Computer Graphics Memory Disk Space
Minimum 286/16 VGA 512K 360 bytes
Max/Rec. 386/16
Control: Mouse required
Sound: Sound Blaster compatible
Notes: Need CD-ROM with 150 K/sec sustained read, 380 ms seek
Reviewed version 1.03a on: 486/66, ATI GU Pro, Gravis Ultrasound,
NEC 3xi CD-ROM, Logitech mouse
Reviewer recommends: 386/16, Sound Blaster compatible
You may have already seen one of the MAD DOG McCREE arcade games - it's something like DRAGON'S LAIR, but done with live action video recorded on laser disk, and you use a gun to shoot people rather than move Dirk around. If you're too slow, you get shot, and if you're too trigger happy you shoot an innocent bystander. It was a very popular game and is quite fun to play.
Funsation has taken that game and converted it for the PC. This is one of the new slew of CD-ROM only games. You can't buy it on floppy.
That low down, dirty sidewinder Mad Dog McCree and his gang have invaded the sleepy western town of... ummm... well, we don't know but it probably has a picturesque name like Cactus Junction or Minos. Anyhow, he's kidnapped the Mayor and his daughter and taken them to his hideout, that rat! You're the stranger in town, and as specified in Section 4, paragraph 3 of the Mysterious Stranger Code, you are obligated to save the town. First you need to rescue the Sheriff and find the hideout. And Mad Dog's gang doesn't like people making trouble...
The game interface is much like the arcade version - simple and easy to use. The majority of the screen contains the video window, where all the action takes place. On the left of the screen is an indication of how many shots and lives you have left and a menu box (literally!). On the bottom is an American Laser Games logo.
You use your mouse to move a gun around the screen. When the gun is on the video window it points into the screen. Press the left button to fire. Bang! When you want to reload, you need to move the gun to the bottom of the screen and push the right mouse button.
The video window contains all live action - Mad Doc McCree wasn't drawn, they took actors, dressed them up in period clothes, dropped them western scenery, then filmed the game. You may be walking down the street, for instance (the camera following your point of view as the buildings go past), when a horse rides past and the desperado riding him tries to shoot you. It's a real horse, and there's a real actor on the horse. If he succeeds, he rides off. If you shoot him first, the game cuts to a scene of him falling off the horse to the ground.
Generally, when you're facing an enemy you have a set amount of time before they kill you, which will be heralded by a big puff of smoke from their gun. Then it's off to the mortuary with you.
If you see a cow skull or spittoon, shoot it for bonuses. Hit one cow skull, for instance, and your Colt .44 six-shooter becomes a (cough) nine- shooter. Hit another and you've got a (COUGH HACK) twelve-shooter. Well, sometimes you have to sacrifice realism to game play.
The live video and sound really make the game. Like THE 7TH GUEST, all the actors are overacting horribly, and the voices are just so stereotypical. But it works - you don't miss anything no matter how small your screen, and it gives you that added feel of being in a bad spaghetti western. The old guy who plays the obligatory grizzled old prospector is a ham and a half, but that just adds to the fun.
Mad Dog is basically just a shooting gallery game, but having the bad guy actually run on screen with a day's worth of beard, brandishing his guns and leering is just much more involving than having a crude drawing slowly raise up in a window. There are totally gratuitous scenes of people you've just shot dying spectacularly - there's no blood anywhere in the game, but that guy on the roof might do an impressive twist as he plummets through the air towards the ground in a sudden closeup. And on the other shoe, if you're a mite too slow on the trigger and a bad guy sends you to Boot Hill, they'll often laugh and snigger about it.
You're not supposed to get killed or kill innocent people, you're off to see the undertaker, who has a great way with words. "That wuz a good man you just shot. Emphasis on the 'wuz'!"
The first thing you might notice if you've seen the Mad Dog arcade machine is that the graphics are... different. Oh, all the scenes are there but they're not the beautifully crisp laser disk scenes. This stems from two PC hardware limitations.
First, everything has to be reduced to a 256-color palette that your run of the mill VGA card can handle. They did a pretty good job of this, I thought, though you can definitely see the palette effects in clouds of smoke and colors that have a sparse selection: dark brown next to dark olive brown is a jarring contrast.
Second, the PC CD-ROM is a bottleneck. Your basic CD-ROM can transfer 150 thousand bytes of data a second. That sounds like a lot, but it's nowhere near fast enough for almost full screen full-motion video like Mad Dog uses. So they used what I thought is actually a pretty slick way of handling the video.
They ran the Mad Dog video through a program which analyzed the total number of pixels (dots) that change from one frame to the next. When this number is too big, they go to larger dots - you've probably seen the mosaic effect on some commercials or identity blurring devices which turns an area of the screen into large blocks where each block is the average color of all the smaller dots within the block. So in Mad Dog, when everything on screen (the background) is moving quickly, everything looks blocky. When things settle down, they go back and fill in the rest of the block so that we get full detail. So what you'll see is that fast moving video looks chunky, but that after a few seconds everything looks pretty good.
An intriguing solution, and one that lets Mad Dog play on a minimal system (386/16 with single speed CD-ROM). However, the effect is somewhat jarring at times, and I really wish they'd also provided video data that was processed with faster speed CD-ROMs in mind. There's almost 500 megabytes of free space on the CD-ROM, plenty of room for them to place processed video for double and/or triple speed CD-ROMs. It seems like it'd be a matter of running the video through again with higher thresholds and then just reading from the right file at run-time. Oh well.
There's no question that Mad Dog is fun to play. I've seen enough people get hooked on it. The concept is simple (if someone pulls a gun on you, shoot them), and the implementation is pretty faithful to the arcade game.
The last is also its weakness, however. There are three levels of difficulty: Deputy, Sheriff, and U.S. Marshall. By default, it starts on Deputy. I think this is a bad idea, since you'll finish the game too quickly. In the arcade version, "Continue" means inserting another quarter. On the PC version, "Continue" means clicking the mouse button. You have an infinite number of continuations. Most people seem to beat the game in a day or two, and once you've done that the game never really changes. Sure, you can try the different paths (most of which involve you getting killed), but you've solved the game already. If you go back and play with a higher difficulty, it's the same game but with bad guys who draw faster. One solution is to start with a harder difficulty. Another solution is to not use Continues, but how many of you have that much willpower?
Also, the game has lots of guaranteed deaths. These are places where you are _going_ to die unless you've seen that scene before. In one scene, for instance, you shoot two bad guys. Then there's a puff of smoke from a small window and you're dead. The next time you know enough to shoot at the window and kill the Invisible Man before he shoots you. This is a common strategy that the game uses to extend playing time, and there is a minimal plot that you have to reconstruct to know where to go next, but once you know the tricks you know the tricks.
So don't expect weeks of solitary fun from this game. On the other hand, it's a complete blast to play the first one or two times through. Nobody I've seen play it has failed to show the first signs of obsessive compulsive behavior. So it makes a great game to watch your friends (or not-so-bitter enemies if you lack the former) play and an excellent group/party type game.
This review is Copyright (C) 1994 by Ron Dippold for Game Bytes Magazine. All rights reserved.