Single Player Gauntlet

Here comes a new challenger!

"1P Game: Battle your way past various enemies and through bonus stages to reach the final boss."

— Super Smash Bros. 64 Manual

Many games are clearly designed to be played with others. In tabletop games, you have to get another person^note ...usually, anyway, But in video games, a second person isn't always available. Some games provide a campaign mode that uses the gameplay mechanics in an unorthodox way, but others, especially older ones, will provide this instead: a successive series of matchups. There may be some frills such as an Excuse Plot, an unorthodox enemy, etc. This has several practical purposes, such as providing a possible vehicle for the game's story, showcasing mechanics, or, in the arcade days, giving you something to drain your quarters for if nobody else was with you.

They may be known by different names, often depending on the genre. They're usually called "Arcade Mode" in Fighting Games and "Grand Prix" in Racing Games.

To be a Single Player Gauntlet, the mode in question must:

• Be in a game that's designed for, or at least lends itself to (such as being in the same format), Competitive Multiplayer.
• Have the majority of the gameplay be as if a computer player is in an additional human player's place.
• Have a defined end-point.

If it doesn't fit these criteria, you're probably thinking of a Boss Rush, an Arrange Mode, or a Campaign Mode.

The line between which modes are a Single-Player Gauntlet and which are a Campaign Mode can be blurry, and sometimes they're one and the same. They can and often do coexist as separate modes in the same game, however.

