Tinstar (Super Nintendo, 1994)
The Wild West is a woefully under-utilized setting in videogames. From
Nintendo’s Sheriff to Red Dead Redemption, not a whole lot of games have explored
the themes and locales of the American West. Even fewer games have innovated on
the genre’s tropes. Instead, they crib from classic westerns and hodgepodge them
into a potentially cohesive plot. Tinstar represents one of the few games about the
Wild West that charts its own course.
Tin Star was the result of a relationship between Nintendo and John and Ste
Pickford. These two developed numerous U.K. computer games in the 1980s as
Binary Design and, later, Zippo Games. The Pickfords switched over to consoles
when they developed Wizards and Warriors II for Rare. Once there, they produced,
designed, and directed a variety of games under the name Software Creations. One
of these games was Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball for the Super
Nintendo. Despite the game’s gangbuster sales, Nintendo of America decided to give
the contract for the follow-up to Rare. Nintendo of America “compensated” the
Pickfords by contracting them to make a light-gun game. The Pickfords and their
team at Software Creations responded by making Tinstar.
Tinstar- He talks like John Wayne and acts like Dudley Do-Right. The hero ah this
here moving picture game is the newly-minted sheriff of East Driftwood. His
hovercraft horse Aluminum is his only companion other than his trusty sidekick…
Mo Crash- Unlike Tinstar, Mo traverses the robot wasteland on his rocket
rollerskates. He plays straight man and informant to the oblivious Tinstar.
Judge Soy Bean- The mayor of East Driftwood invites Tinstar to be sheriff of his
little town. Apparently, he did so without meeting the big lug first. His honor
spends much of his time telling Tinstar to do his job. Tinstar tends not to pay much
attention to the mayor as he is too busy ogling…
Maria Bean- The mayor’s daughter is the apple of Tinstar’s eye. She occasionally
cheers him on, but she is hiding a rather odd secret.
Black Bart- This rotund roughneck is the leader of the Bad Oil Gang. He schemes to
disrupt East Driftwood and get rid of Tinstar.
Schemp Crash- This eye-patched thug is Schemp’s older brother (by five minutes).
Besides ragging on his brother for being mom’s favorite, he acts as a mouthpiece for
the various gangs in East Driftwood.
Tiny Johnson- Tinstar’s first act upon arriving in East Driftwood is to kill a
geranium. This particular plant is the prize possession of Tiny Johnson. He
challenges you to your first showdown.
Bugsy Johnson- After you dispatch Tiny, his brethren take it upon themselves to try
and exact revenge. The first such brother duel with is Bugsy. This buck-toothed
bamboozler will pull his gun on you before the signal to shoot appears. Fortunately,
you can still shoot him all the same.
Lucky Johnson- The second member of Tiny Johnson’s brood to bother Tinstar. As
his name suggests, direct hits will occasionally just shoot a hole through his hat.
Enough direct hits and his luck will run its course.
The Kid- Tinstar’s final member of the Johnson family to face off with is barely knee
high. Will the big guy plug the pint-sized punk and put his feud with the Johnsons to
rest?
Snake Oil- This green gangster is a hitman for the Bad Oil Gang. After you send him
to jail. You have to keep his cronies from freeing him.
Crude Oil-
Cows- These bionic bovines have a bad habit of stampeding. Like Aluminum, they
don’t have legs. Weird.
The Undertaker- This rubber-band man tallies up your pay (i.e.- your points) at the
end of a level. Those points will come in handy for saving your game and getting a
particular ending.
The game chronicles the first week of Tinstar’s tenure as sheriff of East
Driftwood. Each day within the game, from Monday to Sunday, is split into several
sections. For each section, you control a reticle that can moved around the screen
and used for shooting. Software Creations used this set-up so that the Nintendo
controller, mouse, or Super Scope could be used to play. The general consensus
seems to be that the mouse works best, but the controller and Super Scope are both
competent choices.
The first segment of each day involves juggling a bottle in the air with your
shots until it changes colors and is eventually destroyed. Additional bottles are
added over the course of the game, which ups the difficulty. However, the real
secret to the bottle juggling is a target high above the initial platform. Reaching this
target will cause the bottle(s) to be destroyed quicker, but also earns substantially
more points. Those points end up playing a big role in the overall game.
Start Here
Keep Going
Almost There
Aim And Fire
From this display of Wild West showmanship, Tinstar is tasked with taking
down the two-bit toughs around town. The stages for these fights range from a
stagecoach to the middle of a stampede to the center of the town. In each of these
stages, you direct Tinstar’s shots while the robotic rustler stands his ground. He’ll
move to the next part of the stage once you clear out an area, but he generally stands
still until then. These stages are punctuated by boss fights.
