Gauntlet Legends is one of those rarest of the rare games: a co-op game where you actually work together. Of course, there are many games that you can play with your friends, but most of them, whether it be Soul Calibur, Halo, or Mario Party, have you competing against them. Recent entries like the latest Super Mario games for the Wii U have expanded true co-op options, but back in the day if you wanted to play a game with someone and not have to face off against them to do it, pretty much your only choices were Baldur's Gate and Gauntlet.

Gauntlet Legends had a lot of different iterations of the game available, as it was released as an arcade cabinet (back when arcades still existed!), a PSOne title, a Dreamcast title, and an N64 cartridge. The reason I chose this particular game for my Flashback Friday is simple: I played every single version of this game together with my dad when I was a little girl. As my dad tended to like shooters and horror games, especially Resident Evil, and I was more into RPGs, it was difficult for us to find something we could play together. I hated playing shooters, and while my dad played Soul Calibur and many other fighting games with me, they weren't really his thing either. Plus, it was hard to enjoy a game together which made the other person lose. Gauntlet Legends was a godsend; a fun, co-op dungeon crawler that we didn't have to compete with each other to progress in. There's only four characters to choose from: a blue valkyrie, a red warrior, a green archer, and a yellow sorcerer, and the game is just a simple hack-and-slash. However, you could also choose to level up certain statistics of your character as you progressed through the game, which I believe was a first for the Gauntlet series. The Dreamcast version was the absolute best port of the game, with the best graphics, but the N64 version was a close second as it ran very smoothly on the cartridge-based platform; unfortunately the PlayStation port was rather glitchy, and not as pretty as the Dreamcast port, making it the worst of the three (although the PlayStation controller made it easy to play). I have such fond memories of playing this game with my dad, and despite its age, I recommend it to anyone who wants to just spend some quality gaming time with a friend or loved one.