Nintendo's fascinating history continues to be unearthed by fans across the world. Just last year, 16mm film from Nintendo's Wild Gunman — originally a 1974 arcade cabinet before jumping onto the NES in the '80s — was discovered. 16mm film games use film reels and projectors to project photos and footage onto the screen. Now, footage from another 16mm game has been uncovered.
- Further reading - 16mm Film From Nintendo's 1974 Wild Gunman Arcade Cabinet Has Been Found
The game in question this time is Sky Hawk, a 1976 arcade game. This time, the 16mm film footage is of remote-controlled fighter planes, which you must shoot down. One game lasts 60 seconds, and if you shoot down eight or more planes, you get give a free game. Many haven't seen footage of this game at all, but YouTube channel Critical Ephemera has uploaded some never-before-seen gameplay of the long-forgotten shooter.
One user on Reddit — WentMadSendHelp — reveals that the footage this time is run through the projectors sideways, facing a mirror, and the mirror rotates during the game to hide part of the screen:
For the time, it's incredibly realistic! The image quality, landscapes, and audio all look and sound incredible for the time. The game itself is approaching 50 years old, and this was around before the time that Nintendo of America even existed. So that tells you just how primitive and experimental this kind of technology was for the time.
You can see for yourself what a game of Sky Hawk looks like, and indulge in another slice of hugely interesting Nintendo history that was, for a while, lost to time.
Let us know your thoughts on this piece of 'ancient' Nintendo video game tech in the comments!
[source boingboing.net]
Comments 19
So Nintendo games had completely photorealistic visuals in 1976. Checkmate, naysayers.
@nhSnork That made me crack up! Thanks!
Fascinating! Graphics even the switch couldn’t render well
These 16mm games are begging for a sexy 4K rescan. I’m such a sucker for archive footage.
Nintendo ought to make something of a “museum” collection that compiles these rarities and other oddities.
It would absolutely blow me away to witness these technical marvels in person, and the minds that conceived these games are just brilliant.
That's a cool find. I do remember seeing a Wild Gunman installation when I was very young in a long-since-gone go-kart place. It had a large screen for the projections. I didn't really know what it was at the time, but remembering it now it's the only thing it could have been.
What is so cool is that I used to play this game in the Lucky Star arcade in Blackpool in the early 80s, I loved this game. It’s funny but there was the Nintendo magic in their early games and I didn’t even realise it was Nintendo. The same was true of Radar Scope, it was just a great game.
Sweet! Would have been super fun to work on the production of these films.
How impressive would this have been, really, in 1986?
Wait...did you say 1976?
1976!!!
Far out man! the 70's was hip
Coming soon to NSO Deluxe subscription!!!!
A similar one featured in the film Jaws
WHOA, I love old/archive footage and this really looked cool
kamikaze. 👎 flipping mad in japan
Wow I wonder if Nintendo has any of these mothballed anywhere?
Here in the US now and again they unearth ancient mechanical game relics from estate sales or old collectors’ barns, though in Japan storage space is harder to come by.
Another nice example of ingenuity in the electro-mechanical era, before solid-state electronics took over coin-op amusements.
Wild Gunman? The same one from back to the future?
@RPGreg2600 Not quite. That was a non-existent Arcade Cabinet version of Wild Gunman for NES. The movie essentially stuck an NES in a cabinet and attached some NES Zappers to it.
This is Wild Gunman as a Clay Light Gun Simulation System game for 70s Arcades. Completely different game. The NES title is a sequel to it.
Think of it like how we have Punch-Out!! on Arcade with wireframe characters, then Punch-Out!! on Game & Watch, then Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! on NES, and then Punch-Out!! on Wii using motion controls. All different games, but all named the same name.
@marandahir so same franchise, different game. I didn't remember there being a wild Gunman on NES, I'll have to check it out when I get my spare NES hooked up on this old CRT TV I got.
Punch Out Game & Watch is just a rebranding of the Boxing Game & Watch. The game plays more like Urban Champion than Punch Out.
Crazy thing about the original 16mm film Wild Gunman is that Sega brought it to the US.
@RPGreg2600 Wild Gunman (the NES version) was only a console game. The Back to the Future II machine was a fictitious variant.
(though Nintendo certainly knows the game is most well-known because of the cameo. It is surely not coincidental that Nintendo only released it on Wii U VC in October 2015, the same month the Internet was in a BttF hype mode because that was the moment the 1989 film ceased to be in a "future" time.)
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