Things go back to the first-person perspective for protection missions.
These stages take place in bars and outside jails and banks. Tinstar has to save the
bars patrons from a bunch of bullies bent on beating them to scrap. Failure to save a
patron results in a loss of health. The jail and bank protection missions have more
stringent penalties. A single bomb will level the property and force you to restart
the level. Meanwhile, you have to be aware of the other outlaws taking aim at you.
These stages tend to get very hectic very quickly.
Throughout the third-person and protection stages, metal canteens will fly
across the screen. If you manage to hit all of the canteens, you will enter into a
bonus stage at the end of the level. The stage is set up with a buxom bot bound to a
spinning table. You are charged with shooting the stars around the table without
hitting this hydraulic hostage. Any stars shot in this part will add points to the final
stage tally.
Last, but not least, each day is capped with a good old-fashioned Wild West
showdown. You are once again put in the first-person perspective and are set right
in front of your rival. At some point, an icon that looks like the chamber of a pistol
will appear in one of the four corners of the screen. You must shoot the icon and
then shoot your rival before they can strike. It takes multiple hits before these
rogue rustbuckets will fall for good.
Before Shot
During Shot
After Shot
Perhaps as important as the varied action in Tinstar is the look and feel of the
game. Saturday morning cartoon visuals and effects emphasize the game’s unique
setting. Beady-eyed portraits of the characters jaw at you during the story breaks.
Defeated enemies perform wacky animations before exploding into a shower of nuts
and bolts. Gunshots crack when they connect and make your hits sound meaty.
Smiling suns and oddly-shaped monuments clash with the more ordinary Wild West
paraphernalia in a way that feels right. Even Tinstar himself toes the line between
the serious and silly in his walking and posturing. Cartoon logic and silly dialogue
further supplement the vibe. The game’s story is never too serious, but it is able to
make the characters endearing.
In terms of the gameplay, destructibility adds to the cartoonish fun. Parts of
the scenery in nearly every stage can be destroyed or manipulated. Shoot parts of a
wooden train car and the underlying frame will be exposed. Shoot the guy by the bar
and he will take a drink. The various effects encourage exploration of the
environment just to see what will react when you take aim at it. It is not surprising
that the lead programmer for the game, John Buckley, later went on to do rendering
for Red Faction Guerilla.
The game’s soundtrack, crafted by Chris Jojo, Matthew Cannon, and Suddi
Raval, also leaves a strong impression. It manages to combine bits of Ennio
Morricone, Alfred Newman and Dmitri Tiomkin into a catchy western score.
Stirring horns announce the game’s title. A jaunty banjo and piano accompany the
bar scenes. Stampede scenes feature bongos, bells, and the occasional mooing cow.
It all immerses you further into the game’s weird Wild West world.
Unfortunately, several factors hamper that sense of immersion. Although the
game zips you from one gameplay style to another, the enemies and settings tend to
repeat fairly often. It is even joked about in the game.
This reiteration leaves the impression that the game was strung along to fit
with the “stages as days of the week” motif. Given this repetition, it is best to play
this game a “day” or two at a time. This tactic runs afoul of the game’s other issue.
Points are awarded for shooting enemies along with the bonus stages and the tallies
at the end of most stages. However, the game has a peculiar save system that
expends points for every save. It generally does not inhibit saving. However, if you
wish to get one of the three endings other than the worst one, you have to take care
to save and die as little as possible. It makes the game more replayable, but the
emphasis on running through the game and not saving makes the repetition more
apparent.
Tinstar is a charming, oddball game. Set in a cartoony Wild West populated
by robots, it goes off the beaten path in terms of setting and style. The variety of
gameplay styles coupled with the overall silly tone make for entertaining play.
Repetition and an awkward save system restrict some of that enjoyment though.
Tinstar is a game that, like any good Wild West protagonist, plays by its own rules.
If you can cope with those rules, the game will suit you just fine.
External Links
Flying Omelette- This site has a number of game reviews and archived music. The
latter includes two great tunes from the Tinstar soundtrack. Definitely worth a
download!
Suzaku000’s Youtube Playthrough- This guy did a solid run-through of Tin Star and
posted it stage-by-stage onto Youtube. If you want to see more of how the game
plays, you should look here.
VGMuseum’s Game Endings- If you don’t want to go through the trouble of playing
the game to perfection, you can scope out the various endings to the game at this
site.
Zee-3- The Pickford Brothers’ current website includes their softography and all
sorts of game-related information you can get a nice Tinstar font here as well.