Gun Fight

Last updated
Gun Fight
December 1975 advertisement for Gun Fight by Midway.jpg
A printed ad for the Midway version
Developer(s) Taito
Publisher(s)
Designer(s) Tomohiro Nishikado
Dave Nutting (US)
Programmer(s) Tom McHugh (US)
Platform(s) Arcade, Astrocade, Atari 8-bit
ReleaseArcade
Astrocade
Atari 8-bit
Genre(s) Multidirectional shooter
Mode(s) Multiplayer
Arcade system Taito Discrete Logic
Midway 8080 (US)

Gun Fight, known as Western Gun [a] in Japan [3] [1] and Europe, [4] is a 1975 multidirectional shooter arcade video game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, [5] and released by Taito in Japan [3] and Europe [4] and by Midway in North America. [3] [5] Based around two Old West cowboys armed with revolvers and squaring off in a duel, it was the first video game to depict human-to-human combat. [6] The Midway version was also the first video game to use a microprocessor instead of TTL. [6] [7] The game's concept was adapted from Sega's 1969 arcade electro-mechanical game Gun Fight.

Contents

The game was a global commercial success. In Japan, Western Gun was among the top ten highest-grossing arcade video games of 1976. In the United States, Gun Fight sold 8,600 arcade cabinets and was the third highest-grossing arcade game of 1975, second highest-grossing arcade game of 1976 and fifth highest arcade game of 1977.

It was ported to the Bally Astrocade video game console [8] as a built-in game [9] in 1977 [10] and later the Atari 8-bit computers. [11]

Gameplay

Western Gun is a single-screen shooter [12] where two players compete in an Old West gun fight. [13] It was the first video game to depict human-to-human combat. [6] [8] When shot, the characters fall to the ground and the words "GOT ME!" appear above the body. [14] The game has two joysticks per player: an eight-way joystick for moving the computerized cowboy and the other for changing the shooting direction. [3] [15] Unlike later dual stick games, Western Gun has the movement joystick on the right.

Obstacles between the characters block shots, such as a cactus, [16] and (in later levels) stagecoaches. [14] The guns have limited ammunition, with each player given six bullets. A round ends if both players run out of ammo. [12] Gunshots can ricochet off the top and bottom edges of the playfield, allowing for indirect hits. [12] [16]

Taito's original Western Gun allows the two players to move around anywhere on the screen. Midway's version, Gun Fight, restricts each player to their respective portions of the screen and also increased the size of the characters. [17]

Development

Both Western Gun and Gun Fight have artwork of Wild West cowboys on the cabinet, with matching in-game graphics featuring cacti, rocks, and human characters (and a covered wagon in Gun Fight). These cartoon-like humans were in contrast to earlier games which used miniature shapes to represent abstract blocks or spaceships. [5]

The original game, Western Gun, was created by Tomohiro Nishikado for Taito. [5] The game's concept was adapted from a Sega arcade electro-mechanical game, also called Gun Fight, [18] which was released in 1969. [19] In that game, two players control cowboy figurines on opposing sides of a playfield full of obstacles, with each player attempting to shoot the opponent's cowboy. The cowboy figurines were adapted into character sprites, with both players able to maneuver across a landscape while shooting each other. It was the second game by Nishikado to use human character sprites, after a 1974 sports video game he designed for Taito, Basketball, which was released as TV Basketball by Midway in North America. [18]

Taito licensed Western Gun to Midway for release in North America, one of the first such licenses, after the 1974 scrolling racing game Speed Race , [20] also designed by Nishikado, [21] and the 1974 sports game Basketball . [22] The title Western Gun, while making perfect sense for Japanese audiences in that it conveyed the setting and theme as simply as possible, sounded odd to American audiences, so it was renamed Gun Fight for its American localization. [20]

Taito's version was based on discrete logic. [5] When Dave Nutting adapted the game for Midway, he decided to base it on the Intel 8080, which made Gun Fight the first video game to use a microprocessor. [7] Nutting's company Dave Nutting Associates had already used microprocessor technology in prototypes of arcade pinball machines, and the first arcade pinball machine to include a microprocessor, The Spirit of '76 by Mirco Games, used this technology under license.

Midway's version, which had a black-and-white raster monitor with a transparent yellow screen overlay, used bitmapped framebuffer technology to display the game text and graphics, including its animated human-like characters. [23] To make the animation fast and smooth, the game included a special barrel shifter circuit built from multiple discrete chips. [24] The microprocessor used this to shift each pattern of picture bits, byte-by-byte, to the proper horizontal bit offset, reading back each shifted byte and then writing it into the framebuffer. The 8080, like other microprocessors of its era, had shift instructions that could only shift by a single bit position. With the shifter circuit, the microprocessor could quickly shift a picture byte by several bit positions, giving it more time for other work. A similar shifter circuit was used in later Midway and Taito games whose hardware was based on Gun Fight, such as Sea Wolf and Space Invaders . [25] [26] In some later Space Invaders derivatives, such as Taito's Space Invaders Part II of 1979, this circuit is a Fujitsu MB14241, a single-chip implementation of the barrel shifter.

Midway's version increased the size of the character sprites, while at the same time restricting each character's movement to their respective portions of the screen. [17] Nishikado believed that his original version was more fun than Midway's version, but he was impressed with the Midway machine's improved graphics and smoother animation. [27] This led him to design microprocessors into his subsequent games, including the 1978 shoot 'em up Space Invaders . [28]

Reception

In Japan, Western Gun was among the top ten highest-grossing arcade video games of 1976. [29]

In the United States, following its November 1975 release there, Gun Fight sold 500 arcade cabinets by the end of 1975, making it one of the top ten best-selling arcade games of 1975. [30] It eventually went on to sell 8,600 arcade cabinets in the United States. [31]

In March 1976, the first annual RePlay arcade chart listed Gun Fight as the third highest-grossing arcade game of the previous year in the United States, below the Kee game Tank I & II and Taito/Midway game Wheels I & II . [32] Later in October, RePlay listed Gun Fight as the second highest-grossing arcade game of 1976 in the United States, below Midway's Sea Wolf . [33] In November 1977, the first annual Play Meter arcade chart listed Gun Fight as the fifth highest-grossing arcade video game of 1977. [34] Play Meter later listed it among the top 30 highest-grossing arcade games of 1978. [35]

In 2021, The Guardian listed it as the eleventh greatest video game of the 1970s. [36]

Ports

In 1978, [37] the game was introduced to the home market with a port to the Bally Astrocade, [8] which included a color version of the game within the system's ROM. [38]

In 1983, Epyx released Gun Fight and another Midway game, Sea Wolf II , for Atari 8-bit computers as an Arcade Classics compilation. [11]

Legacy

The game was included in GameSpy's "Hall of Fame" in 2002. They commented that "Gun Fight was the first game to feature two humanized characters attempting to outfight each other, which would become one of the most common themes in games for the next 25-plus years"; that it was one of the first Japanese video games imported to North America; and that Midway's version "was the first microprocessor-based arcade game". [14]

Atari, Inc. released a similar arcade game in 1976 titled Outlaw which was ported to the Atari VCS.

In 1982, the clone Gunfight was released for the Atari 8-bit computers by Hofacker / Elcomp Publishing. [39] The Duel for the Commodore 64 is a clone released in 1985. [40]

Taito used a control scheme similar to Western Gun for the run and gun video game Front Line (1982). [41] In 1995, GamesMaster host Dominik Diamond called Sega's arcade game Virtual On: Cyber Troopers "a futuristic version" Gun Fight game. [42]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Japanese: ウエスタンガン, Hepburn: Uesutan Gan

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taito</span> Japanese toy and video game company

Taito Corporation is a Japanese company that specializes in video games, toys, arcade cabinets, and game centers, based in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The company was founded by Michael Kogan in 1953 as the Taito Trading Company, importing vodka, vending machines, and jukeboxes into Japan. It began production of video games in 1973. In 2005, Taito was purchased by Square Enix, becoming a wholly owned subsidiary by 2006.

<i>Space Invaders</i> 1978 video game

Space Invaders is a 1978 shoot 'em up arcade video game developed and published by Taito. It was released in Japan in April 1978, with the game being released by Midway Manufacturing overseas. Commonly considered to be one of the most influential video games of all time, Space Invaders was the first fixed shooter and the first video game with endless gameplay and set the template for the genre. The goal is to defeat wave after wave of descending aliens with a horizontally moving laser cannon to earn as many points as possible.

Racing games are a video game genre in which the player participates in a racing competition. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to fantastical settings. They are distributed along a spectrum between more realistic racing simulations and more fantastical arcade-style racing games. Kart racing games emerged in the 1990s as a popular sub-genre of the latter. Racing games may also fall under the category of sports video games.

A sports video game is a video game that simulates the practice of sports. Most sports have been recreated with video games, including team sports, track and field, extreme sports, and combat sports. Some games emphasize playing the sport, whilst others emphasize strategy and sport management. Some, such as Need for Speed, Arch Rivals and Punch-Out!!, satirize the sport for comic effect. This genre has been popular throughout the history of video games and is competitive, just like real-world sports. A number of game series feature the names and characteristics of real teams and players, and are updated annually to reflect real-world changes. The sports genre is one of the oldest genres in gaming history.

<i>Breakout</i> (video game) 1976 video game

Breakout is an arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and released on May 13, 1976. It was designed by Steve Wozniak, based on conceptualization from Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, who were influenced by the seminal 1972 Atari arcade game Pong. In Breakout, a layer of bricks lines the top third of the screen and the goal is to destroy them all by repeatedly bouncing a ball off a paddle into them. The arcade game was released in Japan by Namco. Breakout was a worldwide commercial success, among the top five highest-grossing arcade video games of 1976 in both the United States and Japan and then among the top three highest-grossing arcade video games of 1977 in the US and Japan. The 1978 Atari VCS port uses color graphics instead of a monochrome screen with colored overlay.

<i>Galaxian</i> 1979 video game

Galaxian is a 1979 fixed shooter arcade video game developed and published by Namco. The player assumes control of the Galaxip starfighter in its mission to protect Earth from waves of aliens. Gameplay involves destroying each formation of aliens, who dive down towards the player in an attempt to hit them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shooter game</span> Action video game genre

Shooter video games or shooters are a subgenre of action video games where the focus is on the defeat of the character's enemies using ranged weapons given to the player. Usually these weapons are firearms or some other long-range weapons, and can be used in combination with other tools such as grenades for indirect offense, armor for additional defense, or accessories such as telescopic sights to modify the behavior of the weapons. A common resource found in many shooter games is ammunition, armor or health, or upgrades which augment the player character's weapons.

<i>Jungle Hunt</i> 1982 video game

Jungle Hunt, is a side-scrolling action game developed by Taito for arcades. It was originally distributed in 1982 as Jungle King, then quickly modified and re-released as Jungle Hunt following a copyright dispute over the player character's likeness to Tarzan. Taito also distributed a less successful rebranding of the game as Pirate Pete in 1982. Jungle King, along with Moon Patrol released a month earlier, is one of the first video games which has parallax scrolling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tomohiro Nishikado</span> Japanese video game developer

Tomohiro Nishikado is a Japanese video game developer and engineer. He is the creator of the arcade shoot 'em up game Space Invaders, released to the public in 1978 by the Taito Corporation of Japan, often credited as the first shoot 'em up and for beginning the golden age of arcade video games. Prior to Space Invaders, he also designed other earlier Taito arcade games, including the shooting electro-mechanical games Sky Fighter (1971) and Sky Fighter II, the sports video game TV Basketball in 1974, the vertical scrolling racing video game Speed Race in 1974, the multi-directional shooter Western Gun in 1975, and the first-person combat flight simulator Interceptor (1975).

The following article is a broad timeline of arcade video games.

1982 was the peak year for the golden age of arcade video games as well as the second generation of video game consoles. Many games were released that would spawn franchises, or at least sequels, including Dig Dug, Pole Position, Mr. Do!, Zaxxon, Q*bert, Time Pilot and Pitfall! The year's highest-grossing video game was Namco's arcade game Pac-Man, for the third year in a row, while the year's best-selling home system was the Atari 2600. Additional video game consoles added to a crowded market, notably the ColecoVision and Atari 5200. Troubles at Atari late in the year triggered the video game crash of 1983.

1978 saw the release of new video games such as Space Invaders. The year is considered the beginning of the golden age of arcade video games. The year's highest-grossing video game was Taito's arcade game Space Invaders, while the best-selling home system was the Atari Video Computer System.

1977 had sequels such as Super Speed Race and Datsun 280 ZZZAP as well as several new titles such as Space Wars. The year's highest-grossing arcade games were F-1 and Speed Race DX in Japan, and Sea Wolf and Sprint 2 in the United States. The year's best-selling home system was Nintendo's Color TV-Game, which was only sold in Japan.

1976 had new titles such as Road Race, Night Driver, Heavyweight Champ, Sea Wolf and Breakout. The year's highest-grossing arcade games were Namco's F-1 in Japan and Midway's Sea Wolf in the United States.

1975 saw several critical influences in the history of video games, including the first commercial games utilizing large-scale integrated circuits and microprocessors, as well as the first role-playing video games.

<i>Boot Hill</i> (video game) 1977 video game

Boot Hill is a multidirectional shooter arcade video game released by Midway in 1977. It is a sequel to the 1975 video game Gun Fight, originally released by Taito as Western Gun in Japan. It was released under license from Taito, as Boot Hill is another version of Western Gun.

<i>Sea Wolf</i> (video game) 1976 video game

Sea Wolf is an arcade video game designed by Dave Nutting and released by Midway in 1976. It is a video game update of an electro-mechanical Midway game, Sea Devil, itself based on Sega's 1966 electro-mechanical arcade submarine simulator Periscope. The game was released in Japan by Taito. In Sea Wolf, the player, piloting an unseen submarine, launches torpedoes vertically in an attempt to sink ships moving horizontally across the screen before time runs out. The screen is viewed through a faux periscope mounted on the cabinet.

<i>Circus</i> (video game) 1977 arcade game

Circus is a block breaker arcade video game released by Exidy in 1977, and distributed by Taito in Japan. The game is a re-themed variant of Atari, Inc.'s Breakout, where the player controls a seesaw and clown in order to pop all the balloons in the level. The game has been copied and released under different names by numerous other companies in both the United States and Japan.

<i>Speed Race</i> 1974 video game

Speed Race is a 1974 arcade racing video game developed and manufactured by Taito and released under the titles Racer and Wheels in North America by distributor Midway Manufacturing in 1975. Designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, the gameplay involves the player using the attached steering wheel to maneuver a car alongside a fast vertical scrolling road. The objective is to score points by driving past other cars without colliding with them; more points are awarded for driving faster. Players must do this under a 90-second time limit, which ends the game when it runs out. The gameplay concepts were adapted from two earlier driving electro-mechanical games: Kasco's Mini Drive (1958) and Taito's Super Road 7 (1970).

Electro-mechanical games are types of arcade games that operate on a combination of some electronic circuitry and mechanical actions from the player to move items contained within the game's cabinet. Some of these were early light gun games using light-sensitive sensors on targets to register hits, while others were simulation games such as driving games, combat flight simulators and sports games. EM games were popular in amusement arcades from the late 1940s up until the 1970s, serving as alternatives to pinball machines, which had been stigmatized as games of chance during that period. EM games lost popularity in the 1970s, as arcade video games had emerged to replace them in addition to newer pinball machines designed as games of skill.

