Wild Gunman retrospective: One heck of a baby's toy | NES Works

[@yars45]

An incredible bit of history you've collected here. thanks for all the work you put into this series.

[@JeremyParish]

+Yars Thank you!

[@lawrencekrysak]

I can't believe I've never realized (or even had it pointed out!) how close in proximity the release date of 'Wild Gunman' was to the 'Back to the Future' narrative timeline. Thank you for that. This is an excellent retrospective.

[@Dracalis]

For such seemingly simple games, these videos are impressively thorough. I really enjoy the extensive history that you teach, for both Good Nintentions and Game Boy World!

[@erainmartinez8175]

I love this classic NES style of it

[@superretrohappytime946]

Good video! It's also interesting to note that the Famicom gun also came with a belt and holster. So when it says "fire!" you were actually meant to take it out, then shoot, adding a different level of difficultly to the game.

[@mikegreiling]

Damn I had no idea there was so much history behind such a simple game. Love how in depth you go in these videos. Going to be hard to keep up this level of quality if you intend to go through the entire NES library!

[@JazzemYT]

Fantastic stuff Jeremy, I love how well produced and informative these videos are. At this point it's rare for me to find out something new about Nintendo's history, yet you routinely manage to make that possible :D

[@Luceshoe13]

I’d honestly love to see this game and all the other light-gun games reimagined and expanded on in some sort of modern light gun game akin to House of the Dead. These cartoony graphics recreated with today’s modern 3D technological capabilities would be amazing!

[@nipulkradmsinatagras8293]

The in-depth history is what makes this game extra special.

[@MagusX1]

Awesome video! I was playing Kirby’s Adventure on my switch and entered one of the mini games, which is basically Wild Gunman with out the zapper. It’s cool how much of Wild Gunman is in Nintendo’s DNA. And as you said in the video the Kirby mini game shows how this game works well as a short fix in another game.

[@Cooldrew100]

I had no idea about any of those light-gun installations they used to make, like the original Wild Gunman, but I had seen the Custom Gunman toy from its appearance in WarioWare. Those games are super full of old Nintendo history and oddities.

[@221b]

So the original Wild Gunman was essentially Mad Dog McCree fifteen years early?

[@NORMALLYRETRO]

First thing I thought of as well

[@nickfifteen]

Fifteen years earlier? C'mon, the 1970's weren't merely 15 years before the 199---....oh...

[@helpfulmole]

Great video! I really like how you had a nice cold opener, widened the scope in the middle, and brought it back at the end. It felt like a great piece of writing except.. you know like video. I can't wait to see more!

[@RetroPowerUp]

So much history about Wild Gunman I didn't know about! Excellent video, thanks for sharing!

[@deadpoinsettia]

Elijah Wood 0:51

[@edgarthepartyman]

Your videos just keep getting better and better. Keep up the good work.

[@robertellis5977]

All the early NES shooters outside of duck hunt....I didn't discover until I purchased the plug in and play game with 1500 games....in 2006 lol I grew up playing duck hunt so I was familiar with that shooter.

[@MrLeo34]

Really appreciate the effort you put into these videos - interesting, informative and well researched.

[@shane1489]

Never doubt Marty

[@LOTRDanTube]

This is such a great video. Easily the best of your Good Nintentions yet.

[@gldni17]

So this was the inspiration for the minigame in Kirby's Adventure where you shoot enemies with various boxing glove guns for points and extra lives. But I guess Kirby took some liberties by arming the little pink powerhouse with a boxing glove bazooka and a boxing glove cannon for the later enemies. X3

[@JackMenhorn]

love it. thanks for making this. had no idea about the bowling alley stuff

[@unoclay]

Jeremy, the BTTF timeline at the outset is just amazing, thank you so much for that alone.

[@JeremyParish]

You're welcome!

[@unoclay]

couldnt stop thinking about that timeline. And though I expect you considered this/others may have suggested, another potential theory is that, given Marty/Doc's meddling with their own pasts, they may likely have spawned a butterfly effect/alternate timeline in which NES / Wild Gunman arrived earlier than the timepoint in our own timeline. Meaning, the film's timeline perspective is therefore correct (a likely scenario, since BTTF are PERFECT FILMS) and our own timeline/NES time points irrelevant.

[@ChrisGorski]

Thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you, good sir

[@DrMrProfessorPatrick]

The footage you used of 1974's Wild Gunman is actually excerpts from Craig Baldwin's 1978 experimental film of the same name. Great video though. Wild Gunman is my favorite NES game. :)

[@Poever]

Were I to have a nickel every time I see that BTTF2 clip on this channel

[@WilliamStoneContentZone]

oof

[@LorenHelgeson]

Young Elijah Wood shakes his head in bemusement.

