Wild Guns

The Good
Wild Guns is a great example of a game with over-the-top gameplay and is amazingly fun to play. Combining Western & Sci Fi elements results in shootouts between a cute cowgirl armed with a single colt and a huge mecha robot. Of course the girl wins :-). Complete nonsense but that's what makes the game so much fun. The action is very intense and keeps on going (as a matter of fact I hardly had time to let go of the controls and capture a screenshot). It seems there's a big explosion about every two seconds. In contrast to traditional shooting gallery / lightgun games this game is played from a 3rd person perspective and you'll be busy dodging bullets as well. This only adds more action (BTW this isn't a lightgun game).

A big part of the fun are the interactive backgrounds; you can shoot at bottles of whiskey in the saloon, destroy cactuses in desolation canyon and break windows on several stages etc. Just take a look at the sceenshots to see how Carson City looks before and after the shootout. Sometimes you'll receive a power-up when you destroy an object (for instance the forklift truck at the ammunition depot).

The game looks very good and the graphics engine is fast, everything runs very smooth. I don't know the name of the special effects but the game has some pretty cool technical gizmos. My favorite one is the way the air trembles, because of the heat, after a big explosion. I like the artwork and the design of the sprites as well. I only wonder why the big crab at the end of the gold mine level is in the game. A coyote or rattlesnake would have been better, this isn't a Darius game.

Good music. Very up-tempo versions of western tunes. Some of the tunes immediately bring you in the right mood (= pumped up, bring 'em on!).

Two-player cooperative mode. Always fun.

The Bad
Too short, there are only six levels, each containing three sub-levels that take between 60 and 90 seconds to finish. Like the majority of the (console) action games released in the late eighties / early nineties this game is quite hard to finish, especially for those (like me) without superb reflexes. Wild Guns is not as hard as for example Contra or R-Type and with some practice I did fairly well on the first five levels but found the sixth level very hard to beat.

The Bottom Line
Perhaps the most action-packed game available for the SNES. Even repeated dying couldn't stop me enjoying this one.

BTW if you like Wild Guns you might also enjoy Cabal by Capcom.