Classic Game Review: Six Gun Shootout
Tuco’s smile was a mixture of annoyance and amusement. He was not so used to hot baths that he resented the intrusion of any member of the male sex into his private paradise, but his sadistic sense of humor struck at his sadistic sense of humor as he thought of the intruder’s expression as he looked behind the screen and found the bathtub empty.
Tuco gently tensed his trigger finger as the one-armed would-be assassin glanced around the screen to find his target absent from the bathtub and a lead No Trespassing sign aimed at his chest. A look of disbelief was permanently etched on his face as his form fell into the tub and his own blood turned the tub water into a rusty cesspool of death.
Such is the opening encounter of one of the scenarios in Six-Gun Shootout (SG), one of SSI’s latest releases. SG is a man-to-man combat game set in the days of the “Wild West” with a look and feel reminiscent of Galactic Gladiators. The game consists of ten scenarios based on Hollywood’s “Wild West” and popular legend with minimal story included. The object of the game is to survive, not necessarily to use the historically correct weapon in the exact historical location. For example, the “shootout at the 0. K. Corral” actually takes place in the corral on stage. However, the local Tombstone newspaper published eyewitness reports that made it clear that the shooting took place on the street outside the corral.
However, the scenarios are challenging and worth playing. SG also offers a campaign game where the player can create and assemble a “personal character” and try to make it survive all ten scenarios (Hint: to achieve this, the player definitely needs to be a “good guy”, otherwise probably won’t survive the “Stinking Spring Shootout” scenario where Pat Garrett seized a 12-5 lead for the death of “Billy the Kid”).
Although the game mechanics are similar to Galactic Gladiators, the mechanics of Six Gun are more fluid. The hidden move ability is a pretty useful and impressive upgrade. Each character can also use “cover” more effectively as the options to allow characters to be prone, kneeling, or standing affect line of sight differently than line of sight in the previous game.
The game also has a “See” command that allows each character to test line of sight against the other characters before commanding a character to shoot at a target. Unlike the previous man-to-man combat game, SG isn’t very flexible in creating its own scenarios. The previous game had a tremendous ability to design settings and characters to fit fictional situations. In SG, there is no built-in mechanism to create such scenarios, only the ten existing scenarios are modified. It is to be hoped that if SG is a best-selling game, that “construction kit” might be available as an additional floppy disk. Otherwise, SG is a superior game.
Each scenario involves the movement and combat of two “teams”: “The Good Guys” and “The Bad Guys”. Scenarios include: “The Shootout at the 0. K. Corral”; “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly”; “Bravo River”; “Stinking Spring Shootout”; “The Battle of Ingalls”; “Dalton’s Disappearance”; “The Magnificent Siette”; “Northfield Nightmare”; “The Treeing of Placido”; and “Indian Raid”. The first, fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth listed scenarios are based on historical situations. The second, third, and seventh are based on recognizable movie situations. The last two are generic “could have happened” scenarios.
Depending on preference, the player could end up controlling Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Jessie James, Doc Holliday, Pat Garrett, or The Man with No Name (Blondie). The commands are simple. Each character can: prepare a weapon; load a weapon: fire; move according to a grid of 8 positions; stay; become prone; kneel down; use dynamite; and/or see possible lines of sight. Each character moves through movement segments according to a formula for the character’s movement rate combined with the weapon’s movement rate. The character’s movement rate is not static, being modified by things such as health condition and body position. SG is a relatively simple, fast and fun game. It is satisfying and clear in its determination of victory points and victory. One only wonders if the tweaks allowed to the ten scenarios will allow it to have as long a lifespan as previous SSI games.