Man, gamers these days are so goddamn needy when it comes to what a video game should have, aren’t they? They’re always wanting big, epic stories, graphics so good that it will make live-action footage look inferior in comparison , a million customizables, 9999fps or some garbage at all times, it’s all too much! Don’t they know that you don’t need all of that in order to make a good game? As long as you have a good foundation to work off of, some creative ideas, and enough content to leave the player satisfied, that should do the trick just fine. Hell, there are plenty of games that were released in them good ol’ days that were able to become classics not by being crammed with too much stuff, but with taking a swing at the fences, creating something that was familiar for some, yet featured new twists to make it more interesting. Take, for instance, a game I definitely should’ve played a lot sooner than later, Wild Guns.

I had known about this game for a long time before I first checked it out, I wanna say since around 2015-2016, when I had watched a video of it on YouTube, and based on what I saw, it looked pretty fun and unique. However, because old habits die hard, it took me way too long to eventually decide to try the game myself, and from what I played back then, I ended up really liking it. It has been a hot minute though, so while I am waiting for the chance to replay through Doom II for a review (real life is a bitch), I figured I would replay this game to see if it still holds up, and unsurprisingly, it absolutely does. It is one of the most fun and unique co-op games that you could find on the SNES, and while it isn’t perfect, with some parts feeling unnecessary or lackluster, it is a joy ride from start to finish that deserves all the praise it can get.

The story is fairly simple, where a woman by the name of Annie loses her family due to the Kid Family abducting and killing them, so after seeking the help of a space bounty hunter known as Clint, the two of them go off to get revenge on the family in the most explosive and brutal way possible, which is almost as basic as a revenge story can get, but it doesn’t waste any time and gets you into the action right away, so I can get behind that. The graphics are pretty great, with all of the levels and enemies fitting both the western and steampunk aesthetic very well, and all of the enemies, characters, and bosses are full of life with animations galore that are pretty great to witness, the music is wonderful, matching the tone of the settings flawlessly and fitting for all of the gunplay that will be happening all throughout the game, the control can take a bit to get used to for those who have never played the game before, but they can get used to it fairly quickly, and it works well enough, and the gameplay, on the surface, is pretty typical, but the way that it is carried out makes it stand out from all other games at the time, and it works wonders.

The game is a shooting gallery title, where you take control of either Clint or Annie, go through six different levels full of plenty of different sections you can blast through, shoot up anything and everything that appears on screen, making sure to grab items by shooting them (makes sense to me) and dodge any bullets that are fired your way, gather plenty of different money items, bombs, and different weapons that can help you out against your foes along the way, and fight against plenty of bosses, ranging from the big and ruthless, to the small and fast, all of them being a joy to face for plenty of reasons. In any other title, all of this could be seen as typical for this era, with nothing else to show for itself, but the fact that it chooses this style of gameplay makes it a lot more unique and fun to blast through, especially with a friend.

Since you don’t need to worry about trying to reach the end of any kind of stage, or really any goal that isn’t right in front of you, the game prioritizes the gunplay over everything else, and it feels appropriately immensely satisfying, allowing to mow down plenty of enemies before you while making sure to apply the perfect dodging maneuvers. Not only that, but the different weapons you can acquire make it even more satisfying to annihilate whatever lays before you, having a much bigger range of fire then before, along with, of course, dealing much more damage. This especially rings true with the Vulcan Gun, which doesn’t last all too long, but whenever you have it, you feel UNSTOPPABLE, as everything seemingly goes down with just a few shots, and you can cover a lot of ground with it. And finally, one more noteworthy thing to note about the game is, again, the theme it has. It isn’t necessarily original, having a bombastic western setting with a whole lot of shit going on at once, but the inclusion of robots does, ironically, add a bit more life and charm to it, along with each blending into each other flawlessly, to the point where you can’t imagine it without either of those things.

With that being said though, the game isn’t perfect. While I do praise the main gameplay for being incredibly addicting and fun to mess around with, it doesn’t really change up at all throughout the whole game, aside from the places you go to and the enemies you fight, which can turn some people away if they aren’t drawn into this immediately like others. Secondly, while most of the bosses are completely original, there are quite a few that are repeated several times, which can make them tiring to fight whenever you run into them again. And finally, this is just a personal complaint myself, but it does kinda suck that all of the powerups that you do get throughout the game each have limited ammunition. Sure, it would probably be too unbalanced if they didn’t have ammo limits, but you could still take them away whenever you get hit by anything and be fine, because trust me, given the way this game works, you WILL get hit by something sooner or later.

Overall, despite its lack of variety and repeating bosses, Wild Guns is a fantastic title that has aged incredibly well over the past 30 years, one that manages to keep the gameplay fast and satisfying at all times, while not being too long to the point where you are just hoping it would end at some point. I would highly recommend it for those of you who love old-school co-op games, or any game for that matter with this level of energy and style, because with the right person beside you, I guarantee that you will have a blast with this title. It’s just a shame though that this never got any kind of sequel later down the line. Yeah, it did get a remaster with additional content, but that can only go so far! MAKE WILD GUNS 2, COWARDS!

Game #494

Um jogo que venceu o desafio do tempo, mesmo nos dias atuais ainda diverte e impressiona.

Intuitivo, divertido e desafiador, um jogo que com certeza entra pra minha lista de jogos indispensáveis do Super Nintendo.

