Sheriff is an anomaly; a classic era arcade game that will multiplicatively reward you for incredibly long play sessions instead of trying to boot you out immediately so that it can gobble more quarters. It's incredibly ambitious for its time, taking the simple vertical shooter concept and changing it to the player being surrounded, using a whole range of movement and eight-directional shooting to take out a bunch of bandits who are glad to charge through the openings in a player's defenses to get 'em. In theory, it's a significantly more stressful form of something like Space Invaders. In practice, you get a good rhythm shooting at a diagonal and sometimes move up or down. Your enemies react to rounds to determine their speed rather than to time, meaning that once you get a basic pattern going shooting the first enemy, you're basically set for the rest of the round. This is coupled with, as a reward for surviving ten rounds, your points being DOUBLED by Mr. Jack finally rescuing Betty and going through INSTANT MATRIMONY before she's immediately kidnapped again. This results in very long play times that are waaay too generous for a game made in the 70's - if I was, like, four and it was 1980 and I was surrounded by arcade machines for some reason, this would probably be my favorite.
'tis a fun little repetitive game. It has that Nintendo feel of "what if we did this thing a little bit different?" that games like CluClu Land, Devil World, Hell even stuff like Kid Icarus, Metroid, or Super Mario Kart would go on to hold, which is wild to see this early on in the company's history! But it is not an answer to Space Invaders, it's like, a polite and cheaper version from the weird supermarket down the street.
'tis a fun little repetitive game. It has that Nintendo feel of "what if we did this thing a little bit different?" that games like CluClu Land, Devil World, Hell even stuff like Kid Icarus, Metroid, or Super Mario Kart would go on to hold, which is wild to see this early on in the company's history! But it is not an answer to Space Invaders, it's like, a polite and cheaper version from the weird supermarket down the street.
Space Invaders but you're in the middle and have a cool hat. 8-directional shooting in 1979!
For being one of Nintendo’s earliest successful titles, it is… an interesting one. One that hold some level of quality after almost 45 years, but it isn’t really anything that I would wanna come back to again. That being said though, Mr. Jack is probably one of the most ruthless cowpeople that I have ever seen, shooting anybody on sight the moment a woman gets captured by bandits. Gotta respect the drive.
Game #285
Game #285
Actually pretty fun, even if Mr. Jack feels allergic to moving sometimes and the vulture makes the most annoying sound in existence. Outside that the music captures the cowboy mood well. It can get pretty intense and you can fire off shots that make you feel like a badass, turning to kill someone in a corner and turning back immediately to shoot the next guy. Hell even the way my Ending run came to an end was memorable: I beat the level and died at the same time, so I got the victory cutscene first followed by a Game Over right after due to not having any lives.
Nintendo needs to do more with this game outside of one of the most annoying assist trophies.
Nintendo needs to do more with this game outside of one of the most annoying assist trophies.
The game is a spiritual successor of “Gun Fight”, but more improved and fun. You can aim in all directions and shoot the enemies, something very innovative and daring for the time. The gameplay is the most important aspect and what keeps the game interesting, as it is very fun. You need to think about the best direction for your next shot at the same time as you dodge the enemys shots. The graphics, colors and variety of enemies and stages are not the strong point of the game, but what it has is beautiful and well made.