Mad Dog McCree

Mad Dog McCree
File:Mad Dog McCree cover.jpg
Developer(s)	American Laser Games Her Interactive (iOS)
Publisher(s)	American Laser Games Digital Leisure (iOS)
Platform(s)	Arcade, 3DO, CD-i, DOS, Mac OS, Sega CD, Windows, DVD, Wii, 3DS, iOS
Release	1990
Genre(s)	Shooting game
Mode(s)	Single-player

Mad Dog McCree is the first live-action laserdisc video game released by American Laser Games. It originally appeared as an arcade shooting game in 1990.

It gained a lot of attention for its real-video style, bearing similarities to recent Hollywood westerns. It featured on the 1992 series of GamesMaster as the last challenge of the very first show, and then later in the 1992/1993 series as a celebrity challenge with Josie Lawrence playing. Both contestants were successful in their challenges.

Storyline

The player assumes the first-person role of "the stranger", a nameless individual who rides into a small, peaceful, unnamed town and finds that the mayor's daughter has been kidnapped by a gang of outlaws working for a villain named Mad Dog McCree. He is given a short introduction to the aforementioned girl by an old prospector, and the possibility to go through target practice involving bottles on a fence, and some being tossed in the air and shot by the player; after this, the Prospector fills him in on the situation. The stranger is told that "Mad Dog McCree and his gang have taken over the town" and that both the mayor and his daughter are imprisoned in the gunfighter's hideout, while the sheriff has been locked up in his own jail by the gang. It is at this point that the first enemy appears and attempts to shoot the prospector; like all others, the gang member must be shot to avoid losing a life, one of three.

Mad Dog McCree set the trend for most future American Laser Games releases, driving the action forward by having the player shoot villains, with few other decision-making situations. The action takes the stranger through several locations, including a saloon, where a man named One-Eyed Jack holds the keys to the prison cell holding the sheriff, a bank in the middle of a robbery, a corral and a jail. One must also find a map, hidden inside a mine, to Mad Dog's hideout, reach the hideout by correctly following road signs, free the mayor and his daughter, and confront Mad Dog in a final showdown, all the time eliminating members of the man's posse.

Gameplay

The game is the first of several to use the same simple engine, in which almost all possible actions are performed using the player's six-shooter, controlled by a mouse or light gun in the PC version. The gun is useful for eliminating villains, choosing paths, selecting locations, reloading and shooting cow skulls and spittoons, which temporarily gives the player additional ammunition. Three difficulty levels are available from the beginning.

The main portion of the game is interspersed with several different types of showdowns with random villains, in which the stranger begins with no ammunition and must quickly reload and shoot at the right time, in order to shoot the enemy first. In parts of the game which are not showdowns, reloading can be done an unlimited amount of times and at any time during gameplay. Shooting a bystander or getting hit by a gunfighter results in the loss of one life out of three and is followed by a clip showing an old undertaker commenting on the player's actions.

The arcade edition of the game has been released with four different hardware setups, using a laserdisc player, a 3DO, and a PC-based system. Home versions were released for the Sega CD, PC, CD-i, Mac CD-ROM and 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. Mad Dog McCree was the first in a series of American Laser Games releases to be reissued by Digital Leisure with updated video and sound quality in 2002 for DVD, playable with a standard DVD remote. In the DOS version, two-player support is available. There is also a single save/load slot, which can be used to save and restore the action at any time.

In 2009 the game was released for the Nintendo Wii as part of the Mad Dog McCree Gunslinger Pack. Included in this collection are its sequel Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold and The Last Bounty Hunter. In 2011, it was released for iOS. On June 14th 2012 it will be released on the E-Shop for the Nintendo 3DS

Glitches

In the 3DO edition of the game, when an enemy shoots the player character, the player can pause the game, select "Continue", and the game will jump back to before the enemy arrived. This allows the player a second chance, with the advantage of knowing where the enemy will appear.

In some builds of the arcade game, the laserdisc player was replaced with a customised 3DO, which allowed for more video. However, these new units proved unreliable, as the seek motors in the CD-ROM drive burned out rapidly.

Also, the arcade version has an exploit. If the player holds the light gun upside down, the ammunition will automatically refill every time a round is fired. (The intended way of reloading is to tilt the gun down to the ground.)

Sequel

A sequel was released entitled Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold.

External links

• Mad Dog McCree at MobyGames