Playing Mad Dog McCree on Sega CD with only the gamepad is an absolutely miserable experience. I'm sure it's better with the lightgun, but it's downright unplayable with the pad. Your cursor is either too slow or so damn fast it goes right past the tiny-ass hitboxes on some of the bad guys who come out and shoot really fucking quickly. There's actually a really shitty scenario where right after selecting the bank on the scene selection screen you could be shot immediately by a dude on the opposite side of the screen that's almost impossible to hit from the place you had to start in with the cursor.

The SCD's horrifically compressed FMVs only make the game harder, there'll be a bunch of times where you'll be shot by guys you couldn't see the first time you go through a scene. For example, in the saloon stage after shooting all four of the dudes in front of me after dying like three times figuring out the proper timing to actually hitting them, I suddenly got killed by a blob out in the background on the staircase that I didn't even notice until his shot went off. Then there's this chick who stands up suddenly from behind one of the counters in the bank who I ended up shooting by accident, was a bad guy holding her hostage? Was it Princess Peach dancing around? I couldn't tell you because that's how shitty the FMV looks on SCD when it's blown up to near full screen on a CRT.

The entire game itself just feels trial-and-error due to the tight windows of opportunity to hit people because of the limitations of using FMV, which is ignoring the actual trial-and-error where some invisible shithead out in a tiny window in the background sniped at me right after I took out two guys in front of the corral. I know the game itself is really narmy and that's most of the appeal, but I still can't help but feel like I'd much rather be playing Lethal Enforcers.

No pardner, I don't like it.

Far & away thee best American Laser Game production. They're all quite funny, but Mad Dog is hilarious. In fact thee whole series is packed with quirky quotable characters, over thee top ragdoll deaths (some great stunts too). No doubt still suffers from ALG's signature flaw: thee 'fuck you'. Oh you don't know about that? Yeah, it's when a civilian peeps into your view sporting similar attire as baddies. This is especially frustrating seeing as your response time to hit yr target before getting capped yourself is a miniscule window. It's thee worst kind of punishing in gallery shooters like this, but in thee case of thee Mad Dog series, you just cannot get too ruffled about it because you're too busy chuckling your pain/quarters away.

Part of my Light/Rail Shooter list.