You’ll be spending most of your time trying to stay one step ahead of them, jumping on the chandelier that sways in the typical Mode-7 fashion. One of the more unique battles take place in a saloon where you must defeat a pair of bomb-throwing maniacs know as the Smith Brothers. As you progress on, you’ll need to pay attention to their attack patterns and time your shots accordingly. These upgrades will prove to especially helpful in boss battles.Īs with most arcade style shooters, the first few bosses are fairly simple to defeat. Both items can usually be picked up by into certain taverns/buildings or are sometimes dropped by special bandits once they’ve been killed. The golden sheriff’s badge gives you rapid fire which of course allows you to shoot more enemies onscreen at once. Collecting a silver sheriff’s badge with the dual pistol symbol grants your character double firepower. There’s not a huge variety of power-ups to make use of, but what is available is helpful enough. I found the game to be easier when play as either of the later two bounty hunters. Billy and Steve’s weapons fire quickly but cover a narrow space, whereas Bob and Cormano’s heavier firepower is a little slower, but covers a wider distance. Bob and Cormano make good use of the shotgun. The weapon of choice for Billy and Steve is the pistol. The goal is to take down 8 outlaws spread across 8 stages, collecting a bigger bounty for each boss you put out of commission. Once you’ve selected your hero, you then proceed to shoot all sorts of bandits, enter taverns for weapon upgrades and blow stuff up with the help of dynamite sticks that are tossed your way (in the early stages anyway). The 4 bounty hunters to choose from are Billy, Bob, Steve, and Cormano. Sunset Riders can be best described as the result you get when you crossbreed Contra with the Wild West. The Super NES version, on the other hand, had a more favorable outcome. The Genesis port was pretty lackluster with only two characters to choose from (instead of the original 4), watered down graphics, and a shorter game altogether. What I found surprising about these console ports was how they differed in conveying the presentation found in the arcade version.
It was no surprise that this game would go on to be released on the Sega Genesis and later on the Super NES as well. I’m talking about six-shooters and shot guns, of course. It was a game that allowed up to 4 players to choose a bounty hunter and clean up the bandit-infested towns using that old fashioned brand of justice. It was in that vein that in 1991, Konami released Sunset Riders in the arcade. Those things aside, no western scenario would be complete without an outlaw, a bounty hunter, and a town caught in the middle of the battle between the two characters. That’s actually what I like the most about those types of movies.
When combined, these elements usually make for a nice bar fight somewhere down the line. When I think about the subject of westerns, I usually think of cowboys, whisky, and saloons.