#4 Boot Hill

Released: 1977 - Arcade                             

Developer: Midway
Played: 30th January 2013 - MAME Emulator/ Rom

Boot Hill is the arcade sequel to gunfight, developed by Midway games, it featured 2 arcade sticks, one to control the player and the other to point the gun, think of it as the predecessor to the dual thumbstick controller and and FPS game. The key to Boot Hill's success is unfortunately its arcade cabinet, it holds all the cards here and as you can see from the screens of my play through below something is a bit off...

In the original cabinet there was a mirror effect and the monochrome display was projected over a background showing the titular Boot Hill. Players take on each other in a wild west shoot out dodging the carts and cacti, bouncing bullets off the sides of the screen to take out your opposite cowboy, don't worry though if you have no friends you can play against the computer!
It's charm is the limited but effective gameplay, you get six bullets and that's it, go out guns blazing and you may waste them, best to try dodge and pick off your target with a well placed shot around a cactus. Though when you do die its not all sorrow as you get to hear a pretty funeral march as your corpse evaporates and reforms as a tombstone on boothill.

Overall its not a bad little title, basically its like pong but instead of paddles there's two cowboys and instead of balls there's bullets and instead of hitting the ball you need to miss everything coming at you... In fact its nothing like pong. Definitely lacking when you have no original arcade unit to play it on but its a precursor for games to come such as Smash TV and even the newer Hotline Miami which use a similar double control system.

Play it here:

MAME Emulator - http://mamedev.org/

*I don't tell you where to get ROMS from, just to make sure i'm covered on legal fronts.