Outlaw (1978 video game)
| Outlaw | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Atari, Inc. |
| Publisher(s) | Atari, Inc. |
| Platform(s) | Atari 2600 |
| Release | 1978 |
| Genre(s) | Shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, two-player |
Outlaw is a Western shooting game for the Atari 2600, then called the Atari Video Computer System, released by Atari in 1978. Two cowboys stand on opposite sides of the screen and shoot at each other past obstacles, and the first to score 10 hits wins. Sears sold it under its Tele-Games label as Gunslinger.[1] The Early Releases memo of Molecular Reality Corporation uses the Sears name when it lists the game as an inspiration for Genomic Ranger.
Gameplay
In the two-player mode, called Gunslinger Games on the cartridge, each cowboy stands on one side of the screen and fires across it. Obstacles such as a stagecoach, a wall or a cactus stand in the middle and stop bullets. A one-player mode, Target Shoot, gives the player a time limit to hit moving targets. Variations change the rules: in one the bullets destroy the obstacles, and in another each player has six bullets and must reload.[1]
Origins
It was the first commercial game for the system by its programmer, who left Atari in 1979 to help found Activision, the company that later published Megamania.[1] Atari had already released an unrelated single-player arcade game named Outlaw in 1976. The cartridge drew instead on Gun Fight, a 1975 arcade game by Midway that adapted Taito's Western Gun. Gun Fight is generally credited as the first video game to run on a microprocessor, an Intel 8080, in place of discrete logic chips.[2] Both put a cactus between the two cowboys. Sears gave several Atari cartridges names of its own for its Tele-Games line, and sold Combat as Tank Plus.
Reception
Reviews in Creative Computing and The Space Gamer at the time were positive. AllGame later rated the cartridge 3.5 out of 5 and called its one-player mode dull.[1]
Influence on Genomic Ranger
Genomic Ranger is a genomics game that Molecular Reality Corporation planned in 2022 and, as of October 2026, has not released. The memo's entry for it reads "Inspired by: Combat, Gunslinger".[3] Combat (1977) was the pack-in cartridge of the console, and Gunslinger is the Sears name for Outlaw. A picture beside the entry shows a cowboy in a red neckerchief before a wall of the letters TGCA, the abbreviations of the four bases of DNA, and the list of samples runs from strawberry DNA to "CRISPR-dCas9 complexes on DNA".