So now that Red Dead Redemption is out everyone is saying “What took them so long to make a cowboy game?” and sighing very loudly. I’m sure it’s very good in it’s own way but I don’t hold out much hope for it myself, mainly because it’s a Rockstar game and so will inevitably feature a blocky man walking very slowly around a needlessly large field while the same three NPC’s constantly fade in and out of his range of vision. That’s when you aren’t attempting to complete the game crippling difficult mission that always marks the halfway points of the Grand theft auto games. More importantly the quintessential western game came out in 1993. Ladies and gentleman I present Sunset Riders.
Sunset Riders is essentially a Contra/Probotector clone with high levels or ‘rootin tootin, fancy shootin’ and the kind of amazing racial stereotyping that only the Japanese don’t find offensive. Players are given a choice of four characters, none of them appear particularly heterosexual in this post brokeback mountain world but at the time Graham Norton had yet to invent homosexuality so no one bothered to mention it. That said it certainly passes the time to imagine the character select screen as a fetish club where you are trying to find a young cowboy for a night of rodeo fun. So which hoe down hero can ride all night and which has nothing but a dusty trail? Which Rodeo Romeo has a full chamber and who is just firing blanks? Which six shooting superstar has a life destroying STD? It’s time to play the cowboy selection game!
Billy – Despite his best efforts to look straight (brown hair, guns, blue jeans) his pink top is giving away all his secrets. Billy is a butch man whose two peacemakers give him a speed advantage but mean he doesn’t quite get the same power. Billy is ideal as a first time choice but more experienced players are probably going to want something a bit more forceful.
Bob – He may look like a palette swap of Billy but trust me with his Blonde hair and green outfit Bob isn’t turning anyone away. A confident man who knows exactly what he’s doing and isn’t afraid to tell the world! He might me using the same pistols as Billy but as good cowboy knows it’s not the equipment if’s the way you use it.
Steve – With his green outfit and blonde mullet young Steve is obviously obsessed with Bob. His youth and vigour are in his favour as he sprays everywhere at once with his large shotgun. For all his enthusiasm his shots can be a bit more tentative than the older cowboys and some might say his sheer power is rather over egging the pudding. It’s sometimes fun to play with Steve but his lack of maturity means he isn’t taken seriously as a long term prospect.
Cormano – The first stereotype you will encounter but not necessarily the most outrageous. With his poncho and sombrero Cormano is the quintessential Mexan. Like all foreigners he is hiding a secret and that is the size of the shotgun under his garments. A self assured powerful man with no need for words Cormano is always the classy choice. Unfortunately being a Mexan he more than likely has whatever new animal related decease is doing the rounds at the minute. (i.e. Aryan Flu, Pig Poorly, Randolph AIDS.)
With that ordeal out of the way you are free to mince around the levels which involve shooting absolutely everyone you see, prancing around on the backs of bison and trying to claim the reward on the end of level boss. Some sections even involve being on a horse, these are impossible due horses being naturally predisposed to being shot in the legs by bandits. Still the thought was there. Even where free from the huge liability of the horse there can be no denying that Sunset Riders is a difficult game. The game takes a semi-realistic approach to gunplay in that if you are hit by a bullet you immediately die, thankfully the bullets are huge flashing globes which move at speeds at least perceptible to the human eye. To tell the truth I don’t think many gunfighters were able to avoid the kiss of hot lead by jumping nimbly over the bullet, but it would be certainly be worth a try. In a further simulacrum of real life wealthy players would be able to purchase new lives (well in the arcade version anyway) whears the poor with only one 50p to their name would be forced to rely on the NHS. They should call that the National Hopeless service, my uncle went in with a broken toe and when he came out he was infected with the T-Virus. Trust me when you come home one day and Uncle Pete is chomping Granddads’ leg it’s a real shocker. Thankfully the home console versions of the games didn’t force you to shove 20p pieces into the cartridge and you were free to set yourself up to 9 continues which should be more than enough to complete the game on easy. If like me you are inept then you can always not play it on an emulator, buy the arcade cabinet and then set the cabinet to free play. An extreme measure? Maybe but it’s definitely worth it. With an amazing soundtrack which can’t help but make you want to shoot things, people shouting “wahoo” on the title screen, lots and lots of old west prostitutes and a special fluttery wanted posted effect Sunset Riders has a lot going for it and I haven’t even mentioned the boss battles.
While there’s nothing that different in the way you actually fight the end of level bosses the characterisation of each bad guy can easily match up to any of the Metal Gear games. Who needs Psycho Mantis when you could be duelling against Simon Greedwell the overweight land baron who quips “It’s time to pay” before shooting at you from the presumed safety of his balcony. How about Sir Richard Rose the toffee nosed final boss who cheats by keeping a boiler door up his vest a-la Back to the future part 3? Best of all though is chief Scalp-em/WigWam (depending on whether or not you are playing the SNES version) the Indian chief who is essentially a more dangerous version of Little Plum from the Beano. Presumably Konami still holds the rights to these characters so would it really be too much to ask to have them crop up against Solid Snake some time in the future? I’m sure that constant Money related puns over the codec would never get tiresome. “Hey Snake you’re a credit to the organisation.”
Sunset Riders makes a fantastic antidote to the current crop of po-faced-greyscale-emergent game play-sandbox-call of duty-licensed music-microtransaction style nonsense that everyone loves at the minute so for that reason I would give it three fistfuls of dollars out of a maverick annual.
Bonus feature
Top 5 Cowboy Games
1. Sunset Riders – Flamboyant men in chaps shooting each other and asking to be buried with their money.
2. Samurai Western – Flamboyant men in chaps try to shoot a samurai who proceeds to cut them all to bits. Like all the best games it features a robot cowboy and the ability to customise your character by placing animals on their shoulders.
3. Wild Arms 2 – The only good Wild Arms games but also the best RPG to not feature the words ‘Persona’ or ‘Final’ in it’s title. Innovative features include not having a stupidly large 3D environment to explore, not having a real time active battle system and not giving the characters really irritating voices.
4. God Hand – Only the first level may actually bear any resemblance to the old west but any game where you can uppercut a clown into the moon has to make every list ever made.
5. Custer’s Last Stand – She was asking for it.
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