The light-gun genre has been popular mainstay of video games throughout history. The genre itself can be traced back to 1936 with the Seeburg Ray-O-Lite game - A large veneered wooden duck hunt of a game which incorporated a light activated Shotgun.
Operation Wolf by Taito in 1987 is easily one of the most popular and commonly remembered Light Gun games - with it, your 10p coin would transport you into a Rambo style jungle setting shooting insurgent rebels. Other popular light gun games have been Sega's Virtua Cop series starting in 1994 and Time Crisis by Namco in 1995.
Light gun games have been made cute as in Point Blank on the PlayStation. Horrified as in Sega's House of the Dead and herioc as in Konami's Silent Scope.
In 1994 the 'Light Gun' was 'Real-ised' on the 3DO, in the form of Mad Dog McCree. An arcade conversion by American Laser games.
Mad Dog itself represents a popular mode of thinking by developers of this early CD platform era. The thinking was to take realism one step beyond computer generated and to incorporate the really-real world in the video game.
A light gun interactive movie if you want.
Mad Dog is the digitised story of Mad Dog McCree. Where you, as the player, must traverse the Wild West town, gunning down Cowboy vermin' were ever they be a hidin'.
The game has a simple tree structure. You decide where to start, either the Corral, Saloon, Bank or Sheriff's office. Once in your chosen location, I'd recommend that every-time a gun toting Cowboy turns up - shoot him. By actually hitting your intended target within the allocated time, you progress further up the tree structure of the game - failure to do so will mean you meet up with undertaker.
The script is fun, the acting is well on the way to being tolerable and the sets are impeccable.
The usual pain of these games is that they don't work at all without a light gun, as the 3DO D-Pad is simply to slow to substitute.
The only other niggles are that you can't shoot the old guy leading you through the game and no matter where I search on the web - I cannot for the life of me remember where I have seen him before.
From the Seeburg game, to Segas' first arcade machine 'Periscope', to the Atari VCS, the Sinclair Spectrum, the MSX, Dreamcast, PS2 and Xbox - the Light Gun genre has always provided a scintillating and fun arcade challenge - and deserves better recognition for its services to the video game industry than it often receives.
Mad Dog McCree with a light gun can hold its head high in such company, it's one of the better 3DO games.
It is not all that rare and it is quite fun but like I have said, only with a light gun. Ignore at your peril.
3DO Kid.
One of the better 3DO games ... seriously? I would nominate this game among the top ten worst 3DO games ever! Even w/the lightgun it is virtually unplayable thanks to the obnoxious disc access time. Is the pal version improved or something? Thankfully, Mad Dog II was technically sound & good fun.