Wild Gunman

About Wild Gunman

Wild Gunman (1984) is Nintendo's quick-draw light gun game for the Famicom and NES Zapper, adapted from Gunpei Yokoi's 1974 arcade machine that projected filmed gunslingers, and famously played by Marty McFly.

Wild Gunman in Depth

The player waits for an outlaw's eyes to flash, with a speech bubble reading "FIRE!!", and then shoots; firing too early makes the duel unwinnable and moves on to the next. The NES version has three modes: Game A pits the player against one outlaw, Game B against two, and Game C against an entire gang, with cartoon sprites in place of the original's filmed footage.

The 1974 original was one of Nintendo's electro-mechanical arcade games, built by Yokoi from the design of the company's Laser Clay Shooting System. A light gun was linked to a 16 mm projection screen showing full-motion footage of a Wild West gunslinger; if the player drew and fired fast enough when his eyes flashed, the film switched to the gunman falling, and otherwise to him drawing and shooting. Players faced five gunslingers in all, and a premature draw lit a "foul" light. Its four film scenes were each shot on two reels, one for each outcome, eight in total, filmed with uncredited local extras around Kyoto and at the Nara Dreamland amusement park.

Making Wild Gunman

The 1974 machine, formerly known as Gun Fight, was released in North America by Sega in 1976. That year it was Japan's sixth highest-grossing electro-mechanical arcade game, behind Nintendo's own Sky Hawk and Mini Laser Clay, and one of the most popular machines at the AMOA show in North America. Nintendo adapted it into a video game for the Famicom in Japan in 1984, and in 1985 it was a North American launch game for the NES alongside the Zapper; the NES version was also published on the PlayChoice-10 arcade system. The original's footage has appeared in films: Craig Baldwin's 1978 experimental short Wild Gunman re-edited it to surreal effect, and in the 1981 film Gas the villain, played by western star Sterling Hayden, loses to the machine and shoots its screen with a real gun. In Super Smash Bros., the Duck Hunt duo can summon its gunmen, and their Final Smash traps opponents in a shoot-out with the gangsters from Hogan's Alley.