Picture a coin-op arcade cabinet from 1974 that plays actual film footage of live-action cowboys. You draw your gun, watch an outlaw reach for his iron, and pull the trigger at exactly the right moment. That was Wild Gunman, one of Nintendo's earliest arcade machines, and for the past 50 years it has existed almost entirely as a footnote in gaming history.
Now, thanks to arcade collector Callan Brown (known online as 74XX Arcade Repair), there is once again a playable version of the game. Brown describes it as “what might be the only playable Wild Gunman '74 experience in North America, or maybe the world.”
Why the original machines disappeared
Wild Gunman was designed by Gunpei Yokoi, the same engineer who would later create the Game Boy. The concept was genuinely unlike anything else at the time: instead of pixel graphics, the cabinet projected 16mm film footage of real actors dressed as Wild West outlaws. Four sets of footage, labeled A, B, C, and D, each featured different gunfighters. Watch the film, wait for the draw signal, shoot at the right moment, and either a victory or defeat clip would play out.
The problem is that film reels were never built for that kind of punishment. Looping the same short clips hundreds of times a day, every day, destroys the material. Yokoi himself noted in an old interview that only around 100 units were ever shipped, which means there were never many machines to begin with. An untested original cabinet sold at auction in 2023, but its current whereabouts are unknown. As far as anyone can tell, no confirmed working Wild Gunman cabinet exists today.
The film situation was even worse. Until 2021, no reels were known to exist at all. That year, one collector managed to locate the D footage, which was the first confirmed survival of any original Wild Gunman film.
The eBay find that changed everything
Brown got lucky in the way that only obsessive collectors tend to get lucky. He spotted an eBay auction for a set of unidentified Nintendo film reels and took a chance on them. When the reels arrived, he found they contained the complete B and D footage, plus a partial reel of A. The C footage remains lost.
Here's the thing: that's more original Wild Gunman film than has been accessible in decades, possibly ever. Brown digitized everything he had and decided the only logical next step was to build an entire arcade cabinet around it.
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Brown is clear that his build is "not quite a replica" but rather a reimagining of the Wild Gunman '74 experience using modern hardware. The original cabinet design and electronics are not reproduced exactly.
How a Unity game and Wii-style sensors brought it back
The cabinet itself is built from plywood with 3D-printed modules, which is already a fun detail. But the real work happened inside. Brown recreated the game in Unity, building the logic and timing systems around his digitized footage. An office projector handles display duties, throwing the film onto the screen the way the original optical system once did.
For the gun, Brown went with infrared LEDs and made the gun itself the detector rather than the screen. If that sounds familiar, it should: it is functionally very close to how the Wii Remote pointer worked, using the gun to sense the IR source rather than a camera tracking a light gun on screen. The result is a responsive, accurate shooting system that does not rely on fragile 50-year-old hardware.
An Arduino open-source circuit board controls the front panel LEDs that track your score, tying the whole experience together in a way that feels arcade-authentic even if the components are thoroughly modern.
What this means for preservation
Brown plans to bring the cabinet to Ontario Pinfest in May, which will be the first time most people have had any chance to play something resembling the original Wild Gunman experience. He has also said on Reddit that he intends to release both the Arduino code and the Unity game at some point, which would let other builders attempt their own recreations using the same approach.
The C footage still being missing is the one significant gap. Three of four outlaw sets are now accounted for, but that fourth gunfighter remains lost somewhere, possibly in a box in someone's attic, possibly gone for good.
For a game that predates the NES by a decade and laid some of the earliest groundwork for what Nintendo would eventually become, getting three-quarters of it back is a better outcome than anyone had reason to expect. For more on gaming history and the titles that shaped the medium, browse our gaming news, and check out our latest reviews for what's worth playing right now.
