While I may be an elderly millennial, I was roughly a negative decade old during the Atari 2600’s time on top, but I do have some memories of playing it. We were always a few years behind on console generations when I was a kid, being a working class family living during trickle down and the dot com bubble and all that fun stuff, so I was 7 when I got a NES even though the SNES had already been out for a bit, and before I had a NES I distinctly remember messing around with one of these woodgrain beasts that my parents had, who definitely were not gamers beyond that.
I had to be 5 and that was many, many brain eating drugs ago so I don’t have a lot of super distinct memories of it, but I do remember sitting there on the floor waiting for Mystery Science Theater to come on WGTW (The One To Watch!) while playing Outlaw with my dad.
The original Outlaw was the better named response to Midway’s GUN FIGHT [/fight milk voice] and wow they must have really been punching themselves for getting beat to the most obvious possible title. Outlaw was programmed by David Crane who has a wonderful resume that includes founding Activision with the other people I’ve mentioned a hundred times in here, and designing Pitfall. Its a wild west gunfight shooter where you move your cowboy shaped splotch around the small map, usually with an obstacle in the middle you have to shoot around, and attempt to maneuver yourself into getting a good shot at the cowboy shaped splotch in front of you.
The strategy of the game is that you can only move or shoot, not both, and when you take a shot you are motionless until the bullet either hits or misses. I love when really simple things like that end up adding enough layers to a game to stay entertaining. Its yet another one that is forgettable without a human to play, but - and this might be my first real hot take of the 70s - its one of the most amusingly competitive games on the system. You could take this game right now and remake it with like Drivekick’s aesthetic and they would be playing Outlaw at whatever gathering of the fightgalos replaces EVO.
I had to be 5 and that was many, many brain eating drugs ago so I don’t have a lot of super distinct memories of it, but I do remember sitting there on the floor waiting for Mystery Science Theater to come on WGTW (The One To Watch!) while playing Outlaw with my dad.
The original Outlaw was the better named response to Midway’s GUN FIGHT [/fight milk voice] and wow they must have really been punching themselves for getting beat to the most obvious possible title. Outlaw was programmed by David Crane who has a wonderful resume that includes founding Activision with the other people I’ve mentioned a hundred times in here, and designing Pitfall. Its a wild west gunfight shooter where you move your cowboy shaped splotch around the small map, usually with an obstacle in the middle you have to shoot around, and attempt to maneuver yourself into getting a good shot at the cowboy shaped splotch in front of you.
The strategy of the game is that you can only move or shoot, not both, and when you take a shot you are motionless until the bullet either hits or misses. I love when really simple things like that end up adding enough layers to a game to stay entertaining. Its yet another one that is forgettable without a human to play, but - and this might be my first real hot take of the 70s - its one of the most amusingly competitive games on the system. You could take this game right now and remake it with like Drivekick’s aesthetic and they would be playing Outlaw at whatever gathering of the fightgalos replaces EVO.