Sunset Riders (サンセットライダーズ Sansetto Raidāzu?) is a Wild West-themed side-scrolling run and gun game developed and published by Konami in 1991 for arcades. It later received home ports to the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis in 1992 and for the Super Nintendo in 1993. The arcade version was also made available as part of the Arcade Archives.
Overview
Set on the Old West, Sunset Riders focuses on a group of four bounty hunters who seek to obtain the rewards for capturing various outlaws. Each stage is introduced with a "Wanted" poster depicting the outlaw who serves as the stage's boss. The original arcade machine allowed for simultaneous four-player action, with each character being locked to a player, while a later two-player revision allowed players to choose their character.
Sunset Riders plays very similarly to the Contra games, with players being able to shoot in eight directions. The stages often have two tiers of platforms, with players being able to jump between them by holding up or down while pressing the JUMP button. Along the stages, players can find power-ups which increase their guns' firepower and autofire, as well as various hazards which serve as obstacles, although they can also be used to the player's advantage.
Ports
Sunset Riders was originally ported to the Sega Mega Drive in 1992. This port cuts on a lot of the arcade's content, featuring only two playable characters and four stages, which were made longer to compensate. The Super Nintendo port released in 1993 is more faithful to the arcade original, with all characters and stages present, although some of its content was cut due to censorship, such as removing the dynamite-tossing cowgirl enemies and the courtesans who gave the player power-ups, as well as changing the sprites for the cancan dancers in the third and fourth stages and removing all Indian enemies from the 6th stage.
Characters
Playable characters
- Steve
- Billy
- Bob
- Cormano
Bosses
- Simon Greedwell
- Hawkeye Hank Hatfield
- Dark Horse
- The Smith Bros.
- El Greco
- Chief Scalpem
- Paco Loco
- Sir Richard Rose
Gallery
Screenshots
(arcade)
(arcade)
Packaging artwork
_-_01.jpg "Sunset Riders (SNES) - 01.jpg (4.37 MB)")
_-_01.jpg "Sunset Riders (GEN) - 01.jpg (4.43 MB)")
Promotional artwork
(front)
(back)
(front)
(back)
Miscellaneous
![Super NES/Genesis key artwork by Tom duBois.[1]](/wiki/File:Sunset_Riders_(SNES)_-_02.jpg "Sunset Riders (SNES) - 02.jpg (2.01 MB)")
Trivia
- Steve makes a brief cameo in the first stage of Mystic Warriors, appearing in a movie billboard in the background.
- Simon Greedwell's famous defeat line, "Bury me with my money", is referenced in the game Rogue Legacy, appearing as one of the game's random death quotes.
- In Stage 5, if defeating the area boss, El Greco, while playing as Cormano (Player 4), when the boss throws his red sombrero during his dying animation, Cormano will catch it in the air and switch his pink sombrero with it.
- However, if when defeating the boss, Cormano ends in a position where he cannot catch the sombrero, the game will get stuck (although the background will keep on scrolling).
- Both Cormano and Simon Greedwell appear as nonogram puzzles in Pixel Puzzle Collection.
- Sir Richard Rose bares an uncanny resemblance to the villain Sherudo Garo from the Namco arcade shooter Time Crisis.
See also
- Badlands
- Iron Horse
- Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters
- Mystic Warriors: Wrath of the Ninjas
- Wild West C.O.W. Boys of Moo Mesa
References
- ↑ Restored by Jefferson Taylor. @JTaylorPro at Twitter (May 2, 2023).