes to brilliant ports of classics to current systems.

"I was still in junior high school when I first saw Gauntlet," Naoki Horii, CEO of M2 tells us. "It was in Game Boutique Takadanobaba in downtown Tokyo, far from where I lived. I found the gritty heroes soberly progressing through dimly lit dungeon corridors to be insanely cool." Despite, or maybe because of his young age, Horii's mind began turning. "I desperately wanted to play this game by any means available. What could I do to achieve that?" However, at this time, playing games, rather than creating them himself, was on Horii's mind - and the best way to play games in those days was the Sharp X68000 home computer; a powerful and expensive device, that was home to the best arcade conversions of its time. "I was just barely admitted into what could narrowly be called one of the better schools and my parents were concerned about my future," Horii explains. "So I took advantage of that by sweet-talking them into buying me an X68000, saying, 'If you let me have one of these, I shall surely apply myself to the duties of a student."