Gun Fight [Upright] [Model 597], the Video Game by Midway Mfg. Co. [Schiller Park, IL, USA]

Type of the machine : Video Game
Gun Fight [Upright] [Model 597] © 1975 Midway.

Each player (2 people play at a time--there is no computer opponent) controls a gunfighter. Your left hand has a 4-way joystick which moves your gunfighter anywhere on your side of the screen. Your right hand has a gun grip which tilts up and down to aim your gunfighter's pistol and which has a trigger to fire. Your only goal is to shoot the other player, who is right across the screen from you; he will then fall down and say 'Got Me'. It isn't usually a straight shot, as there will always be cactuses, a moving stagecoach, or trees somewhere between the 2 players. (Another obstacle will be added for each hit scored.) Just shoot the other player for points. The game is time based, and not life based. The factory setting is for a 90-second game, but this is operator-adjustable down to as low as 60 seconds.

This Upright model was mostly red, but it was covered with painted cowboy side-art. There was no marquee at all, the game had its title printed on the monitor bezel, down towards the control panel. The machine overall had an attractive look.

Game ID : 597

Main CPU : 8080 (@ 1.9968 Mhz)

Screen orientation : Horizontal
Video resolution : 256 x 224 pixels
Screen refresh : 60.00 Hz
Palette colors : 2

Players : 2
Control : 4-way joystick, 2-way analog stick

Released in November 1975.

Also released as "Gun Fight [Cocktail Table] [Model 604]".

Gun Fight was based on Taito's Western Gun, a game which used TTL-based discrete logic hardware. Midway's Dave Nutting adapted the Taito game to use an Intel 8080 microprocessor. Gun Fight was the first Japanese title to be licensed for release in America. It was also the first video game to incorporate a microprocessor, and the expanded processing capabilities allowed for graphics and game-play much more advanced than "Pong".

Gun Fight was a pretty important video-games innovator. It was the first game ever to have 2 on-screen humans battling against each other at the same time, and as such it's the grandfather of the fighting games that take up most of the floorspace in modern arcades. It also introduced the idea of having separate controls for aiming and moving.

A Gun Fight unit appears in the 1978 movie 'Dawn of the Dead'.

1. Gun Fight [Upright] [Model 597] (1975)
1. Gun Fight [Cocktail Table] [Model 604] (1975)
2. Boot Hill [Model 612] (1977)

Designed and programmed by : Dave Nutting, Tom McHugh

Consoles :

Bally Astrocade

Game's rom.
Machine's picture.