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#14 Gunfighter (US: Showdown in 2100 A.D.)
- Phillips Videopac G7000 (US: Magnavox Odyssey2)
- 1979
- Arcade Shooter
- Magnavox
Though not really a game that should be in a list containing the 50 best video-games ever made, I'm including it because of it's monumental importance to my early gaming life. In fact, the first five games in my list have such an importance, and are listed because they deserve to be mentioned. No doubt, without each of these five games, I wouldn't have been here today. There's a sixth game that has this importance, but that game is further down the list and actually does deserve to genuinely be among the greatest games ever made. Yet, I did still have a lot of fun with this simple game.
'#14:Gunfighter', as games were numbered back then and developed in-house by console makers, is an arcade shooter that puts two players opposite each other and has them try to shoot the other player. Each round each player gets six bullets, but the trees in between each player reflect them. Players can move up and down to dodge the opponents fire and to get into position to shoot themselves.
As I mentioned this game is important to me, because it is one of the first games I ever played, and likely the first I played in my own house. I played it on my mother's old 2nd Generation video-game system; Videopac G7000 by Phillips, known as the Magnavox Odyssey2 outside Europe. Interestingly, due to the primitive graphics, the concept for both versions was totally different due to different names and box-arts. Europeans thought they were dueling as cowboys in the Wild West, while Americans thought they were robots in the future. Old games like these are surprisingly fun even today, because of their simplicity. Like the Atari 2600, the G7000 controller only had one button. In this game, that button made your character shoot. What more do you need?
