Gun Fight
1975 · Action · Arcade
Overview
Gun Fight (1975) is Midway's Wild West duel, remade from Taito's Western Gun by Dave Nutting as the first arcade game to run on a microprocessor.
Deep Dive
Two cowboys face off across the screen, moving freely and firing around cacti and wagons until one is hit. Taito created the game in Japan as Western Gun using discrete logic circuits; for its North American release Midway's Dave Nutting rebuilt it around an Intel 8080 CPU, making Gun Fight the first arcade game driven by a microprocessor. That shift — from hardwired circuits to programmable logic — is what made the far more complex games of the following years possible.
Developer Story
Gun Fight was originally developed by Taito in Japan as Western Gun in 1975, then licensed to Midway for the North American market. Midway engineer Dave Nutting redesigned the game around an Intel 8080 microprocessor — making it the first arcade game to use a microprocessor rather than custom hardware logic. This was a pivotal moment in arcade history: microprocessors made game logic programmable rather than hardwired, enabling far more complex games.
Did You Know?
- Gun Fight was the first arcade game to use a microprocessor — a decision by Dave Nutting that changed how all future arcade games would be built.
- The original Japanese version (Western Gun) used discrete logic circuits; the American remake was a near-total redesign around an Intel 8080 CPU.
- Players could move their gunfighters around the screen — an early form of character control in a shooting game.
- The Wild West theme made it a cultural touchstone, and the game was controversial for its depiction of human-on-human violence.
Sources & further reading
- Gun Fight — Wikipedia
