Bluffer’s Guide To Westerns
Sheriff Walker-emig deputises a bunch of game devs to dive deep into the wild world of western videogames
The first great western game didn’t have dramatic shootouts at high noon, daring train robberies, or wanted posters. It wasn’t about outlaws, legendary gunslingers or shots of hard alcohol in saloons. However, what the first great videogame western, The Oregon Trail, did have, was an ability to evoke a strong sense of the unifying element that runs through every great western in one way or another.
“The concept of a ‘frontier’ is one of the key pillars of a western setting,” says Blazej Krakowiak of Creativeforge, the developer behind tactical turn-based western Hard West. “While that can come in degrees and there’s a great story to be told about the exact moment something stops being that frontier
(Red Dead Redemption), most western stories work when that element is present. There’s an element of survival, of pioneering, and nature is often both an enemy and an ally.”
The Oregon Trail captures that sense of a frontier that can be both benign and hostile brilliantly. Taking control of a family of pioneers making the journey west, you must manage your pace, rations and resources while dealing with sickness, injury, wagon breakdowns, bad weather and other semi-random events to try and reach your destination safely. The game was created by three teachers, Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger, as a means to teach their students about westward migration in the 19th century.
“Our goal was to provide students with a virtual experience, so that they could realise the hardships that the actual travellers endured,” Paul explains. “Because the program relied on probabilities, each time they played, it was a different trip, as it was for the various different groups that actually travelled to Oregon.”
“It was the first of its kind and best of any simulations at the time,” says
Bill, reflecting on the monster success of a game that was, fittingly for a game about the frontier, a true pioneer. “The feeling of being immersed in the game, making the decisions, and living with the consequences added the appeal,” he continues. “The nice balance of feeling like you are in control but at the same time out of control.”
The success of The Oregon Trail didn’t spark a vogue for game’s exploring the civilian experience of the western frontier. Instead, other western games that emerged in the late Seventies and Eighties tended to be drawn to the gunslinger aspect of the western. The established iconography of the genre meant that with a cowboy hat here and a wagon there, even simple graphics could evoke a scene that recalled the mythical battlegrounds of legendary sharpshooters given life in the popular consciousness through films like The Good, The Bad And The Ugly and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. In Blazej’s words, “[The] Wild West is one of those iconic settings which doesn’t need to be explained to the audience.”
One of the most notable of those early shooters is 1975 arcade title Western Gun, also known as Gun Fight in the US. The game pits two cowboys against each other, the goal being to dodge the fire of your opponent while trying to hit them as you duel between the cacti and wagons that fill the space between you – incidentally, it’s credited with being the first game to depict human-to-human combat. It’s simple but fun design was followed up with Boot Hill in 1977 and copycat Outlaw, which released in the arcades in 1976 but is better known for its 1978 Atari 2600 port. The latter would have been many young people’s first encounter with destructible environments, your shots able to take chunks out of the scenery between the two players.
There were several other shooters that used the Wild West as a theme in that early period. Nintendo’s 1979 arcade title Sheriff saw you play as a sheriff surrounded by a gang
of outlaws. It is notable for using dual-joystick controls, one for character movement and one for aiming and shooting, which although now standard, was unusual at the time.
1984 Commodore 64 shooter High Noon uses a similar setup, having you play as a sheriff taking out outlaws who are trying to shoot you down in between abducting woman from the local saloon and robbing the bank. The game features quick-draw bonus duels in between levels, aping the classic one on one quick-draw scene from classic westerns, which would go on to be a feature in many of the games we will be talking about later. Bank Panic, a 1984 arcade title later ported to the Sega Master System, was built around that very idea. As a sheriff protecting a bank, you cycle between 12 numbered doors and must quickly react to whoever comes through – it might be an innocent citizen dropping off cash, or an outlaw you must beat to the draw. Kane, released in 1986, also on the
C64 and later ported to other platforms including ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC, is another game that places you in the role of a sheriff, this time protecting the town of Kane. The game sought to capture different aspects of the western in its varied gameplay sections: shooting down birds with a bow and arrow for the wilderness survival aspect and horseback riding sections where you have to jump obstacles for the
“it’s The American version of The classical genres of european knights, robin hood, or greek hero myths” Stephen Shaw
horseback skill we associate with the cowboy, for example.
It’s interesting to note that while the western is an American genre, indelibly associated with the landscape and mythology of that country, many of these early titles where actually developed outside the US. Western
Gun and Sheriff were developed in Japan by Tatio and Nintendo, Kane and High Noon in the UK by Mastertronic and Ocean Software. This is a trend that would continue – Konami’s fantastic runand-gun shooter, Sunset Riders, came to the Mega Drive in 1992 and SNES in 1993, for example. Games we will touch on later such as Gunfright, Call Of Juarez and Hard West were developed in Europe. There’s a universal appeal to the genre that holds a fascination for outsiders, despite its American heritage. “It’s the American version of the classical genres of European knights, Robin Hood, or Greek hero myths,” says Stephen Shaw, designer on 1997 Lucasarts FPS Outlaws. “It has similar archetypes of the hero or antihero who has a mysterious past, the larger-thanlife villain, and the ‘quest’ filled with obstacles that must be overcome. Like those, the hero emerges victorious and rides off into the sunset.” The frontier is America’s territory of legend.
