Wild Guns

"Annie: Let's go, Clint!

Clint: Okay, Annie!"

Wild Guns is a fixed-view Third-Person Shooter developed by Natsume for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, released in Japan in 1994 and the United States a year later. A PAL version was published by Titus software a year after that. If you've played Cabal, Blood Bros., or Nam 1975, you'll be familiar with the concept, as this sort of game is rather rare and hard to describe. Essentially, your character is standing in the foreground shooting at enemies in the background, and the directional pad controls both lateral movement and the position of the on-screen crossshair.

The rather thin premise is as follows. Frontier settler Annie's family was attacked and a number of them were killed by a major bandit lord and his cronies. Annie enlists the aid of Bounty Hunter Clint in order to track down said bandit lord and exact her revenge. Standard western plot, no? Well, here's the twist. It's a Western with futuristic tech! IN SPACE! Annie and Clint are armed with automatic weapons, and the bandit lord and his men also have automatics, in addition to turret-equipped buggies, robotic gunmen, floating gun drones, flamethrowing tanks and Humongous Mecha that possess the power of Gatling Good.

The game is fast-paced, with much Fake Difficulty averted by means of a little text bubble appearing above your character's head that says "Look Out!" when an enemy projectile is headed your way, giving you the oppportunity to jump or dodge out of the way. The game features a range of weapons and power-ups, detailed, destructible environments and cool bosses, and an original soundtrack.