---

Examples

Fighting Games

• Dissidia Final Fantasy and its first sequel Duodecim have an Arcade Mode that has versions of all characters preconfigured, unlike the rest of the game where movesets and equipment can be altered.
• The first Dynasty Warriors game, which was a fighting game rather than the now well-known Hack and Slash series, had 1P Battle, which functioned as an arcade mode. The mode lasted 9 stages and had you face off with various other officers, most stages being random, but stage 4 was always Diaochan as a Mini-Boss, and the 9th stage had Lü Bu as the Final Boss.
• Kart Fighter, being a Mario-flavored ripoff of Street Fighter, has a mode where every playable character is fought. Each fighter is encountered twice before the game ends.
• All three Kirby Fighters titles feature such a mode, though how it's executed differs from game-to-game:
  • In the original sub-game from Kirby: Triple Deluxe, various Kirbys with different Copy Abilities were fought across seven rounds on all possible stages. The last battle is a Mirror Match against Shadow Kirby in Another Dimension.
  • In Kirby Fighters Deluxe, the mode is extended to nine rounds with Team Battles happening in rounds 2, 4 and 7 and a 2-vs-1 boss fight against Kracko taking place in round 5. The mode ends with a battle against Team DDD at the Fountain of Dreams.
  • Kirby Fighters 2 has two such modes:
    • "Story Mode: The Destined Rivals" focuses on working with a buddy to defeat increasingly-difficult random opponents while scaling the Buddy Fighters Tower, collecting one of three or four items in-between battles to augment one's stats and then fighting the boss at the tower's summit.
    • "Single-Handed Mode" is much the same as the other two Kirby Fighters single player modes, but with 1-vs-2 and 1-vs-3 battles taking place instead of 3 or 4-person free-for-alls, lasting 9 rounds like in Fighters Deluxe, and much like the original Kirby Fighters, the mode ends with a Mirror Match against Shadow Kirby but at the Decisive Battlefield from the Kirby Clash series this time.
• With some variations, all of the Mortal Kombat games fit the bill:
  • Mortal Kombat (1992) has all the playable characters except the selected character, then a Mirror Match, then two handicap "Endurance" matches, then Goro, then Shang Tsung. This model is also repeated for Mortal Kombat II, with Kintaro and Shao Kahn taking the place of Goro and the now-playable Shang Tsung.
  • Mortal Kombat 3 and its Updated Rereleases Ultimate and Trilogy have four ladders of varying length that follow, more or less, the same path: fight against 4-7 opponents in 1-on-1 fights, Endurance matches, Motaro and Shao Kahn.
  • Mortal Kombat 4 returned to the pre-3 format, except with the removal of the Endurance rungs, and with Quan Chi and Shinnok awaiting at the end of the ladder. The same is true for Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Moloch and either Quan Chi or Shang Tsung at the end), Mortal Kombat: Deception (the tandem Cyber Smoke/Noob Saibot and Onaga at the end) and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (which has Blaze solely at the top). All these ladders are 10-rung long.
  • Mortal Kombat 9 features a 10-rung long single-player ladder for both normal and Tag Team modes. Near the end, the player fights two Tag Team bouts, Shang Tsung, Goro or Kintaro and Shao Kahn. There's also the 300-rung long Challenges which in addition to being sequential fights alternate between characters depending on the rung; some of the rungs even have modifiers.
  • Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11 have the Towers, which are gauntlets with some special rungs having modifiers on them.
• This is a basic function of M.U.G.E.N, and it can be configured in a player's individual build by sorting characters into up to ten order categories in which they can appear, as well as how many characters of each category are to be fought. A simple build might be configured as "1,3,1,2,1,1,0"; in this build, the Order 1 may be a character that is always to be fought first, such as the sample character Kung Fu Man. The three Order 2 characters may be characters with the game's stock AI. The Order 3 character may be a Bonus Stage. The two Order 4 characters may be characters with tougher custom AI built-in. The Order 5 may be a Mini-Boss, the Order 6 may be a Final Boss, and characters that are never to be encountered such as Joke Characters or Purposely Overpowered characters may be set to Order 7. Characters without an order explicitly set are assumed by the game to be Order 1. Each character may also have an intro and outro cutscene built in, but this depends on whether the character's creator included one, or if you have a generic one configured for anyone who doesn't.
• Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl: Both games feature an Arcade Mode. The first game has a simple string of random fights, alternating between mandatory ones and choosing between two. The second game mostly keeps the same format, but also adds some elements similar to its inspiration such as predefined teams and a giant opponent, as well as culminating in a boss battle which the previous game lacked.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future has pre-set paths for its arcade mode depending on the chosen character, and the accompanying cutscene may veer off from what happened in the manga.
• The gauntlets in Rivals of Aether's story mode are very short with predefined paths, as well as cutscenes between each match. The main disadvantage to this is that it's only available to the original six characters; the two Secret Characters, as well as the 10 characters added as Downloadable Content, are out of luck in this regard.
• The Soul Series has had this since its inception, in every main series game. Soul Edge / Soul Blade has a very no-frills one, the only fixed matches being against Cervantes and Souledge (Inferno) at the end. I and II mostly do the same, but have a "destined battle" against a specific character that has to do with the character's story. III has a full-fledged story mode with branching paths, while IV tunes it back with a single per-character path, and V and VI dispense with the story elements in their respective Arcade Modes altogether.
• The Trope Codifier is Street Fighter II. While the first game had similar gameplay, II was the first to feature other playable characters out of a selection. Even the non-playable (at first) bosses largely played like the other matches. The subsequent games in the Street Fighter series mostly keep it the same.
• The Super Smash Bros. series calls it "1P Game" in the first game and "Classic Mode" in all subsequent entries.
  • Super Smash Bros. 64 uses a fixed order for matches, going head-to-head with every non-unlockable character (plus Luigi) on their respective Home Stages.
  • Super Smash Bros. Melee uses a more randomized order for its Classic Mode — renamed because it isn't the only "1P Game" anymore — with any currently-available character available to fight in any round. The newly-added "All-Star Mode" is similar, but every character in the roster is encountered.
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl uses a compromise between the two previous iterations, having characters in groups sorted into each round (e.g. the first match will always be against a character from The Legend of Zelda, but it can be any of the five in the roster).
  • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS features a Classic Mode with branching paths, while for Wii U focuses on free-for-alls instead of one-on-one fights.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has fixed paths, but the paths are set differently for each character based on their thematic elements or origins.
• Like its source material, the Super Smash Flash series has its own versions of Classic Mode.
  • In the original Super Smash Flash, characters are grouped into appearing in given rounds, similar to Super Smash Bros. Brawl^note Despite Super Smash Flash predating Brawl by two years, as well as some elements from Super Smash Bros. 64 such as one of the fights being against a team of Kirby. There are only a few rounds, though, so out of the game's 28 characters, the majority of them will never be fought outside of the Multi-Mook Melee near the end. All-Star Mode is also present, modeled after Super Smash Bros. Melee's.
  • In Super Smash Flash 2, Classic Mode is much more closely modeled after Melee's, with a randomized character selection, but with a few twists such as new bonus stages. All-Star is also present, this one modeled after Brawl and grouping characters by origin.
• Them's Fightin' Herds has an arcade mode where the player has to fight the other playable characters one at a time, with the second-to-last always being themselves. The final one is a Multi-Mook Melee against a wolf, a panther, a cobra, and finally, a bear.

