Skip to main content

Hogan's Alley: It's no Duck Hunt

I once played Hogan's Alley in a Chuck E. Cheese's (back when it was primarily an arcade). Years later, I sought to buy an NES copy, but never found one. Well, I have finally fulfilled that childhood wish (albeit on Wii U Virtual Console, using the Wii Remote). But after two decades, it was a bit of a letdown.

Hogan's Alley launched alongside fellow "shooting gallery" games Duck Hunt and Wild Gunman. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who found the idea of shooting bad guys on my TV appealing. As in all these early arcade-style games, you can choose between multiple modes. In Game A, you have a certain amount of time (sometimes less than a second!) to shoot the bad guys from a line-up of three. There is always at least one good guy (Lady, Professor, and Police) that, if you shoot, counts as a miss. Ten misses and you're done. Pretty simple, and not especially engaging.

In Game B, you are in the eponymous Hogan's Alley (police shooting range), which includes a gun shop, construction site, and building with four big windows. Carboard cut-outs pop out in certain positions and remain on screen for a shorter or longer period of time. Sometimes two come out almost at the same time. When you finish a complete sweep of the alley, you start over again at a faster speed. After every two rounds, the color palette changes. Ten misses (or hits of innocents!) and you're out.

Game C is shooting cans. They don't sit on a fence but slowly fly through the air. When you shoot a can, it bounces up into the air and then continues arcing downwards. The goal is to get them to the left side of the screen, where there are three slots. The top slot is worth 300 points, the middle 800 points, and the bottom a whopping 5000 points. Once you let ten cans fall out the bottom of the screen, you're done. This mode is surprisingly fun. I quickly got 100,000 points, but it's hard to consistently prevent the occasional can from dropping, inching you ever closer to Game Over.

As cool as Hogan's Alley is, I tired of it more quickly than Duck Hunt. In that game the ducks move around unpredictably. In Hogan's Alley, the positions are fixed. Especially in mode A, the game is all about reflexes: how quickly can you identify whether it's a good guy or a bad guy? Can you do it in less than 0.8 seconds? Duck Hunt, in contrast, is pure shooting. Can you shoot the ducks before they fly away? This is more enjoyable, especially if your reflexes aren't so good. If nothing else, you can shoot at the ducks wildly!

Grade: D+

Linked Reviews
"Unless you see yourself trying to beat your highscores a whole lot, Hogan's Alley really doesn't have a whole lot going for it."
— Marcel van Duyn, Nintendo Life, 5/10

"While not the deepest experience, this is a fine Zapper diversion, which shows off some nice early NES sprites and the early, fun tone of the system."
— Pat Contri, Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the NES Library, 3/5

"Perhaps the most interesting thing you can say about it is that a year after the NES’s mainstream release in the U.S., the FBI opened a target training facility called Hogan’s Alley that closely resembled the game’s Mode B."
— Jeremy Parish, NES Works
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Super Mario Land: A short, oddball entry

Super Mario Land was a Game Boy launch title, but not the pack-in game. That honor went to Tetris. Tetris is an incredible game with perennial appeal, and it propelled the Game Boy's explosive success. Super Mario Land is not as impressive but still fun. Super Mario Land is a bit odd. It doesn't feel like other Mario games. Only four of the classic enemies appear: Bullet Bills, Piranha Plants, Goombas, and Koopa Troopas. Even the koopas behave differently: their shells can't be kicked and instead explode like bombs. Most of the enemies are assorted creatures, like spiders, robots, ghosts, and Moai heads. The Fighter Flies from the original Mario Bros. arcade game also appear. The Super Mushroom, coins, and Super Star appear, as well as question blocks. The Fire Flower, however, has been replaced by a similar flower power-up. It lets Mario throw a bouncing ball. It ricochets off walls like an old screen saver, and only one can be on screen at a time. Weird! Extra-life mushr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dragon Buster: It's a bust

On paper, Dragon Buster sounds like a great Japanese arcade game: a side-scrolling dungeon crawler in which you (a boy named Clovis) slay monsters and wizards and collect potions, jewels, scrolls, and other treasure. But when I actually played it, I was disappointed. The stages (dungeons) are made up of hallways, monster rooms, elevators, and a few drops and ledges. Smaller enemies roam the hallways, but each room contains a big monster to fight, such as a Golem or the hilariously-misnamed Bishop, who is an ax-wielding fighting-man. When you defeat it, you collect an item, then continue on your way. In a certain room, defeating the monster will produce an exit instead. Some of the stages are labyrinthine. There are a total of twelve worlds (maps), and you have some choice of which dungeons to do. In the last dungeon of each map, you have to fight a fire-breathing Dragon. Each one has a different weak point that flashes red. The number of dungeons on each map varies greatly, from just o...
1 comment
Read more

The Legend of the Mystical Ninja: A whimsical adventure in Japan

Growing up, I played The Legend of the Mystical Ninja at my best friend's house (though I was bad at it), and I had been looking forward to trying it again. It's an unusual, fun adventure game. I recently learned that in Japan Legend of the Mystical Ninja was preceded by three Famicom games and followed by three more Super Famicom games, none of which were localized for the West! The Japanese name of the series is Go for It, Goemon! It's based on a 1980 Japanese arcade game called Mr. Goemon. The emulation community put out fan translations of the Famicom games between 2009 and 2017. Surprisingly, no translations of the Super Famicom games existed until 2020, all three created by the same people . The series takes place in early-modern Japan. It has a light-hearted anime aesthetic. The titular character is a spiky-haired kid named Goemon. If a second player joins the simultaneous action (highly recommended), Goemon is assisted by an older, overweight ninja named Ebisumaru. ...
Post a Comment
Read more