Atari’s Gauntlet arcade game. Ask 19 out of 20 people what version of this title they’re fond of, and they’ll say this one. The 1 out of 20? People like myself who prefer the NES (remixed) version instead. Put the two side-by-side and you’ll see how different they are. The NES version is more definitively quest-based, has secret codes to access the final level, in-game music, and a treasure-chest limit that disables passwords for being too greedy.
Tengen made the home version, which Atari created themselves to release home-market games. They made only three licensed games for the NES until they went around Nintendo’s publishing policies. By then, they made unofficial and inferior ports of their own games. This explains why Atari / Tengen would make Sega games for the NES. All three companies had competing systems at the time.
In a funny case of irony, Third-party publisher Mindscape would release Atari’s Gauntlet II for the NES (authorized, of course).