Único defeito é ser tão curto e com baixa variação de mini-boss e tendo uma fórmula que ao aprender a jogar, o jogo ficará considerável mais fácil, se fosse um jogo com 1 hora a mais, chegaria a cansar, mas sendo curto só me fez querer mais dessa gameplay.

Nota Final 8/10.

Third GOTM finished for September 2023. Very fun, but will also absolutely rock your shit. Sprite work and graphics are very crisp, and the aiming and hitboxes felt good outside of melee attacks. Lots of tension in constantly dodging and switching between lasso and shooting. Felt really arcadey in some of the difficulty and bosses, and not necessarily in a good way, but while I don't generally enjoy those types of games I can respect that this one was still quite good. Would've been an absolute blast in co-op!

now this is a real ass game. i played without save states at all and it made everything feel so much more rewarding and fulfilling, and even if i game overd i wasnt even that mad because i just got to keep playing this game lol, it's just that fun. there are a couple of really difficult levels that got me a little frustrated but it was in the stubborn way where you wanna do one more run because you just know you can beat the level. then by the time you memorize the attack patterns and youre in The Zone and everything falls into place perfectly the feeling of beating a level feels so good. especially the last level, it will rock your shit but when you beat it feels so so good

Wild Guns is absolutely incredible and I cannot believe I missed it until now. It's the perfect challenge level, it has such variety of mechanics (I didn't even discover I could throw TNT back until I had to in order to survive a boss fight) and the soundtrack is out of this world. It's up there with Windjammers for me as a title that, if I saw it in an arcade, I would hunker down at the machine all day and play on loop. Definitely give this one a try if you love rail-shooters and are craving some variety within the genre.

Potentially the best Tengo Project/Natsume title and easily my favorite of the bunch. Know I’m intensely biased towards Wild Guns, as it represented one of the first arcade (or, maybe more accurately, arcade-inspired) games I ever put any amount of time into, but it’s one I’ve only grown more fond of as I’ve played through it over the years.

If there’s anything close to a lynchpin mechanic here, it’s the Vulcan Meter- shoot down enemy bullets and you’ll build up towards a mode that allows for a brief period of invincibility and extra damage, crucial for some of the tougher bosses. The catch is that it triggers automatically, so the process of managing it upends some of your dominant defensive strategies: it’d be easy to get complacent and shoot down every bullet, but because this will leave you exposed on some of the tougher fights, tools like jumping, rolling, and bombing all get their place in the defensive hierarchy- anything to avoid unnecessarily activating it. It additionally helps in keeping some of the repeat fights engaging thanks to inherent variance brought on by these shifting priorities: fight the dualist miniboss on the first stage, and there’s little reason not to try and stun him to build a bit of extra meter, but later encounters will have you re-examining those same strategies, frantically jumping around shots you’d be otherwise tempted to counter.

It’s a system that also speaks to the game’s uncommon generosity among arcade titles, the combination of the game-changing nature of the Vulcan Meter and the way an extra life is always in reach thanks to the low scoring threshold making for runs where pushing through attempts, instead of endlessly resetting them, is encouraged. Improvisational too! Aside from the deviations of the brought on the player’s fluctuating resources, there are also randomized item drops, sometimes granting you extra-powerful weapons, sometimes saddling you with the near-useless “P-Shooter.” The result is a game where multiple runs can vary wildly from one another- and given that a successful clear only takes about 30 minutes to complete, makes the prospect of going for another one endlessly inviting.

I could go on: the way the scoring system encourages you to stay one place and keep firing to build and maintain your multiplier, eating through your special weapon’s ammo in the process, or the constant temptation to lasso and stun targets- a move that'll leave you momentarily vulnerable, but can be so, so worthwhile on some of the deadlier fights.

Remarkable that everything here gels so well together, especially given that many of the other Natsume titles at the time had the benefit of being based on older titles and the tight window of time for the game’s development. Would never have guessed its origin would be so unromantic, but regardless, the end result is one of my favorite titles of all time- if you’ve been thinking of jumping into this style of game, I’m hard-pressed to think of a better entry point.

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While we were waiting for our next subcontracted work to begin, our boss told us to develop a new game with two conditions: quickly and cheaply. I believe from the initial planning to the finished app it took us about five months. I’m sorry the answer is so boring!

Wild Guns creator Shunichi Taniguchi https://shmuplations.com/wildguns/

Wild Guns foi uma grande surpresa para mim, achei o jogo bem charmoso e adorei a temática de misturar faroeste com tecnologia futurística, sem contar o estilo anime do jogo.

A gameplay é bem simples, você fica na frente da tela enquanto os inimigos ficam no fundo do cenário, você pode controlar seu personagem, andando, pulando ou se jogando para desviar de tiros.

O maior defeito desse jogo pra mim é que ele não usa bem o layout do controle do snes, tirando o D-Pad, o jogo só usa 3 botões, um pra pular, um pra atirar, e um para usar uma bomba que mata tudo que está na tela.

O jogo não tem um botão próprio pra mirar, então enquanto você anda a mira também se move e só quando você segura o botão de atirar, seu personagem fica parado e você pode mirar melhor.

O problema disso é que existe muita arma com munição limitada, então tu acaba gastando munição só pra poder mirar em um inimigo.

Eu acredito que o jogo poderia usar melhor os botões do snes, podendo mirar com o L ou R e ter um botão pra desviar dos tiros.


Wild Guns é um jogo bem arcade e bem desafiador, possui Co-Op de 2 e é um jogo que vale muito a pena jogar pra conhecer.