Wild Guns provides examples of

 * Action Girl: Annie, a woman as beautiful as she is deadly, one of the two playable characters. She manages to kick major ass and perform various acrobatic feats whilst wearing a period dress and hat.
 * Airborne Mook: There are mooks with hang gliders. Also, many hovering robotic drones appear throughout the levels.
 * Attack Drone: Several Mooks are these.
 * Attack Its Weak Point: All of the large-sized bosses have a weakpoint, even if it's usually small.
 * Badass Normal: The player characters, who are technically normal humans. The final boss is one too- he can take more damage than a Humongous Mecha!
 * Bottomless Magazines
 * Climactic Music: The boss music.
 * Cool Train: One of the bosses is a hovering locomotive with lots of gun turrets.
 * Cores and Turrets Boss
 * Cranial Processing Unit: Played straight with the first boss, as well as the crab boss. Their weak points are located in their head.
 * Degraded Boss: The trenchcoat-wearing cowboy robot minibosses appear in the final stage as a regular Mook and take a few hits to die.
 * Depth Perplexion: Seen particularly in the boss battle against the jetpack guy. The dynamite you pick up from the boss is able to affect him as well as the horse-riding Mooks who are much further behind.
 * Die, Chair, Die!: Most of the environments are destructible. Destroying things like tables can reward you with power-ups.
 * Divergent Character Evolution: Annie and Clint pretty much play the same, except that Clint's dodge roll goes a longer distance while Annie's directional jump takes her further.
 * Dodge the Bullet: You must quickly decide whether to do this or shoot them down to build up your Super Mode.
 * Do Not Run with a Gun: You cannot run and shoot at the same time, although you can dodge roll while shooting.
 * Double Jump: Useful for evading incoming fire.
 * Dual Boss: The second-to-last boss is a pair of gun-toting, sombrero-wearing Humongous Mecha.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: Seriously, everything on the screen that isn't you is trying to kill you.
 * Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Dynamite, which can be picked up off the ground and thrown back at enemies.
 * Expy: Clint, a man as dangerous as he is unshaven, is obviously based on Clint Eastwood's various western characters, most likely The Man With No Name from the Dollars Trilogy. Annie is likely based on the real life female sharpshooter Annie Oakley.
 * Fire-Breathing Weapon: One of the bosses is a massive flamethrower-equipped tank.
 * Flunky Boss: The final boss. Some of the others too- like the jetpack guy, the fly-bit that spawns more fly-bots, and the snake thing.
 * For Massive Damage: Best way to get the high scores.
 * Gatling Good: There's enough Gatling Good to go around between you and your enemies.
 * Giant Enemy Crab: One of the bosses.
 * Helpful Mook: Anything that throws dynamite at you- you can pick up the dynamite, and either throw it back or throw it at a stronger enemy.
 * Humongous Mecha: Several bosses, most notably the gatling-gun equipped boss of the first level, Carson City. He is at least twice as tall as the building on which you fight him.
 * Impractically Fancy Outfit: Clint has the standard poncho-and-cowboy-hat arrangement, but Annie has a fully-frocked ankle-length "high-class" dress and frilly hat. Doesn't slow her down at all, and doesn't even tear.
 * Instant Death Bullet: It takes one bullet to kill you, and if you get shot, you immediately collapse.
 * Jet Pack: Some of the bad guys have one.
 * Killer Robot: Several of them. They usually take a long time to kill.
 * Limit Break: The Vulcan gun, which does extra damage, has a wide area of effect, and makes you temporarily invincible. You get it by shooting enemy bullets until you fill up the green meter at the bottom of the screen.
 * Locomotive Level: Armoured Train.
 * Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: A few bandits in the ammunition depot have riot shields, protecting them from your attacks unless they peak out to fire at you.
 * Made of Explodium: EVERYTHING.
 * More Dakka: There is an incredible amount of firepower on screen at any one time, both from you and your enemies. You should at all times attempt to grab weapon power-ups.
 * Mecha-Mooks: Many, interspersed with human bandits.
 * Mechanical Horse: What few bandits aren't riding buggies are riding these.
 * Mook Maker: The second Mini Boss of Desolation Canyon is this.
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Robot Cowboys with gatling guns...
 * One-Man Army: Both Annie and Clint will mow down hundreds upon hundreds of Mooks during the course of the game.
 * One-Hit-Point Wonder: Annie and Clint. Hell, even the first few Mooks you fight can take at least two.
 * Opera Gloves: Annie
 * Painfully-Slow Projectile: Slow enough to jump out of the way or shoot them out of the air.
 * Perma-Stubble: Clint.
 * Pimped-Out Dress: Annie
 * Pinball Scoring
 * Pink Means Feminine: Annie
 * Pistol Whip: You can do this if a Mook gets too close.
 * Poison Mushroom: The pea shooter, which deals no damage.
 * Power Glows: When the Vulcan gun is activated, a golden glow flashes over your character.
 * Power-Up: Upgraded guns include a grenade launcher, a shotgun, a machine gun, and the Vulcan gun.
 * Rule of Cool: Given the premise, you had better believe it.
 * Scenery Gorn: The game's detailed, colorful levels get shot to pieces.
 * Scoring Points
 * She's Got Legs: Despite Annie having an old style dress, it's slit so that her legs show when she runs and leaps.
 * Shoot the Bullet: Doing this repeatedly fills up a Limit Break gauge, which turns you temporarily invincible and gives you an awesome weapon.
 * Shout-Out: Both the heroes' names are references, to Clint Eastwood and Annie Oakley.
 * Smart Bomb: Wouldn't be an old-school shooter if you didn't get these.
 * Spider Sense: Your character knows when bullets are headed towards him/her, and informs you with a text bubble that says look out! giving you the chance to dodge.
 * Stuff Blowing Up: Regularly, complete with Exploding Barrels.
 * Super Mode: Shoot down enough incoming enemy bullets, and you temporarily gain the use of the game's most powerful weapon: The Vulcan Cannon.
 * Tank Goodness: See the Kill It with Fire entry above.
 * Timed Mission: There's a timer that counts down, and goes down even faster when you kill a Mook. Unlike many games, you want the timer to go down, as the boss will appear once it does.
 * Unnecessary Combat Roll: Averted, a roll confers invulnerability to all forms of damage, for both you and the enemy. Taken to an extreme since you can roll through a jet of flame.
 * Weaponized Car: You fight these whilst riding on a train.