Gameplay Today - Because You're Always Gaming

Wild Guns sounds pretty generic but it is one of Natsume's finest titles they ever produced. The action is fast, intense, and over before you can process it all. Subscribing to the Contra school of realism, one bullet does you in.

Wild Guns takes place in a Will Smith esque Wild Wild West setting, a mixture of cowboys and giant mechs. Players take the role of Clint or Annie who play identical aside from their special attacks. Clint sets off dynamite while Annie throws a fire bomb; the attacks have the same effect just different graphical aesthetics.

The beauty of a game like this is how it makes entire generations of light gun games pointless by perfecting the D-Pad cross hair. The camera is always at Clint or Annie's back, and as either character moves left or right so does the cross hair. Since you can't move in three dimensions the up and down buttons serve as cross hair movement.

Players can shoot while moving, although slowly, but the real beauty is the jump button. A double jump and a diving out of the way maneuver can be initiated with simple pressings of the jumping button. There is seemingly no lag to button presses and the game seems more interested in killing you fairly than by error of the jump coding.

Since bigger enemies, specifically robotic enemies telegraph their attacks with animation it gets a Punch Out result and feeling. If the boss of level 1 moves his right arm at all, he will use his flamethrower. His left arm will be his chain gun and both arms signal he will be wildly shooting at you. This kind of pattern is present throughout and never seems to hell-bent on tricking you, letting you dodge the fire at the very last second while looking cool doing it.

With six stages of classic shooting action this is a must buy for Virtual Console owners and likely a game you didn't get to play as a kid. Released at the very end of the SNES' life this title was passed up for Sunset Riders which came out two years prior. For 800 Wii points it’s a steal and try the 2 player mode which can only get confusing if you forget that you’re playing as a dude or a dudette.