This 1991 arcade classic from Konami is a simultaneous four-player, horizontally-scrolling run-and-gun game with a colourful, cartoony, wild western theme.
Tag Archives: cowboys
A Fistful of Bucks, Commodore 64
Created by Ian Gray and Lee Braine and published by Ocean Software in 1985, A Fistful of Bucks (aka A Fi$tful of Buck$) is a simple, scrolling cowboy shooter with you playing a bounty hunter on the hunt for cash.
Boot Hill, Arcade
Midway‘s 1977 classic, Boot Hill, actually owes it existence to another game – Taito‘s 1975 arcade game Gun Fight (aka Western Gun in Japan). Boot Hill is an authorised remake of Gun Fight.
Lasso, Arcade
Lasso is an obscure arcade game, developed and manufactured by SNK Corporation in 1982. In it you play a rancher/cowboy trying to round-up his cattle with a rope.
Red Dead Revolver, XBox
Red Dead Revolver was first published by Rockstar Games in 2004. It is the first title in the Red Dead series.
It is a Wild West style third-person shooter, with RPG and adventure overtones. In it you play the lead – a bounty hunter called ‘Red’ who must track down various outlaws and collect the reward on them. Of course there’s more to the story than simply bounty-hunting, and this becomes clear as you progress.
Gunfright, ZX Spectrum
Another isometric action adventure from Ultimate Play The Game, this one with a Wild West theme.
Gunfright was first released in 1985 and uses the Filmation II Engine as first seen in Nightshade.
Bank Panic, Arcade
Sega‘s 1984 arcade hit Bank Panic is a simple reaction game where you play the role of a bank clerk who must answer the various doors in a bank to serve customers, some of whom are genuine and some of whom are bandits.
Darkwatch, XBox
Developed by High Moon Studios, Darkwatch is a First-Person Shooter/survival horror game that crosses the American “Wild West” with ghosts, zombies and werewolves and that kind of material.
When it was first released, back in 2005, is was quite impressive for the time. In this day and age Darkwatch looks and plays very simply, but is not entirely without its redeeming features.
Atmospherically, Darkwatch is still excellent, with lots of ghostly visual effects creating some interesting scenes. The horseback chase sequences are particularly good.
Where the game falls down, though, are the terrible cut scenes and the bogstandard script and voice acting.
The weapons and special powers are interesting. The baddies and bosses are interesting. The environments are interesting. It’s just that the dialogue and rather uninteresting protagonists hold Darkwatch back from being a true classic.
These grabs were taken on a development XBox that outputs lossless screenshots over a network, with pixel perfect quality. A grabber’s dream. 🙂
More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkwatch
