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Western Gun
We're taking a trip in arcade history, back along the timeline of a place pivotal to make video games such a huge industry! Finding a website called Timetoast.com I managed to find a timeline of arcade games throughout history, starting with everyone's favourite Pong in 1972. Looking further into the timeline, however, we find the title Western Gun made by Taito, famous for other classics like Space Invaders. What's so good about this game? Let's find out!
Western Gun was, as you could probably tell by the title, a Wild West gunslinging affair, you are in a duel with whoever happens to be playing with you and your goal is to fill them with lead as you gun them down! Much like the Pong machine and the Magnavox Odyssey Western Gun could only be played with two people! You couldn't play this alone, unless you wanted a garunteed victory every time! Unlike a real life cowboy duel, however, each player has multiple opportunities to shoot and gain points before the end of the game. The game was hugely popular and sold over 8000 arcade units in Northern America alone, even in Europe and Japan it was a huge success! One of the contributing factors, other than a relatively empty market, that led to its success was the fact that it was the first game to ever include guns!
Guns! It seems that they are standard in video games today! Whether you're in Victorian London slaying Werewolves in The Order 1886 or trying to keep Pyramid Head at bay in the Silent Hill series they seem to crop up absolutely everywhere! It took to 1975 for the famous type of weapon to be translated into pixels, and pixels they truly were! As it was 1975 you could probably guess that the graphics were rather primitive, black and white, not a circle in sight! Think like Pong, except the characters from Pong formed into two humans with guns! Regardless, the game was a huge success, the graphics were great for the time! When we discussed the early MMO we name dropped Collossal Cave Adventure released in 1975, a text based adventure game. Think how better two completely white characters on black backgrounds holding something that looked vaguely like a gun was at the time!
The success of the game bred two sequels, each one met some level of success but the original is where the series gained huge momentum! Taito struck a gold mine, a gold mine they struck again with Space Invaders. Over in North America the game received higher praise in the form of home console partnership, enter the Bally Astrocade! There was a North American superstore named Montgomery Ward, they stocked the Bally Astrocade, this was made by, you guessed it, Bally. Bally was a division of Midway Games, a huge name in the arcade market namely for supplying the arcade cabinets for Pacman in 1980! The Astrocade was only available through mail order, making it rare today and Western Gun came built in with the system! This game was a huge success and made Taito what they are today, the success of Western Gun made Space Invaders economically viable and all it took was to bring guns into the video game industry!