[@jonothanthrace1530]

Clearly Doc Brown was a games enthusiast and had a Famicom... whose Z80 probably wound up somewhere in the DeLorean.

[@lordofthecats6397]

Thoult shall not confuse thy Z80 architecture with 6502 compatible chips!

[@underwaterlevelz1947]

A personal gripe of mine...I've always found it annoying that many retrogamers arbitrarily point to Wild Gunman as being the best Zapper game on the NES. Barker Bill's Trick Shooting is the best by a wide margin.

[@iganas]

Wow, I had no idea Wild Gunman was this interesting.

[@EricKlein]

Spectacular episode.

[@gyrosmann]

The difference in quality when comparing your footage of Wild Gunman and Duck Hunt is crazy. Did you capture Duck Hunt earlier or is there any other reason for that?

[@JeremyParish]

+gyrosmann That Duck Hunt footage isn't my capture. There's a small source credit caption that appears whenever I used borrowed footage. I've just uploaded some of my own DH footage and it is [makes a kissing motion with three fingers] magnifique.

[@AverageJoeVinyl]

Amazingly interesting. Very well done!

[@ACriticalHit]

VS. Nintendo games were regularly released months ahead of their NES counterparts in the US in order to give arcades operators a timed exclusive, so my pet theory is that Marty simply grew up in a universe where NOA went ahead with producing a VS. Wild Gunman. BTW, if anyone wants to learn more about the original Wild Gunman '74 arcade, I have a video on my channel that goes into more detail. :-)

[@chanceaaronblack2792]

Oh my gosh! Nintendo is so cool, and you are so cool! Great history and videos!

[@eareboucas]

Great video, Jeremy! Thanks for the research and insight into this game. I'm personally more into Hogan's Alley, but I had lots of fun with this as a kid. =)

[@Justin-Hill-1987]

My theory is that Marty McFly played something similar to Wild Gunman at a 7-Eleven in Hill Valley...

[@koobert]

So what was that in Back to the Future? Not the PlayChoice 10 version nor the Famicom / NES version. The rotation looked weird, I remember as a kid thinking that was way too smooth for a Nintendo arcade game. I didn't have many friends. Oh yeah, how did you capture these without an old interlaced output?

[@JeremyParish]

+koobert Pretty sure they just made a simple CG mock-up of Wild Gunman for the movie. The NES couldn't handle that many enemies, or overlapping enemies. As for the capture process, you can read more here: gamespite.net/2016/01/05/its-like-xenos-paradox-but-for-footage-of-old-video-games/

[@koobert]

+Jeremy Parish I was more curious how a light gun would work on a progressive scan signal in general. What was the work around?

[@JeremyParish]

+koobert I fed the signal into a CRT before upscaling it, so it was a 240p signal. To my understanding, tube televisions treat 240p as 480i, so there was no discrepancy from how light gun games would normally work.

[@BagOfMagicFood]

Yeah, looked like they took real game assets and animated them in... some other way. I wonder how much of that was done digitally back in 1988.

[@NesNyt]

True or false was wild gunman released prior to this movie

[@MaxW-er1hm]

As he explained, it had just came out, but for him to have been able to hear about it in America would have been almost impossible, as only the test market release had yet happened. As he says it is possible he had a grey market famicom

[@bethanyh1637]

I found this video is a little confusing, too. But, I know the history of the game independent of this video, so let me try and help: A Wild Gunman arcade game was released prior to the movie, but the version shown in the movie is entirely fake. It's based on the sprites of the NES version, but more advanced. There was no arcade version of the game like what was shown ever made. The NES version of the game was released just days prior to the dates used in the first movie and the movie, itself, released even earlier than that. The real Wild Gunman arcade game was FMV based and made in the 1970's. It was made by Nintendo, but published by Sega. It had the same concept of the sprite based game, but used real actors filmed on western-movie style sets. Although rare, Marty could have become a "Crack Shot" on one of these machines.

[@Arcadiality]

Interesting stuff. Thank you sir.

[@dcashley303]

Fantastic series, I'm always surprised by these videos, you could easily make a DVD out of these and I'd buy it. Any Famicom games in the works?

[@JeremyParish]

+davidevoid This series is centered around the U.S. NES library, but I'll prod at some interesting early Famicom titles once I'm through the initial launch lineup.

