Western Gun (lost Taito arcade game; 1975)

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Taito western gun.jpg

Screenshot of Western Gun.

Status: Lost


Western Gun is an arcade game released in 1975 by the company Taito. Its programmer, Tomohiro Nishikado, would later become famous for creating Space Invaders in 1978. The game utilizes discrete logic unlike its later American counterpart Gun Fight which was reprogrammed by Dave Nutting of Midway under license from Taito. Both Western Gun and Gun Fight were the first games to depict person-to-person combat, and Gun Fight was the first game powered by a microprocessor.

Gameplay

Two players can walk around on-screen shooting each other for points until time runs out. Cacti and rocks are placed randomly around the screen that players can hide behind or reflect bullets off of, respectively. One of the significant differences between Western Gun and Gun Fight is Western Gun allows your player to walk on both sides of the screen. It's possible that Gun Fight restricts the players to each side because Midway's version only has two colors and it became harder to differentiate them.

Availability

ROM dumps exist for Gun Fight and are supported in MAME, but Western Gun remains undumped and therefore lost. Another Taito game titled Western Gun Part II is available on MAME, but it's only a licensed version of Nintendo's Sheriff. There's still hope for preservation enthusiasts as there are several known cabinets out in the wild, including one that was localized for Korea. In 2012, an original Western Gun cabinet was found by DragonsLairFans forum member Level42.

Fan Games

A BitChute user going by the name MasterofTTL uploaded a video showing progress on a recreation of Western Gun. He later released his game on GameJolt for free.

Gallery

The only known video footage of Western Gun from a documentary titled TV Game Museum.

Footage of Gun Fight running in an emulator, shown here for comparison.

External links

Sources