Sunday, June 10, 2012

Game Review: Wild Gunman for NES


Rating: 85 out of 100

Grab some Shasta and connect your NES Zapper gun. Its Vintage Game Spot’s first review of Nintendo’s “light gun series.” Just a little note, if you have a plasma or LCD television, the light gun will not work on your TV. That’s right, technology has caught up with the all mighty Nintendo. For more on this read my previous blog, “WHAT A PIECE OF… Antiquated Equipment: The NES Zapper.”

Wild Gunman was developed by Nintendo as an arcade game in 1974 and was modestly successful. It was released for the NES in 1985. The game was made famous by Michael J. Fox when he played it in Back to the Future II and made reference to it in Back to the Future III.

The game is very straightforward. Armed banditos come out and try to shoot you. You have to shoot them first. If you shoot them before they draw their weapon, you lose. If they shoot you first, you lose.

Overall the game is very fun. The graphics and audio are classic 80’s and give a real feeling of nostalgia. The game play is very easy to pick up on and you never get bored with it. My roommates had never played it before and they became almost instantly addicted. The cartridge is available almost everywhere classic games are sold and isn’t very pricy. I don’t quite remember how much I spent for mine but I would venture to say it was $5 or less.

CULTURAL REFERENCES: I am a big fan of the Back to the Future trilogy. In fact they were my favorite movies in the 80’s (ok, they tied with Star Wars, but still.) In Back to the Future II, Marty goes into the CafĂ© 80’s and finds 2 kids (one played by a young Elijah Wood) trying to figure out the Wild Gunman arcade game. He demonstrates it to them, to which they reply “You mean you have to use your hands? That’s like a baby’s toy!” (See video below for that clip.) In Back to the Future III, when Marty uses the Colt Peacemaker to shoot every target at the town dance, the Colt salesman asks him where he learned to shoot like that, to which Marty replies “7 Eleven.”

ON A DIFFERENT NOTE: Don’t forget to vote for your favorite game system on the poll located on the top of the column on the right! VOTE! PLEASE VOTE!

3 comments:

  1. Man I really want to play this on my Nintendo but I need to buy an old tv first haha bc all of mine are LCD

    ReplyDelete
  2. this is the first game that i ever played with a zapper for NES and it's a classic good ol Game Arcade during that time ... man I miss my child hood days ....

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very descriptive article, I loved that a lot.
    Will there be a part 2?
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    ReplyDelete

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