[@dcashley303]

+Jeremy Parish Brilliant, it was nice to have them in the book

[@GetBant]

I'm a big fan of lightgun games and its a shame that the laser clay idea failed, I remember as a kid playing on one of them old western lightgun machines at the local bowling ally, I pressed the trigger down to many times and got game over as each press once the gun was empty removed a hit point. Such a cheap tactic meant we never played it! It wasn't until years later I got Time Crisis and Point Blank at home. I still indulge in a trip to the bowling ally to play the newsets lightgun games, They are still spectacular. dome projections, heart rate monitors and good old Time Crisis! I managed to play Time Crisis 5 the other day! its very cheesy and still amazing! Hopefully we get a console release! I do remember them installing a special area which had a fullsize car that you sat in to play some driving game projected onto big screens around the car. Not sure of its name but I'm guessing something like ridge racer. Thanks for the video, Really enjoyed all the extra details you looked into! Also the shot shown in BTTF2 looked like it was mocked up for the film as it had 4 guys on screen at once all animating a bit differently from the game. Did Nintendo pay to have this included?

[@indiamapper3579]

Arzil is nice

[@SabrewulfJoelPerez]

Wild gunman Joel Perez favorite

[@kamdan2011]

1:32 Marty played the game at 7-Eleven.

[@GamingDelight]

Then it's possible that Marty's local 7-Eleven had a Famicom with the Famicom Gun and Wild Gunman.

[@kamdan2011]

Nick C's Gaming Delight, unlikely.

[@GamingDelight]

Kamdan No, really. The Hill Valley 7-Eleven must have imported the system, the gun, and the game from Japan.

[@kamdan2011]

@@GamingDelight, possible but still HIGHLY UNLIKELY.

[@GamingDelight]

@@kamdan2011 How is it "highly unlikely"?

[@TroyBlackford]

Little Frodo, a Kinect plant?

[@w.s.mcgallis7731]

In BTTF 3 Marty claims to have learned how to shoot at 7-11...

[@LorenHelgeson]

I remember when 7-11s had arcade machines. As a kid back around 1992, mine had a Street Fighter 2 cabinet, and there were always older kids crowded around it at peak hours. Meanwhile, next door, there was a video rental store which had - I kid you not - Golden Axe, Final Fight, and a T2 pinball table.

[@Belgand]

And that's the primary reason why it's Wild Gunman and not some other game. The second and third films were made back-to-back, so it was specifically setting up Marty's skill as a gunslinger in anticipation of that becoming relevant in the third movie. With the Western theme already locked in, it was just a matter of finding an appropriate video game to use and Wild Gunmen was pretty much perfect. If it didn't exist, they probably would have created a fake game in a similar style.

[@michaelsegal3558]

I have a multi-game cart that has this game called Wild Ball where there is a girl in a Japanese school uniform on the screen and you play Rock Paper Scissors against the computer and there is an article of clothing flashing on the girl and if you beat the computer that article of clothing comes off if you tie that article of clothing goes back on and you lose a life and and if the computer beats you then you just lose a life

[@CraparellaSmorrebrod]

Love how your videos constantly improve. Great job on this one. Just a small nitpick: you often make long sentences while something is happening in the video that is only partially related, so as a viewer one has to really really pay attention - much more so than when watching a regular documentary. Sometimes I have to even rewind and watch things twice.

[@michaelsegal3558]

I hate how new TVs don’t work with gun zapper games

[@MaxW-er1hm]

I enjoy playing on a compact CRT, but for light gun games a nine inch screen is absolutely terrible... and now crt's are hard to find out in the wild

[@TheCastellan]

Could see George Mcfly buying a Famicom.

[@JeremyParish]

Maybe in the altered timeline, but in the timeline Marty knew, that dude did NOT have the scratch to import a game system from Japan.

[@GamingDelight]

@@JeremyParish My guess, his local 7-Eleven might have.

[@GameBoyGuru]

Seeing the large display of projection-based light gun games reminds me of "Golf and Stuff" from The Karate Kid, with the large-scale clay shooting game that Alli plays toward the end of the movie, where she "shoots" Daniel after he runs in front of the screen. I've never seen one of those games before, but would be interested to play one, should any working models still exist.

[@jamesmoss3424]

It was in back to the future part 2 and I will play wild gunman. 😀👍🎮

[@Justin-Hill-1987]

The game mode where Marty McFly scores a "Crack Shot" in Wild Gunman is not real and is made specifically for the film, since four gunmen can not appear in the desert in the retail release of the game...

[@justinmickatavage7838]

You have to use your hands?.. Its a baby's toy.

[@cloudbloom]

TRAITOR! *spins pistol*

[@cyberfennek]

Nintendo Never gives up :)

[@atlekristiansen4975]

If you have to use your hands, it's like a baby's toy...

[@ryandevan2793]

or it could have been just made up for the movie!

[@georgeluyckx1437]

In the first two modes it really doesn’t matter at what you aim. That’s a bit disappointing. It just looks at the trigger time regardless of wether or not you make a hit.

[@BastetFurry]

10:00 ;.;

[@fatonkasolli5806]

Back when video games were cheap.

[@MaxW-er1hm]

Nintendo games were pretty pricey, with inflation accounted for their hardly any different than modern game price