Wild Guns (Super Nintendo)

As a typical member of Generation X, I missed out on the heyday of the heroic Western. Even so, I’ve long savored the “Weird West” subgenre, wherein Western archetypes like the cowboy rub shoulders with science fiction and the supernatural. The most celebrated example is likely The Wild Wild West, a CBS television series that ran from 1965 to 1969, but the tradition is older still. Conan creator Robert E. Howard turned out some of the first stories in this mode as early as 1932. Personally, I have a soft spot for The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., a short-lived vehicle for Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell that aired on Fox in the ’90s. A true cult classic, that one.

In 1994, right about the time poor Brisco and friends were being put out to pasture, developer Natsume brought their own take on the six-gun sci-fi formula to the Super Nintendo with Wild Guns. A simple revenge tale at heart, Wild Guns sees the deceptively dainty Annie and her beefy bounty hunter pal Clint pursuing vigilante justice against the vicious gang of outlaws who murdered Annie’s family. The only real deviation from the norm is that this gang seems to be roughly 50% pistol-packing desperados and 50% killer robots, with the latter ranging from small drones all the way up to building-sized juggernauts.

Wild Guns is a third-person gallery shooter in the style of TAD Corporation’s 1988 arcade game Cabal. The players (potentially two at once, in this instance) each control a foreground character pitted against hoards of foes occupying the background. Since the player characters are typically immobile when shooting, the primary challenge lies in feeling out the correct balance of blazing away versus dodging incoming attacks. Shoot too much and you’ll be a sitting duck. Fail to thin the enemy ranks sufficiently and you’ll quickly be overwhelmed by return fire.

Take this basic dynamic, stretch it over seventeen individual action scenes comprising six levels, and you essentially have Wild Guns. Annie and Clint do have a few extra tricks up their sleeves in addition to the baseline running and gunning, however. Movement-wise, they can jump, double jump, and execute a short invincible ground roll. Their default guns are supplemented by a lasso that can stun many targets, a handful of temporary weapon upgrades (and one downgrade) represented by power-up icons, and a limited number of screen-clearing bombs. The coolest option of all is the so-called Vulcan Gun, which confers brief invincibility on top of devastating firepower. The catch is that activating the Vulcan requires gradually filling up a special meter through the unlikely method of shooting enemy bullets out of the air with your own. One-hit deaths make this a case of great risk for great reward.

All the above amounts to a reasonably broad slate of abilities that largely succeeds at spicing up otherwise repetitive combat scenarios. My sole grudge is with the occasionally convoluted button mapping. Rolling, for example, is accomplished by holding either left or right and tapping the jump button while shooting. The lasso is activated by tapping the same button you normally hold to shoot. This sort of thing seems unnecessary when you consider that Wild Guns only utilizes three of the SNES controller’s six action buttons. Why not tie the left and right rolls to L and R, respectively, and the lasso to A? Beats me. This makes getting comfortable with the controls more of a chore than it has any right to be and will likely result in some needless deaths early on. All the more reason to be thankful for unlimited continues, I suppose.

The various backdrops in Wild Guns are well-rendered twists on iconic Western locales. You’ll visit the dusty streets of a frontier town, a saloon, a mine, a speeding train, and more, all with suitable high-tech tweaks. The music by Hiroyuki Iwatsuki and Haruo Ohashi similarly pays ample tribute to its cinematic source material. I definitely cracked a grin when I realized that Wild Guns’ 1-Up jingle mirrors the five famous opening notes of Ennio Morricone’s main theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Although not approaching best in class on the system, the artwork and music here are all in line with the respectable Natsume standard. Not bad, considering that it was all created by five people over five months on a relatively tight budget.

Slightly harebrained controls aside, Wild Guns scores an easy recommendation from me. It’s a fast-paced, charming shooter and its bold mingling of a niche aesthetic with an equally niche gameplay style makes it a singular experience within the vast Super Nintendo library. Unfortunately, Natsume hasn’t really capitalized on its series potential. The closest we’ve ever come to a follow-up is 2016’s Wild Guns Reloaded, a remaster of sorts that added a few new characters and stages, widescreen visuals, and support for up to four players simultaneously. Reloaded was well received. It reunited most of the key staff from the original and is probably the game they would have made back in 1994 if they’d had the time and resources. It wouldn’t be the worst way to wrap things up. I’m not quite ready to give up on a proper sequel, though. With the recent news that fellow Natsume heroes Pocky & Rocky are being brought out of mothballs in the near future after a twenty year hiatus, there may be hope for Annie and Clint yet.