Mad Dog McCree

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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 (see 1990 in video gaming). It gained a lot of attention for its real-video style, bearing similarities to recent Hollywood westerns. It is also arguably the shortest release by the company, as well as the simplest, with mostly static action and little music. The game has been released in three different versions, using a laserdisc player, a 3DO and, more recently, a PC-based system to provide the video. Conversions were released for the Sega CD, PC and 3DO, and even a version that could be played on a DVD player using a DVD remote controller. Mad Dog McCree was the first in a series of American Laser Games releases to be reissued by Digital Leisure with updated video, sound and gameplay, among others, in 2002 (see 2002 in video gaming). The game was also mentioned in the essay Mall of America, which can be found in the Norton Reader.

[edit] 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 and the possibility to go through target practice involving bottles on a fence; after this, an old prospector runs out to meet him on a dirt road in the middle of town, filling 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.

[edit] 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.

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.

In the DOS version, two-player support is available, and there are three difficulty levels. There is also a single save/load slot, which can be used to save and restore the action at any time.

[edit] Glitches

Many players found that the 3DO edition of the game was easy to cheat. Whenever an enemy popped up and shot the player too quickly, the player could just as easily pause the game, select "Continue", and find that the game would jump back a couple seconds in the video before the enemy arrived. This would allow the player a second chance, who would then be prepared for the enemy to appear in the same spot as before and effortlessly take him out.

Later versions of the arcade game weren't without their problems either. In some builds, 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 had an exploit. You could hold the light gun upside down and your ammunition would automatically refill itself every time you fired a round (rather than the "correct" way of tilting the gun down to the ground to reload, which left you vulnerable for a brief period of time).