Wild Western

Wild Western is a vertical scrolling shooter arcade game which was released by Taito Corporation in 1982; it runs upon the company's SJ System hardware, and the player must use an 8-way joystick to take control for a sheriff on horseback (whose objective is to protect a steam-hauled train which runs alongside him in the centre of the screen, while avoiding contact with cacti, rocks, shots from bandits who run alongside the train on the screen's left side and the train itself), as well as a rotary controller with a button to make him fire shots from his gun at the aforementioned bandits and a second button to make him jump. When a bandit jumps onto the train, the sheriff must do the same in order to fire a shot at him - however, the sheriff must be running parallel with the train at a safe distance before the player can press the Jump Button to board it (and when he has to return to his horse, the player has to wait for it to run alongside the train and time a jump so the sheriff can remount it). While riding the train, the player must also press the Jump Button to duck under an outstretched waterpipe when the train passes a water tank; furthermore, after clearing a stage, the sheriff will be given an opportunity to improve his aim, by firing a shot at a coin that his horse tosses into the air (the bonus he receives will be doubled if he hits it, but the horse will laugh at him if he misses). Finally, if three bandits jump onto the train in any stage, the game immediately ends regardless of how many lives the player has remaining - and if the "High Score Table" dip switch has been set to "Yes" (which it is by default) the player will be able to enter their name (up to five characters) if they scored more than 10000 points. In 1983 the game was converted for the Fujitsu FM-7, NEC PC-8801 and Sharp X1; furthermore, in 2005 and 2006, the inceptive version was recreated in Taito Memories Gekan and Taito Legends 2, and on June 20, 2019, it got rereleased as a part of Hamster Corporation's Arcade Archives series.