So I was reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauntle..._video_game%29 today:
There were some skilled players who could play a hypothetically unlimited amount of time on one credit, especially with the Warrior and Wizard, and thus causing the arcades to lose money. A ROM update was released, reducing the "extra shot power" and "extra shot speed" powerup bonus for Warrior and Wizard, and adding a new points-based difficulty counter to the game. The difficulty counter caused the game to become more difficult, in 16,384-point steps, which removed more designated food from the levels, and made the monsters respawn faster. Unfortunately, this was not well thought out, as on the default game difficulty of 4, it was almost impossible to pass levels 1–7 without dying, and level 4 was designed so that some of the food drops would block the monsters from swarming the player. This was because the game removed some of the "default" food for playing solo; on difficulty level 0, at least one food placement was removed from every single level (at low scores), and on difficulty 4, two or three food drops were removed. This made the game too difficult, even for the best players, unless they could find a machine set to difficulty 0. Instead, the game gave bonus food for three or four players playing together. (Three players gave all of the default food, while four gave extra food in random locations.)
This is news to me. How widespread was this broken ROM update? Did Midway Arcade Treasures include the original revision or the second one?