References

  1. 1 2 Akagi, Masumi (13 October 2006). アーケードTVゲームリスト国内•海外編(1971-2005) [Arcade TV Game List: Domestic • Overseas Edition (1971-2005)] (in Japanese). Japan: Amusement News Agency. pp. 40–1. ISBN   978-4990251215.
  2. ↑ Akagi, Masumi (13 October 2006). アーケードTVゲームリスト国内•海外編(1971-2005) [Arcade TV Game List: Domestic • Overseas Edition (1971-2005)] (in Japanese). Japan: Amusement News Agency. p. 124. ISBN   978-4990251215.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Stephen Totilo (August 31, 2010). "In Search Of The First Video Game Gun". Kotaku . Retrieved 2011-03-27.
  4. 1 2 "Western Gun". The Arcade Flyer Archive. Killer List of Video Games . Retrieved 2011-04-02.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Chris Kohler (2005), "Chapter 2: An Early History of Cinematic Elements in Video Games", Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, BradyGames, p. 18, ISBN   0-7440-0424-1 , retrieved 2011-03-27
  6. 1 2 3 Cassidy, William (May 6, 2002). "Gun Fight". GameSpy. Archived from the original on 24 January 2013. Retrieved 14 September 2012.
  7. 1 2 Steve L. Kent (2001), The ultimate history of video games: from Pong to Pokémon and beyond: the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world , p. 64, Prima, ISBN   0-7615-3643-4
  8. 1 2 3 Shirley R. Steinberg (2010), Shirley R. Steinberg; Michael Kehler; Lindsay Cornish (eds.), Boy Culture: An Encyclopedia, vol. 1, ABC-CLIO, p. 451, ISBN   978-0-313-35080-1 , retrieved 2011-04-02
  9. ↑ Mini-micro systems, Volume 11. Cahners Publishing. 1978. p. 46. Retrieved 12 February 2012.
  10. ↑ "Gunfight (Astrocade)". GameFAQs . Retrieved 12 February 2012.
  11. 1 2 "Atarimania - Arcade Classics: Sea Wolf II / Gun Fight". Atarimania.com. Retrieved 2011-02-01.
  12. 1 2 3 "Gun Fight". Archived from the original on 2014-11-14.
  13. ↑ "The Arcade Flyer Archive: Western Gun" . Retrieved 2015-06-18.
  14. 1 2 3 Cassidy, William (May 6, 2002). "Gun Fight". GameSpy. Archived from the original on 25 April 2012. Retrieved 3 December 2011.
  15. ↑ Western Gun at the Killer List of Videogames
  16. 1 2 Rusel DeMaria & Johnny L. Wilson (2003), High score! The illustrated history of electronic games (2 ed.), McGraw-Hill Professional, pp. 24–5, ISBN   0-07-223172-6 , retrieved 2011-04-02
  17. 1 2 "Gun Fight (Arcade) review". Honest Gamers. June 15, 2018. Retrieved 17 April 2021.
  18. 1 2 Smith, Alexander (19 November 2019). They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. I: 1971-1982. CRC Press. pp. 193–95. ISBN   978-0-429-75261-2.
  19. ↑ "GUN FIGHT（ガンファイト）". Sega (in Japanese). Retrieved 2 May 2021.
  20. 1 2 Chris Kohler (2005), Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, BradyGames, p. 211, ISBN   0-7440-0424-1
  21. ↑ Chris Kohler (2005), Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, BradyGames, p. 16, ISBN   0-7440-0424-1
  22. ↑ "The Golden Age Arcade Historian: Video Game Firsts??". Allincolorforaquarter.blogspopt.co.uk. 22 November 2013.
  23. ↑ "The Mass Impact of Video Games" (PDF). Vasulka.org. p. 116. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  24. ↑ The schematic for the "game logic" board of Gun Fight has a shifter circuit made from four AMD Am25S10 4-bit barrel-shifter chips wired together, along with several 74175 latches to hold the data to be shifted and the number of bit positions to shift by.
  25. ↑ "mw8080bw.cpp". Github.com. Retrieved 2020-03-09. Most of these games do not actually use the MB14241 shifter IC, but instead implement equivalent functionality using a bunch of standard 74XX IC's.
  26. ↑ "mw8080bw.cpp". Github.com. Retrieved 2020-03-09. ... data shifter, using either ~11 74xx chips, AM25S10s, Fujitsu MB14221 or Fujitsu MB14241 chips, which all do the same thing.
  27. ↑ Chris Kohler (2005), Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, BradyGames, p. 19, ISBN   0-7440-0424-1, As a game, I thought our version of Western Gun was more fun. But just from using a microprocessor, the walking animation became much smoother and prettier in Midway's version.
  28. ↑ Chris Kohler (2005), "Chapter 2: An Early History of Cinematic Elements in Video Games", Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, BradyGames, p. 19, ISBN   0-7440-0424-1 , retrieved 2011-03-27
  29. ↑ "本紙アンケー 〜 ト調査の結果" [Paper Questionnaire: Results of the Survey](PDF). Game Machine (in Japanese). No. 65. Amusement Press, Inc. 1 February 1977. p. 2.
  30. ↑ Baer, Ralph H. (2005). Videogames: In the Beginning. Rolenta Press. pp. 10–3. ISBN   978-0-9643848-1-1.
  31. ↑ Smith, Alexander (19 November 2019). They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. I: 1971-1982. CRC Press. p. 262. ISBN   978-0-429-75261-2.
  32. ↑ "The Nation's Top Arcade Games". RePlay. March 1976.
  33. ↑ "Profit Chart". RePlay. October 1976.
  34. ↑ "Top Arcade Games". Play Meter . November 1977.
  35. ↑ "The 'Winners' of '78: Top Arcade Games". Play Meter . 1978.
  36. ↑ "The 15 greatest video games of the 70s – ranked!". The Guardian . 13 May 2021. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
  37. ↑ "Gunfight (Bally Professional Arcade)". AllGame . Archived from the original on 2014-01-01.
  38. ↑ Rusel DeMaria & Johnny L. Wilson (2003), High score! The illustrated history of electronic games (2 ed.), McGraw-Hill Professional, p. 48, ISBN   0-07-223172-6 , retrieved 2011-04-02
  39. ↑ "Atarimania - Gunfight". Atarimania.com. Retrieved 2012-03-08.
  40. ↑ "Lemon64 - Duel, The". Lemon64.com. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  41. ↑ "Front Line / Top Ten Hits". Video Games. Vol. 1, no. 7. Pumpkin Press. March 1983. pp. 49, 66.
  42. ↑ Diamond, Dominik (7 December 1995). "Episode #106". GamesMaster. Series 5. Episode 12. United Kingdom. 3 minutes in. Channel 4. Archived from the original on 2021-12-22. Retrieved 24 April 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.