The mythological status of the cool sharpshooting cowboy that roams that legendary territory surely accounts for the prevalence of western games that have tried to let us live that fantasy in a direct a way as possible through one of the great traditions of the western genre: the lightgun shooter. Wild Gunman, a 1974 mechanical arcade title that was later adapted to become a NES launch game in the US in 1985 is one of the early examples, emulating the archetypal showdown at high noon scenario with one-on-one quick-draw bouts that test your reaction speed.
American Laser Games produced a whole series of Wild West-themed lightgun games, kicked off in 1990 by the company’s first hit, Mad Dog Mccree. The game stood out thanks to its live-action video, filmed in New Mexico. You would visit classic Wild West locations like the saloon and bank, filled with outlaws for you to
shoot down and topple amusingly from rooftops. The abundance of cliche and some dodgy acting gave the game a welcome sense of fun, almost like you’re visiting a virtual western theme park. American Laser followed up on this with Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold in 1992 and The Last Bounty Hunter, Fast Draw Showdown and Shootout At Old Tucson, all released in 1994.
Konami got in on the act with Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters, an arcade title that was also released on the
Mega Drive and Sega CD in 1994. Characteristically of many games in the genre, it takes us through all the classic western scenarios: a bank heist, a train robbery, and so on. Gunfighter: The Legend Of Jesse James, a Time Crisisstyle title released for the Playstation in 2001 and its 2003 PS2 sequel made an attempt to revive the lightgun western, but, for now, that strand seems to have been resigned to the past.
We’ve established that the appeal of the western doesn’t just lie in the gunfights. There’s something about the world itself: the dusty towns, the morally grey people that populate them, the sunsets on open planes. From early on, there have been games that try to give us a taste of that world. 1985 ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and MSX title Gunfright gave you a small town to explore with residents to interact with as you hunt down and eliminate a gang of outlaws. Gunfrights contemporary, Law Of The West, 1993’s Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist and 1995’s Dust: A Tale Of The Wired West went further in the adventure direction, focusing on dialogue options, story, characters, and, in the case of Freddy Pharkas, comedy.
These are far from the only western games to take the genre in directions that wouldn’t necessarily spring to mind when you think of the Wild West. Marc Haessig, who led design on 2001 real-time tactics game Desperadoes: Wanted Dead Or Alive, explains that his team saw potential in taking a genre that tended to be dominated by
military themes into a western setting. “Characters would have more charisma and differentiate better from each other – as they don’t need military uniforms – and dive into more colourful scenarios,” Marc explains. “Military settings suggest a bunch of restrictions, such as discipline, respect for veterans and real victims, historical accuracy; the western setting was a call for freedom, room for something more fictional and fun.
“A nice thing about the setting was the typical western hero trope of a very fast gunslinger who can quickly defeat a bunch of foes,” Marc says, reflecting on how the setting impacted on the game’s design. “While trying to find a way to allow such an action, it triggered the idea of the Quick-action mechanics that allowed you to coordinate actions amongst the gang.”
hard West, described by Blazej as “XCOM with cowboys and demons”, continued the tradition of the tactical western in 2015, again trying to capture the feeling of the Wild West through its mechanics, as well as its setting. “Several special skills in the game are derived from the legendary skills of gunslingers who could shoot quicker than their shadow and never miss,” says Blazej. “The overall balance of combat in Hard
West was inspired by the spaghetti westerns. The protagonists were almost superheroes compared to their opponents. That’s why they were always outnumbered, with skills serving as the equaliser.”
You’ll note that Hard West blends demons with its western theme and if you look back through the history of the genre, you’ll find that mixing the Wild West with horror is more common than you might think. Alone In The
Dark 3 brought its brand of survival horror westwards in 1994, Silverload is a graphic adventure western horror released in 1995 and Darkwatch is a 2005 Xbox and PS2 FPS that blends the Wild West with vampires and monsters.
“It’s worth noting that, at that time, there were very few pure western games and even fewer FPS titles, so it was hard to look at the marketplace and think a ‘pure western’ game would do well,” says Darkwatch designer Brent Disbrow, explaining that there was a commercial as well as creative logic to blending western and vampire fiction.
“Another point,” he continues. “FPS was a genre that, on consoles, had only recently had its breakthrough title in Halo. Given that the language you speak with in a first-person shooter is the guns, it’s very difficult to say that historically accurate weaponry would be interesting or compelling enough on its own. Combine it with the supernatural, though, and you open the floodgates wide. From the design side, that was a hugely liberating benefit of mixing the source genres.”
