Wild Gunman is a Light Gun Game for arcades created by Nintendo's Gunpei Yokoi in 1974, but most people are much more familiar with its conversion for the Nintendo Entertainment System eleven years later. It's especially notable for having a considerably different arcade mock-up created for Back to the Future Part II's Cafe 80s, where infamously, a child Marty McFly demonstrates his game skills to is dismissive of the game due to requiring the light gun to play, making it a "baby's toy".
The game itself is very simple, only having three game modes: "1 Outlaw", "2 Outlaws", and "Gang", with the object in each being the same. You're about to have a Showdown at High Noon in The Wild West, and you need to be the last one standing against each of your opponent(s). Shoot too early and you get a foul; shoot too late and you're dead. As the mode names suggest, you square off against one or two outlaws in the first two modes, and in the third, you're standing in front of a saloon whose door and windows will randomly open, forcing you to watch and shoot carefully.
It received a Virtual Console port for the Wii U in 2016, and the gunmen themselves appear as the down-B special move for Duck Hunt ever since they were introduced for the fourth Super Smash Bros. game.
This game provides examples of:
- Amusing Injuries: Two of the outlaws don't fall over when shot. One man in a black suit instead sees his hat blown off his bald head, and the other loses his jeans, revealing white boxers. Subverted in "Gang" mode, where they fall over like everyone else (and using other characters' falling animations, to boot).
- Bandito: One of the outlaws is a stout man with a rugged beard, wearing a white poncho and matching sombrero.
- Desert Skull: The saloon's front is decorated with a longhorn's skull.
- Endless Game: Each game mode just keeps going with shorter and shorter timers until you inevitably lose or get bored.
- Exact Time to Failure: You have a timer at the top of the screen which dictates when your opponent(s) will shoot, and another time counting down from 0.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Each outlaw saying "FIRE!!" is accompanied by their eyes flashing, which means you want to see these; it tells you that it's safe to shoot and not foul out. Even the arcade game had this.
- Interactive Movie: The original arcade game, what would properly be called an electro-mechanical game, used motion-picture footage of actors projected onto a screen. Make the shot and the projection changes to the outlaw falling over; lose and it follows through with the initial reel of him winning.
- Limited Animation: Oddly, going by the order used in "1 Outlaw", only your first opponent has a proper east/west walk cycle programmed in; everyone else continues to face you and just shuffles over with minimal leg animation.
- No Name Given: None of the outlaws are named.
- Pac Man Fever: Hilariously, the version seen in Back to the Future Part II is pure fiction, as not even the game's "Gang" mode lets you go up against all five of the outlaws simultaneously (let alone "1 Outlaw" or "2 Outlaws"), and it has no associated "Crack Shot!!" bonus.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: A piece of Fryderyk Chopin's funeral march accompanies the player losing a shoot-out.
- Quick Draw: The original arcade game enforced this, with the gun needing to be kept in the machine's holster until it was time to shoot. The NES obviously has no way of knowing where your Zapper is, so how much you want to abide by this is up to personal preference.
- Scoring Points: Each outlaw is said to have reward money for their death, but it just translates into points, coupled with a bonus for how quickly you shoot them compared to the given time limit.
- Shooting Gallery: The "Gang" mode randomly opens the saloon doors and windows to give you gunmen to shoot.
- Showdown at High Noon: One of the original video game adaptations of it as a concept.
