Tuco’s smile was a mixture of annoyance and amusement. He was not used to hot baths enough to resent the intrusion of any member of the male sex into his private paradise, but his sadistic sense of humor was surprised to think of the intruder’s expression when he looked behind the screen and found the bathtub. empty.
Tuco gently pulled his finger back on the trigger as the one-armed wannabe assassin looked around the screen to find his target absent from the bathtub and a “No Trespassing” sign was directed at his chest. A look of disbelief was permanently etched on his face as his body fell into the tub and his own blood turned the water in the tub into a rusty cesspool of death.
Such is the inaugural encounter of one of the stages of Six-Gun Shootout (SG), one of the latest SSI releases. SG is a man-to-man combat game in the days of the “Wild West” with an appearance reminiscent of Galactic Gladiators. The game consists of ten scenarios based on the “Wild West” of Hollywood and a popular legend with a minimum of history. The object of the game is to survive, not necessarily to use the historically correct weapon in the exact historical location. For example, the “Shooting at 0. K. Corral” actually takes place in the stage corral. However, the local newspaper Tombstone 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 in which the player can create and assemble a “personal character” and try to get him to survive all ten scenarios (Hint: To achieve this, the player must definitely be a “nice guy”, otherwise , probably won’t survive the “Shootout at Stinking Spring” scenario where Pat Garrett took a 12-5 lead in the death of “Billy the Kid”).
Although the gameplay is similar to that of Galactic Gladiators, the mechanics of Six Gun are smoother. The hidden movement capability is quite a useful and impressive upgrade. Each character can also use “cover” more effectively, as the options of allowing characters to be face down, 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 ordering a character to shoot a target. Unlike the previous man-to-man combat game, SG is not 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, just modify the ten existing scenarios. Hopefully, if SG is a blockbuster game, that “construction kit” could 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 Shooting at 0. K. Corral”; “The good, the bad, the ugly”; “Bravo River”; “Shooting in the Stinky Spring”; “The Battle of Ingalls”; “The disappearance of Dalton”; “The Magnificent Siette”; “Nightmare of the north field”; “The Treeing of Placid”; and “Indian Raid”. The scenarios listed first, fourth, fifth, sixth, and eighth are based on historical situations. The second, third and seventh are based on recognizable cinematic 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; stop; become prone; kneel down; use dynamite; and / or see possible lines of sight. Each character progresses through movement segments according to a formula for the character’s movement speed combined with the weapon’s movement speed. The character’s movement speed is not static, as it is affected by factors such as health and body position. SG is a relatively simple, fast and fun game. It is satisfying and clear in its determination of victory and victory points. One only wonders if the allowed adjustments to the ten scenarios will allow it to have as long a lifespan as previous SSI games.