Hogan's Alley
REDISCOVER RETRO GAMING - CLASSIC 8-BIT NINTENDO NES
NINTENDO NES
Game Title:Hogan's Alley
System:Nintendo NES
Players:1 Player
Genre:Shooter
Developer(s):Nintendo
Release Date(s):1984 - JAP
1985 - US 1987 - EU |
Hogan's Alley is a 1984 video game by Nintendo. It was one of the first games to use a light gun as an input device. The game presents players with "cardboard cut-outs" of villains and innocent civilians. The player must shoot the villains and spare the innocent ones.
The premise of Hogan's Alley is fairly simple. You are some sort of police officer or soldier doing shooting practice, with cardboard cutouts of villains and innocent civilians repeatedly appearing. All you have to do is shoot the correct targets, again and again, until you mess up too many times or you're too slow. As you move on you will be given less time to react, so you're bound to fail sooner or later, and that's how the game goes.
The game has a few different game modes on offer: Game A is the most basic and presents you with a simple shooting gallery. Three cutouts will slowly come out at a time, and will then all spin around to reveal their images at the same time. Quickly shoot the right targets before the time runs out, without shooting any civilians. In Game B you're in an actual outdoor training ground, with fake buildings and all. In this mode targets will only appear one at a time, though you typically have less time to react, some targets will appear with their image already revealed before they stop moving, so you have to be ready to fire at all times. Finally in Game C, also known as Trick Shot is completely different from the other two, and comparatively simpler. In this mode you'll again only see one screen, with three openings on the left side, each is marked with a point value, the highest being at the bottom. Tin cans will start to fly in from the right and you simply have to shoot them in the air to bounce them over towards the openings on the left to receive points, the number of which depends on which one they fly into. If you drop too many off the bottom of the screen it's game over!. And the Verdict is...
Hogan's Alley really doesn't have a whole lot going for it. All 3 of the modes offer little variation, as while you might think the scrolling in Game B seems interesting the level starts to repeat far quicker than you might imagine. It also becomes essentially impossible to survive in Hogan's Alley after a certain point as you would need inhuman reflexes to visually identify the targets and react quickly enough, but i suppose the game has to end somehow right? And quite frankly, your glad when it is!. 15 mins good playing time, tops! |