#4: Boot Hill (1977, Midway)

So we talked about Pong not long ago. One of the things that came up during our discussion of that masterpiece was how the original arcade version lacked an AI. You played with someone else or, well, you won. It wouldn't be very fulfilling, but you'd win. Boot Hill, a Midway changed all that in 1977. Now if you didn't have any competition you could play against the computer. Who would have thought?

Essentially this is Pong with cowboys. You've got a pistol, a fancy cowboy hat and a mission: fill the other guy full of lead. One shot is all it takes, but you only get six bullets per round. If you exhaust your supply before your opponent does, you don't have any choice but to dodge and pray. If you both run out of bullets the round is a draw and play restarts. Bullets will ricochet off the top and bottom of the screen and there's also obstacles strewn about that can be used for cover. Gears of War it ain't, but I wasn't expecting even this level of depth from a game made in 1977.

The version of Boot Hill I played for this entry was emulated in MAME. In the screenshots you'll notice that there's no background - the original game used mirrors to project the action onto a drawn overlay of a frontier town. Sadly we'll have to miss out on this. Hopefully nobody's too heartbroken!