Wild Western (Arcade)

With a sheriff riding on horseback to foil a train robbery, Taito’s 1982 arcade game Wild Western feels like it lives up to its name. Trading shots with bandits to protect the locomotive feels like it would be a fine fit for a simple arcade game too, and there could be a version of this game that effectively captures this classic Wild West action set piece, but with an idea so straightforward, all it takes is one little issue to completely disrupt the game’s potential.

Wild Western’s shooting isn’t too hard to get the hang of. You can aim your gun in eight directions, the sheriff riding in on one side of a moving train as a pack of bandits rides along the other side. There’s no reason to worry about what your bullets might hit, the train itself impervious to damage, but it will block your shots, meaning you’ll need to ride up and around the train to get an angle on the enemy. The bandits can aim in the same eight directions, meaning you can try to find moments where you can ride in their blind spots, but they travel in a group and move around a fair bit. The desert around you has many tripping hazards to boot, your horse throwing you off if it hits a cactus or stone, and all it takes is one shot to rid you of one of your three lives. Your bullets take down a bandit in one hit too and travel a tiny bit slow, meaning sometimes you can pull a trick like firing in front of the engine and then the bullet will end up hitting an enemy who was on the other side of it.

Riding around the train is dangerous but a decent test of picking your moment to act. The train can end up high or low on the screen and even when you blast a bandit off their horse, the animal still runs alongside as a new hazard itself. If slipping in to land your shots was the only challenge, Wild Western could have worked well, but the issues arise when you need to factor in enemy gunfire. You and the bandits both fire small white lines for bullets, and these can be rather hard to see. It’s not an issue inherent to the background, the train will eventually head to places like a canyon or bridge over water where the background will change its coloration and decoration. The problem is just that the bullets are too small and don’t stand out enough. Diagonal shots especially can be hard to identify as they fly, a dangerous fact since there are so many other things to keep track of. Take your eyes off the sheriff and you’ll trip on something in the environment, and with the number of outlaws present at times, you might be dodging more than one shot in short succession. You can’t avoid being in their line of sight or you’ll never shoot them yourself, leading to lives lost to something you barely had a chance to see.

Wild Western looks like it might allow you to take things slow at first. There is no timer, but beyond your own death there is a way to lose. Bandits will try to jump aboard the train eventually, some even bolting for it the moment they appear on screen. If three bandits get aboard, the player will lose, but while they’re on top of the locomotive, they are still active threats. You can’t shoot them, but they can shoot you, and what’s worse, to take them out you have to hop aboard the train yourself. There is a jump button to leap off your horse for this purpose, but if you’re a little off in positioning, you can just leap out into the air and die instead of climbing on board. Getting close to the train is a risk while there’s a bandit aboard, the player mostly just having to hope the outlaw won’t fire while they’re pulling up. Once on board it’s easy enough to take them out, but if there are still other bandits left, you’ll need to leap back onto your horse, putting you at risk of being a little off again and just tossing yourself to your doom.

The good news is the bandits usually aren’t too eager to leap aboard. The ones on the train can be saved for last and you’re given a fair bit of time to pick off the regular riders without the risk of them getting three aboard. This won’t rectify things though, most of the game will involve nervously hoping you aren’t blindsided by bullets or unlucky when approaching the train to remove boarders, but if you can last a few stages, you do have the chance to see what Wild Western could have been. In some stages the train track will start becoming wavy, moving far to the right and left to pressure riders on either side. The earlier mentioned canyons and bridges thin the amount of available space, the player having to travel in tighter channels sometimes right behind outlaws since there is little safe ground remaining. If these were the concerns you had, there would be more thought and strategy in playing Wild Western, but the fundamentals are too rickety that these moments don’t get a proper chance to shine.

Wild Western does have a thematic bit of music playing behind it that evokes “Ghost Riders in the Sky”, and between levels, you’ll play a quick bonus game with a more relaxed pokey tune to represent the brief break you and your horse take. While the horse is grazing in this interlude, it kicks a can up into the air, the sheriff off to the side with his pistol ready for target practice. You can only move left and right here and get one shot to try and hit the can for some bonus points, and while it is a pretty simply break between stages, it does feel like a nice slower paced moment before you get back to the involved and demanding rides beside the train. Since the bonus game starts the moment all the outlaws are taken out (save for the times the train gets to pull into station), it’s a nice marker that the enemy posse has been fully wiped out too.

THE VERDICT: Wild Western’s simple structure is undone by an air of uncertainty. The hard to spot bullets and rough train hopping can lead to even excellent play being foiled by something that was hard to account for. Wild Western did have some good ideas for shaking things up, the train heading to new spaces that shift up where you can safely ride, and the bonus game is a nice breather between rounds, but it’s hard to commit to stopping the repeated train robberies when you can sometimes be unsure why you died at all.

And so, I give Wild Western for arcade machines…

A BAD rating. Overly cautious and slow play can spare you too many troubles with the harder to spot bullets, if you clear out enough outlaws eventually you won’t have too much to catch you by surprise after all. Problem is, that makes this action game drag, the game leaning more towards you having to endanger yourself while making it hard to properly account for what you’re riding into. The two areas the game needs fixing are obvious though. The bullets needed to stand out more, the shots somewhat slow but a diagonal shot still often flies too quickly and blends in too well with other dangers or environmental dressing. Changing the shape or coloration of the bullet to make it stand out could give you that bit of time to weave away and make it easier to spot it without having to look right at it, there being a bit too much to track visually on top of incoming bullets at present. The train jumping feels a bit easier to clean up though, the jump button feeling like it could just magnetize you to the train if you’re close enough instead of being so finicky on exact positioning. Tidy up those two parts of the game’s design, and then you can better appreciate the variety it offers in where the train heads and how you’ll need to work around the train differently to line up shots of your own. As is though, you might not even see areas like the bridge because the early frustrations really don’t make this game great as a score chaser when your end can come so suddenly you don’t even realize what hit you.

Wild Western is a sad case where some very basic problems ruin what could have been a decent experience, and I even made sure to watch very carefully just to make sure it wasn’t my own eyesight making this a poor play. One thing that needs to be remembered though was an arcade game is made to be lost in some way, the game wanting you to put in more quarters to play, so making a few little things that catch you by surprise and end your run might not have been seen as a problem. Wild Western would still have ways to knock you from your horse even if things were a bit clearer and reliable though, and with your deaths here not feeling as fair as they could be, it ends up a little harder each time to justify getting back in the saddle for another go.