"Treasure Room" from Gauntlet on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1988)
Composer: Hal Canon
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Tengen
Developer: Tengen
Good morning adventurers. Perhaps you've seen these chests of gold lying around? Maybe you've thought to yourself that you might just take one for yourself? Maybe four or five? Maybe you spotted a key along the way too. Was that an exit over there? Perhaps it was, but look over here! A whole host of treasure chests just waiting to be plundered, you just have to run around that corner, make a left and then through that archway there. Great you've found them! But wait, you didn't notice the timer running down? You only have eight seconds left to make it back to the exit! Perhaps you shouldn't have been so greedy with those last four chests. I do hope you'll make it back in time in three seconds. . .
This song causes me a bit of stress, but the kind of nostalgic stress that you can live with. For the most part. I have previously talked about the summer playing Gauntlet with my family, one of the few games that a lot of us played (minus my Dad who is still averse to video games in general despite having them in the house for 20+ years). I do love how this song picks up speed naturally, that it is not just clipped into playing faster similar to the music in Tetris but that it is written to make the player anxious that their time is running out without having to look up at the timer in the top-center of the screen. It's like the song is feeding of the player trying to get the last couple of chests right before the time reaches zero while still seeing so many un-collected chests.
Maybe there is a larger lesson here, or maybe the song is just a song.
~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian
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