First-Person Shooters

• Quake III: Arena (at least in the PC version) has a variation: the single player is a series of six rungs or "Tiers", of four maps each, that must be cleared before the next tier is unlocked. It also begins and ends with two one-tier maps: the introductory tier 0 and the "Elite" final tier.
  • Its Spiritual Successor OpenArena follows a similar pattern, but in a more structured way: every tier has a common theme, all the tiers are comprised of two three-way matches, a five-way match and the 1-on-1 fourth map, and there's no introductory map.
• Single-player campaigns in the Tournament and Championship spinoffs of the Unreal series have different variations of the Gauntlet:
  • Unreal Tournament has four Gauntlets for the Deathmatch, Domination, Capture The Flag and Assault gamemodes. Beating three matches of a Gauntlet unlocks the next Gauntlet in sequential order. Beating all these Gauntlets unlock the four-rung Final Challenge.
  • Unreal Tournament 2003 adds an introductory five-rung Deathmatch Qualification ladder: two 1-on-1 fights, a three-way match, a five-way match, and a final five-way match where you must earn the right to lead your team by beating them. This Gauntlet is set prior to the four Team Gauntlets for the Team Deathmatch, Double Domination, Capture the Flag and Bombing Run gamemodes, with a similar system to Tournament. Beating the four Gauntlets unlocks the Final Challenge, a 3-on-3 Team Deathmatch game against the returning Malcolm, Brock and Lauren, and a 1-on-1 match against Malcolm.
  • A similar system to 2003 is used in Unreal Championship, the only exception is the final rung, where you have to beat the rest of your team in an actual Gauntlet match, only to go back to incarceration in the ending.
  • Unreal Tournament 2004 keeps extending the Gauntlet system, this time not only adding a second three-way match to the Deathmatch Qualifiers, but also adding a Team Qualification match against three weak teams, the replacement of the Team Deathmatch Gauntlet with a Gauntlet for the returning Assault gamemode. And if that wasn't enough, there are also alternate maps in almost each rung (for which you have to pay a fee), and randomly a team leader challenging you to a 1-on-1 wager fight, or to a "Bloodrites" match for one of your teammates. Even the final challenge changes, as you fight all three Godlike-tier teams at the end of each of the main Team ladders, and whichever battled the best against your team is the one you're facing in the Finals.
  • Lastly, Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict goes back to a simpler and more straightforward Gauntlet system. Each of the main playable characters have their own Gauntlet, there's a 16-rung Challenges Gauntlet, and the story-driven Ascension Rites. All of these, however, follow the same format: a 10-rung Gauntlet, with varying enemies, rules and gamemodes.
• Hunt: Showdown's training mode allows you to play through a scaled-down version of the game map in which you hunt down one of the boss bounty targets, the Butcher, allowing you to learn how to deal with the game's A.I. monsters without worrying about being insta-killed by human players. There are 3 different versions of this mode of increasing difficulty (with the hardest version being identical to a normal game round in terms of enemy density and difficulty), and beating each version earns you coins which you can use to unlock items.
• Nexuiz and its Spiritual Successor Xonotic have a straightforward Gauntlet system meant to guide the players through the different gamemodes and options the games have. It's used mostly to prepare the player for online play.

Party Games

• Mario Party 8: The Star Battle Arena has the solo player take on an opponent for each of the six boards in a race to fulfill the board's win condition. The mode then concludes with a boss minigame against Bowser.

Puzzle Games

• Meteos has Star Trip mode, two submodes of which (Straight and Branch) play like a typical arcade mode. In Straight, a few random planets are dueled in a row, finishing with Meteo as a Final Boss. Branch plays similarly, but the order of opponents are fixed and the path taken can be selected.
• Panel de Pon, as well as its derivatives such as Tetris Attack and Pokémon Puzzle League, feature a series of opponents dueling the player character, the only real difference between each being the behavior of the AI. The number of opponents fought, and where the gauntlet ends, depends on the chosen difficulty level; the True Final Boss of each (Cordelia, Bowser, and Mewtwo, respectively) can only be fought on the hardest setting.
• Puyo Puyo, as well as its derivatives such as Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, contain duels against different characters, usually with short cutscenes between. The first character's screen fills up losses, and implied maneuvers such as combos and chains will interfere with the opponent's playing field.

Racing Games

• Mario Kart is the Trope Codifier for the Grand Prix format, which has stayed fairly consistent throughout the series. This involves playing through several normal races in a fixed amount of tracks, usually four, scoring a different amount of points depending on which place you finish in on each.

Web Games

• The Neopets flash game "Meepit Vs. Feepit" is as simple a fighting game as you can get. While multiplayer is available, the main part of the game is fighting different-colored Meepits in succession: Blue, Dung, Faerie, Tyrannian, and finally Fire. Only the Blue Meepit is available for the second player.

---