| Graphics: |  5 |
| SFX: |  4 |
| Music: | 4 |
| Gameplay: |  4.5 |
| Challenge: | 5 |
| Replay: | 5 |
| Overall: | 5 |
| Genre: | Shooting |
| Reading ability: | Not required |
| Company: | Natsume |
Background:
A few years back, a good friend of mine gave me a SNES cartridge of Wild Guns and told me that it was a rare and obscure classic. I admitted that I'd never heard of the game before, so we fired up my SNES and he introduced me to one of the best arcade experiences available on the SNES.
The Game:
Wild Arms takes the gameplay of TAD's Cabal, expands it in an incredible way, and blends it with an exciting combination of science fiction and cowboy western themes. This is a two player game, with the choice of characters being two quintessential Western badasses: Clint, a real hunk of a gunman, and Annie, a sexy, busty sharp shooter gal who wears a beautiful Western dress that shows a lot of leg. The inspirations behind the characters are Clint Eastwood and Annie Oakley, for sure. The clothing colors can be selected by the X, Y, B, and A buttons before pressing start, and I particularly like Annie's black dress. The settings are definitely an Old West setting, however the science fiction elements become quite obvious when advanced technology appears such as neon signs, air conditioners, robots, hovercars, cowboys riding robot horses, dune buggies, and hover trains and the like appear. This sort of sci-fi/cowboy mashup seems to be a winner everytime, when history meets future. This amalgamation has become known as "steampunk." The TV series "Wild Wild West" and the movie (starring Will Smith) that was based on it is a perfect example of a sci-fi western. Anime series such as Cowboy Bebop, Galaxy Express 999, and Gun Frontier come to mind while playing this game.
TAD's Cabal was played in the arcade with a trackball. It's a shooting game with the perspective from behind your hero. But unlike the G.I. Joe and Rambo arcade shooting games in which your character runs along a course, Cabal had your character moving from side to side, staying put in the foreground. Natsume's Wild Guns is basically the same, but of course minus the trackball. The Y button is your attack, X is your bomb, and B is jump/dodge. This is where Wild Arms totally surpasses Cabal in terms of gameplay.
Moving from left to right will move your character accordingly. Holding down the Y button gives you continuous rapid fire as your character plants his/her feet on the ground as you blast the enemy thugs. The directional pad controls your gunsight, and these are labeled 1P and 2P to prevent confusion during two player modes. Tapping Y will make your hero twirl a lasso, and when you stop the lasso is released, your hero will throw it and ensnare anyone in your gunsight. This seems to work on every enemy in the game except for armored gun turrets. For mid-bosses, you can snare them, shoot them like crazy, then try to snare them again before they can recover, making them an easy defeat. Occasionally, an enemy with a knife will appear in the foreground to try to poke a hole in you, and tapping Y once will pistol whip them and give you 1000 points.
When you're in trouble, you can press B while shooting and your character will dodge/roll out of the way. You are essentially invincible when you do this, so you can actually roll right through exploding dynamite and you won't die. When you aren't shooting, you can press B to jump, and you can execute a double jump by pressing B in mid-air, allowing you to change the direction of your leap to avoid getting hit.
Shooting enemies often provides money bags and gems, and shooting those collects them. Powerups come by from time to time. M is a machine gun with a super rate of fire, S is a shotgun with a medium rate of fire, and G is the grenade launcher which does the most amount of damage, but has a slow rate of fire. Ammo is limited with each of these. When you're doing very well, you can get the V or Vulcan gun, which gives you great amount of damage for a limited amount of time. One powerup is the ? mark, which can give you the M, S, or G weapons, but it can also give you a silly little pea shooter that doesn't hurt a thing. You have to expend all of this ammo before you can start killing again, and I really don't know why this was added to the game, other than to be annoying. The game would've been better without it. Also, I'll add that it is possible to actually shoot a lot of the incoming bullets. It's tricky, but the shotgun seems to make it easier because of its wide spread of damage.
Graphics:
The detail in this game is amazing. You can damage most anything in this game with your bullets, from the wooden boxes, windows, wagons, and even the canyon walls will get chunked out by your shots. It doesn't really help the gameplay much, but it is such a bonus to the detail of the game, and it is highly satisfying to wreak havoc this way. "Let me ventilate these windows! Eat my lead, beer bottles! Take that, neon sign! Here's what I think of your stupid potted plant!" Notice your character's face at the bottom of the screen. When you pick up treasure, they smile. When you die, they grimace in pain. Notice the heat waves when the mid-bosses and bosses explode. You never really see any slowdown that will affect gameplay. Character animations are smooth and detailed... and are those Annie's panties I see when she dies? Tee hee hee!
Music/Sound:
The game has great sound effects for explosions, gunshots, stuff breaking, and character vocals. Music is great too. Typical game music, but with a cowboy western flavor to it. You can even hear whistling in some of the levels' music.
Challenge and replay:
This game poses a great challenge to master, yet it is still fair. You won't see the game doing cheap moves on you to guarantee your death like some games can do. If you die, you just didn't move at the right time. This is a great game to play with friends too, since adding a second player adds a lot and teamwork is fun. It's not like how some shmups are detracted by a second player on screen.
Secrets:
Stage select code: At the Character Select screen, hold down the SELECT button and press A, A, A, A, B, B, B, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, and then B.
(Taken from Gamefaqs.com)
The Good:
While Wild Guns was not originally in the arcades, it delivers a great arcade experience to your home. Even if it was in the arcade, it would not have been a cheap quarter sucker of a coin-op. Gameplay is rock solid and highly addicting.
The Bad:
There is not much negative to say about the game. I'll just mention that the pea shooter is a minor annoyance and the game could've definitely done without it. It prevented me giving this game a full 5 stars in the Gameplay category.
Overall:
Wild Guns was released in 1994, and it showcases the capabilities of Nintendo's hardware very well. This is an excellent game to add to your collection. The domestic release is essentially identical to the import Super Famicom version. Both are rare and fetch a high price. I was lucky that my good friend just gave me the domestic cartridge as a gift. It's sad that such an incredible game like this has been relegated to such obscurity.
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