Shooting Gallery

April 18, 2008 3:58 PM

OldArcadeGameFilter: I'm trying to find a video/arcade game that my mom used to love back in the mid-1980s.

About twice I year I used to take my 60-something mom to the Niagara Falls, Canada, area to visit friends/relatives and to just relax for a few days and get her away from household chores. One of her favorite things to do was to go the the video arcade at Maple Leaf Village. She particularly enjoyed a game which was technically a video game (I guess) since it employed a large screen (sort of like a big screen TV). It was a shooting gallery-type game, though, and instead of a joystick or similar control, the player held a toy rifle and aimed and shot at the animated characters on the screen. The graphics were not quite as crude as "Boot Hill," but not as sophisticated as, say, "Paper Boy." The game consisted of various types of animated creatures (some of which were bird-like) wandering across the screen. You shot at them. If you missed, a graphic saying either "Missed, turkey!" or "Missed again, stupid!" would momentarily pop up. The character worth the most points was a road runner, which dashed across the screen quickly (much like the submarine in "Sea Wolf"). At the end of the game, a MIDI file of "The Party's Over' played, unless you'd achieved a high score, in which case it would play "A-Hunting We Will Go."

Does this game ring any sort of bells with the hive mind?

posted by Oriole Adams to sports, hobbies, & recreation (9 answers total)

Is it this arcade game?
posted by iconomy at 4:09 PM on April 18, 2008

(Also called Desert Gun)
posted by iconomy at 4:17 PM on April 18, 2008

Was it one where you stood a little ways back from the machine at sort of a bench where the rifles were? Could it be Turkey Shoot from Williams in 1984?
posted by legotech at 4:34 PM on April 18, 2008

I'm an idiot... http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6192848425 is the one I was thinking about. Tho it could be turkey shoot too :) Try The killer list of video games
posted by legotech at 4:39 PM on April 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

KLOV: Turkey Shoot.
posted by user92371 at 4:40 PM on April 18, 2008

Yes - if it was that game with the HUGE screen, then my guess is Shoot Away also.
posted by jabberjaw at 4:53 PM on April 18, 2008

looks like iconomy was right...here's screen shots of "desert Gun" at KLOV with the "Missed again, dummy" message

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7562
posted by cosmicbandito at 5:38 PM on April 18, 2008

Ahh! My guess was going to be Duck Hunt, and looking at that game, it sure does look similar. :)
posted by limeonaire at 6:13 PM on April 18, 2008

It seems to me that you stood away and shot at a big screen, but the creatures on Desert Gun do look like the correct game (I remember Mom referring to one of the critters as a "pie on legs.") I'm pretty sure Desert Gun is the one. Thanks so much for the help!
posted by Oriole Adams at 9:23 PM on April 18, 2008