Konami got in on the Gauntlet craze with its own 3-player take-off (its first 3-player game) called Dark Adventure, but they gave their game a different slant by favoring a pulpy, Indiana Jones theme instead of Dungeons & Dragons.
Dark Adventure's attract mode informs us that our three heroes, Condor (i.e., Indiana Jones), a pretty blonde reporter named Labryna, and Zorlock, another archeologist who seems inspired by Belloq from Raiders of the Lost Ark, are holding a press conference to announce the discovery of a strange sarcophagus. Condor slides open the lid, the box explodes with light, and the three characters vanish as a voice declares, "Those who tamper with the sacred ark...are DOOMED!" On starting the game, the heroes appear in a strange land of demons and the only way out is to fight their way through to the demon king and slay him.
Condor of course has a whip, Labryna a sword, and Zorlock a spear, and each can also fling sticks of dynamite around. As with Gauntlet, the characters' health steadily (and quickly) declines and can only be restored by picking up soda cans that occasionally appear. The monsters mostly appear from stone generators and exits must be unlocked by finding keys. Complicating things, however, is that levels often feature multiple exits and taking the wrong one can cause the players to loop back to levels they've already played. More powerful weapons, such as laser guns or bazookas can also be found occasionally, or power-ups that can speed up the characters or extend their melee range.
Dark Adventure makes a strong first impression. The graphics are quite nice, with an appropriately dark color scheme and characters that are taller and more detailed than Gauntlet's. The first level features you battling hordes of minotaurs and then suddenly the music picks up as a giant sword-wielding slime monster starts chasing after you, booming with each footstep. Killing this creature will cause it to collapse back into the muck, but if you linger too long the monster will reappear, so there's a sense of urgency created. Unfortunately, the game isn't consistent in keeping up this atmosphere and it feels like it played its best hand right away. There are some cool monsters and sights still to be seen - e.g., demonic trees that try to ensnare you, bat-winged men similar to those Solomon Kane fought in Wings of the Night, and lava-based levels with their own giants - but not much with the impact of that muck giant chasing you on the very first level. Among other creatures the come against you are rats, giant spiders, bats, and the undead skeletons do finally arrive relatively late in the game.
Konami also produced an alternate version for two-player cabinets called Devil World.
Devil World deletes the Zorlock character as an option, and includes some significant changes such as ditching the non-linear progression and starting the characters out with ranged weapons that can be upgraded with a Gradius-style system in which you pick up orbs that can be saved up and traded in when you have enough for whichever weapon you want. On the downside, the game is stripped down a bit in its rogues gallery and its audio presentation.
It never got a home port. Perhaps it just didn't make much money in arcades but it seems like the concept would have been good for an NES adaptation that could have shifted the design more toward something like a more horror-tinged The Legend of Zelda, similar to what Blood Omen did years later.
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