Dandy, the inspiration for Gauntlet
I’ve met Ed Logg before, the programmer/creator behind the arcade classics Gauntlet and Gauntlet II and attended his GDC talk in 2012. (I was the one that asked him the question about those that could play forever at 42:53)
Logg was inspired by this Atari 8-bit game called Dandy, developed by John Howard Palevich as his undergrad thesis project at MIT. Some have suggested the ‘inspired by’ was a lot closer to ‘directly copied’, but it was resolved without lawsuit – Palevich got a free Gauntlet arcade system and is now listed with ‘special thanks’ in the credits.
Check out some of the gameplay from Dandy (below) and see how many similarities you see (4 play co-op, monster movement, etc)
For a little extra fun, check out Ed Logg’s first, unreleased, Atari game – called ‘Maze Runners’ and to see how he developed