“The Western setting WAS A call for freedom, room for something more fictional And fun” Marc Haessig
Still, the game maintained a strong Wild West identity. “Our weapon set, although more fantastic than historic, was loosely modelled on finding real western weapons and extending them into the Darkwatch organisation’s technological/mystical realm,” Brent tells us. “Our enemies used western archetypes as their leaping-off points for design. Our missions were very much referencing westerns – the opening train robbery, horse-riding mission, the fort assault. Again, we were looking at classic westerns and trying to spin them into new and interesting variants.”
As we cast our eyes over the history of western videogames, a big surprise is that there aren’t more FPS games, as compared to the many military shooters produced over the years. There have, however, been a few notable ones.
“i Wanted To capture The Atmosphere And As many elements of The films As possible” Stephen Shaw
outlaws was a 1997 shooter from Lucasarts, built on the Dark Forces engine and using a cartoony western art style. “Daron Stinnett had been brainstorming on what he wanted to do next after Dark Forces and was wanting to do a western in the vein of the Sergio Leone films,” designer Stephen Shaw recalls. “We both agreed that we wanted to capture the atmosphere and as many elements of the films as possible. I bought some books on western films, several western ‘history’ books, The BFI Companion To The Western, Ghost Towns Of The West, which had a lot of good location ideas and photo reference, and probably the most important one The Encyclopaedia of Western Lawmen & Outlaws, which had about 500 pages of biographies of real life historical figures from the
Old West,” Stephen continues. “I spent weeks reading over their stories, exploits and how they met their end, cherry-picking bits and pieces that stood out from them to weave together the characters in Outlaws.”
The game thought carefully about how its western theme should influence its mechanics, too. It was one of the first FPS games that required you to reload and implemented a stamina system to ensure a slower pace that more closely reflected the gunfights you’d see in classic western films.
The other standout western FPS series is 2006’s Call Of Juarez. You played as two characters: a vengeful preacher called Ray Mccall and a young man falsely accused of murder called Billy. Alongside this concept of a story told from two perspectives, the game had a few cool ideas when it came to capturing the essence of the legendary gunslinger. A slow-motion mode allows you to gun down scores of enemies with the proficiency of a true sharpshooting legend and the game has a fun one-onone quick-draw battle system.
Developer Techland followed up in 2009 with a well-received prequel, Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood, and a much maligned modern neo-western in 2011 called Call Of Juarez: The Cartel. The best in the series, however, is 2013’s Call Of Juarez: Gunslinger. This entry shifted the series towards a more lighthearted tone and arcadey style, reminiscent of, but far better than, the lightgun shooters that populate the genre’s history. As well as being a great shooter, the game’s narrative structure is a stroke of genius: it follows the tall tales of an unreliable narrator, which provides a great excuse to jump between cool scenarios and legendary cowboys and leads to some funny moments when the narrator suddenly changes his story and reality warps before your eyes.
An unappreciated title in the history of videogame westerns that deserves a shout out is 2005 PS2 and Xbox title Gun. “Wild West suggests already by its words something exciting and adventurous,” says Jean-marc.
“It triggers contrasting pictures of magnificent sunsets on wide spaces as well as shady saloons and mud. An interesting possibility of freedom, to be a hero or an outlaw, or even an outlaw hero.” Through its Gtaesque open world design, Gun was one of the first games to take a big step towards this picture of the Wild West – to embrace the freedom of the frontier in its design, to allow us to explore the wilderness, explore desert towns, or battle with outlaws.
Of course, one of the reasons Gun is not that well known today is that there is a game that did all that far better.
The game that has eclipsed all other westerns: Rockstar’s 2010 classic, Red Dead Redemption.
rockstar’s second stab at the Wild West after its decent 2004 third-person shooter, Red Dead Revolver, captured the spirit of the west like no game before it. It had dramatic sunsets and epic wilderness landscapes for you to explore as former outlaw John Marston. It had rough saloons and dusty towns filled with interesting characters. It recreated all the iconic scenarios you want in a western: train robberies, prison breaks and quick-draw showdowns. There was the fantastic soundtrack that could have been scored by the great composer of the western genre, Ennio Morricone. It
offered moments of emotional poignancy – the moment you ride into Mexico is known as one of videogames’ greatest scenes and the game’s melancholy musings on the end of the frontier era packs a powerful punch. It was as if every western game had led to this point: it had the frontier feel and wildness of an Oregon Trail game, the cool gunslinging that was the focus of the lightgun westerns, and the epic homages to great western scenes that have been recreated in games like Call Of Juarez.
It deserves its reputation as the best western videogame ever released. At least, it does for now.
Red Dead Redemption 2, which released on 26 October may eclipse the reputation of its predecessor. With this story of Arthur Morgan and the Van Der Linde gang, it looks as if Rockstar may again show its golden touch to surpass the first Red Dead Redemption. A new legend of the west may be born.