When I first started my Super Nintendo 150 Reviews series I had a whole bunch of rules, the main two were that I was only going to review games where I owned the actual cartridge, and I was going to review them on actual hardware. I stuck by these 2 rules firmly for the entire 150 reviews but then as I came up to my 152nd review I decided I was going to loosen up a little, I had achieved my objective after all so why not relax a little bit. So for my 152nd Review I used the Everdrive my wonderful Fiancee had gotten me for Christmas and I reviewed an unfinished prototype game using the Everdrive to play it on actual real hardware. After this I proceeded to review a few more unreleased games but then I decided hey why don't I review some of the games I always wanted to review but couldn't either find, afford or ones where I just couldn't justify spending like £80 just to review a game.
It was at this point that I decided that I wanted to take a good long look at the game Sunset Riders. What drove me towards this game was the fact I had found some tickets to get half price admission to The American Adventure theme park in the bottom of a bag while doing a spot of deep cleaning, the weird thing about this is that The American Adventure closed years ago. This got me to thinking about the times when I would go there as a very young kid in jeans, a wrangler jacket with a Sheriffs star on it, a gun belt around my waist carrying a set of matching plastic pistols and a white cowboy hat. This was the start of me thinking that cowboys were perhaps the greatest thing ever which was only proven even more true when I was shown the films of the Duke AKA John Wayne, and then I saw the Young Guns films which made me want to be an outlaw like Billy the Kid. It was when I was almost at cowboy fever pitch that the MegaDrive/Genesis version of Young Guns dropped into my life courtesy of Santa Clause one fine Christmas morning, I have to give my parents a huge shout out here not only did they always keep the magic of Christmas alive but they always did there best to makes sure that I could darn good presents not just by spending money but also by listening to what I liked and making very good decisions.
I have to admit that I don't actually remember when I got the Super Nintendo version but I do remember being surprised as all heck when I loaded it up and on the title screen you could see four heroes on horseback and then when I pressed the start button and I had a choice between Steve, Billy, Bob and Cormano I just felt absolutely spoiled for choice. Bob became my go to character, it was a mix between me really liking the shotgun weapons spread and the novelty of him not having been in my MegaDrive version.
So if you haven't played Sunset Riders it is basically a scrolling shooter game where you move largely from left to right making your way through the level to reach your bounty, an individual you have been hired to take down in a blaze of glory. You can get two power-ups along the way, these come in the form of sheriff's badges with one of them increasing the speed as which you can fire and the other basically making you dual wield, so your character instead of having a six shooter or a shotgun will have two pistols or two shotguns at there disposal for double the damage and double the fun.
The games graphics and sound although not arcade perfect are just about as close as you could expect and give the game a darn charming and fun atmosphere, the music is great for getting you in to the right mood to play the game and for making it feel even more action packed. Even more important than this though are the controls. Yeah they might be simple with there basically being three buttons one to shoot, one to jump and one to slide, but they feel awesome, they are super responsive and your soon doing exactly what you want the very second you want to do it. This means that if you get shot or get blown up by dynamite your never cursing the game itself your instead only cursing yourself and become determined that with a bit of practice you can get better and make less school boy errors.
If I was to give Sunset Riders a score out of 10 then I would have to give the game a 9 or even 10 out of 10 the game is simply a joy to play especially in two player. Some people might argue that with only 8 stages and its arcade nature that there is very little replayability or reason to return to the game but I would argue that with the games sense of fun and its charm its easy to return to the game for a quick enjoyable blast no matter how many times you have finished it, its just a great game to dip into for a bit and enjoy yourself. The game is very very expensive even for a cart only version so I cant help but recommend that people either look for it on Virtual console style services or that you look into investing in something like an Everdrive.
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