Tuesday, April 9, 2013

H is for Hogan's Alley

It's more likely that you'd remember Hogan's Alley as an NES cartridge instead of as an arcade game.  Generally speaking, I do as well, since folks who were into using the light gun for the NES typically had either Duck Hunt or Hogan's Alley (or both).

However, my first encounter with Hogan's Alley was at a local skating rink as an upright arcade game.  To be honest, as a kid, I was a little taken aback by the game, in a "what's the big deal?" kind of way.  At the time, the gun apparatus on the game seemed odd against the backdrop of games with joysticks, buttons and the like.  Oh sure, there were gun games before, but a lot of them were target based, and usually used some sort of large gun apparatus as the control, as opposed to something resembling a hand pistol.

Much like I did with the debut of new candy bars, I gave Hogan's Alley a try or two.  I quickly found out I wasn't much good at it, with too slow of reaction times to figure out where the bad guy targets were to shoot.  Given the resultant brevity of games, I quickly abandoned Hogan's Alley as quickly as I tried it.

I found that I haven't gotten much better at target or action first person shooters as an adult, either, so I suspect I'm just not really made for such activities.

Did you ever play Hogan's Alley in the arcade?  What do you think about first person shooter games in general, either past or present?

2 comments:

  1. Hmm, I love shooting stuff on a video game, but not sure I've encountered a game without the gun. I think I've encountered goons like that but I used a corded gun to play it with. And yes, it was from an arcade here. I didn't know what it was called. Maybe it was this one. LOL I'm so forgetful.

    Sonnia J. Kemmer

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  2. I remember playing Hogan's Alley as an arcade once in a Casino on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. I played it because I had played the game previously on the NES and wanted to see if I was any better on the arcade. At that age (about 8 or 9) I was too young to know that arcade games are designed to be very difficult, but after only a couple of quarters I moved on. I don't know if I've played it since.

    As far as FPS games in general, I like them somewhat although it depends what it is that I'm shooting. I'm not big on the games where you're shooting at aliens that look like they're out of Starship Troopers. I could write a whole article about what I like and don't like in FPS games and at the same time, contradict everything that was saying in the previous paragraph.

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