It has been a while since I’ve done a comparison review, and with the acquisition of a certain game it seems that I finally have a good enough pairing to warrant one. Am I the only one who finds the concept of a shooting gallery arcade game to be odd? Or at least one that doesn’t use some sort of a light gun to emulate a real shootin’ gallery, like what you’d see at an actual carnival. It’s convenient then that there were two games on the 2600 that did just that, and that I’ve already mentioned their names, they are Carnival from Coleco and Shootin’ Gallery from Imagic. I never would have thought Imagic would release a game like Shootin’ Gallery. Up until the bitter end Imagic released unique and original games for the 2600, but Shootin’ Gallery almost feels generic or ‘safe’ which as we all know isn’t Imagic’s MO. Perhaps it’s because it was 1983 and Imagic was in dire straits, what with the crash going on, that they needed a game that would play to the perfect and most profitable demographic, kids. Shootin’ Gallery is aimed right at the 9 and under crowd, in that the box says “Ideal for ages 9 and under”, and normally kid’s games never do very well on the 2600 but I think that Imagic might just pull through. The competition, Carnival by Coleco, is a port of the classic arcade game of the same name, it is the more well known of the two since it was released in 1982 pre-crash and had a far wider release than its counterpart. As we all know Coleco is the arcade publisher on Atari with 10 of their 13 released games being arcade ports and two of the prototypes also being arcade ports of Turbo and Looping, so we know we’re in good hands with Carnival. Without further ado this is Imagic’s Shootin’ Gallery vs. Coleco’s Carnival.

Graphics:

Shootin’ Gallery: This game is downright pretty, the screen is full of color and movement it is a truly dazzling display of what the 2600 could do. Amazingly enough the objects that you shoo actually at look like their real life counterparts, you can tell that that is a snail or an otter or a monkey, or what about that great looking train trundling around the center of the screen. The ammo counter is displayed with small lines flanking the large pendulum clock at the center-top of the screen, which also looks amazing, and due to the display method you can tell exactly how many shots you have left. I have one qualm though; there aren’t many targets on the screen at one time, if you look at the screenshots there are as many as seven targets at once and in some cases as little as three at once, but I’ll get more into that in the gameplay section.
Carnival: When compared to Shootin’ Gallery Carnival almost seems simplistic, the thing is though this is a port of a 1980 arcade game so I’m surprised it looks as good as it does. Some elements from the arcade are missing like the 2-player scores, the rankings, the high scores, and the point values at the sides of the screen (as well as something else). But when you compare the port to the arcade game Coleco got really close, the animals and items are almost one-to-one recreations of the machine right down to the ducks looking more like ghosts when they are swooping down at you. Unfortunately since they were dealing with a horizontal screen rather than a vertical one some things had to be altered, well actually one thing mainly and that thing is the pipes. It’s very hard to describe what has happened to them but suffice to say they resemble a demented pinwheel that cool circle-thing from the arcade, also the fact that most of it is off-screen so only half is showing at once is a bit crappy. But if there’s one final thing to take away from the graphics, it’s the amount of targets on-screen at once, and the fact that they aren’t flashing and flickering is quite impressive even now.

Sounds:
Shootin’ Gallery: Most of what you’ll be hearing is the sounds of you shooting, which is a very good and crunchy whoosh and explosion noise, but the game does have a bit of music attached so you’re not stuck simply listening to the shooting sound. The music that plays is that classic carnival tune that also pops up in the Benny Hill theme song, so now I just ruined that for you forever.
Carnival: There is no music, which is unfortunate since you can guess what the arcade version had. I know it’s an unfair comparison but even the Intellivision version of Carnival had music, sure it was awful, but it had it. All you’ll be hearing is a series of beeps and various other sound effects but there is nothing memorable.

Gameplay:
Shootin’ Gallery: As is standard with any shooting gallery style game you shoot shit with a gun, you have limited shots but there are ways of regaining ammunition built into the game so that the player can rack up their high score. To start with you’ll be faced with two targets, a monkey and a snail, if you shoot the snail a train will start rolling through the center of the screen, you can shoot the engine, cars, and caboose for points. If you shoot the monkey enough times various animals will start walking along the screen a bit further up, they are a mix of kangaroos, otters, and later penguins, and squirrels, each are worth large amounts of points. You can refill your shots by shooting certain objects a certain number of times, mainly the caboose and monkey, and by doing so will also unlock animals that are worth more points. The game makes you use strategy and quick reflexes to get the most enjoyment from the game which is something that I would very much expect Imagic to do with such a simple genre of game.
Carnival: This game also has the player use strategy to get the most points possible but if you ask me it’s not quite as complex as in Shootin’ Gallery. When you start the game a large amount of targets will start making their way from the sides of the screen consisting of ducks, owls, and bunnies, as well as 8’s in boxes. There are three ways to lose bullets in Carnival, you shoot them, you hit an anti-bonus that takes bullets, or they get eaten by a ghost duck. If a duck gets to the bottom row of targets it will make a dive bomb for the bottom of the screen, it will eat 10 of your bullets if it makes it. You can regain lost bullets by shooting the 8’s or hitting the bullet bonuses on the left side of the screen, you get 40 in total so don’t waste them. The demented pinwheel is also a target you can hit, though it is quite difficult to do so since the target area is about two pixels wide, it is recommended that you take out the pipes early however since they will decrease the amount of deadly ducks that appear as the level progresses. That’s all there really is to the game, shoot the pipes and the bonuses for more points and bullets, the strategy is minimal and is nowhere near the level that Imagic put into their game, but that doesn’t mean the game is bad. What makes the game bad is the lack of the bear bonus screen; you have a picture of it on the manual but it’s not even in the game, c’mon Coleco!

Overall both the games are fun little distractions that will keep you engaged for a short while, but unfortunately these games get stale after a while, though Carnival definitely peters out long before Shootin’ Gallery. Yeah there’s no other way of putting it Shootin’ Gallery is superior is all three major categories completely trouncing Carnival, but do you want to know what Carnival has that Shootin’ Gallery doesn’t? A fair price… loose copies of Shootin’ Gallery are listed for upwards of 25 dollars, even as high as 60 bucks, with boxed copies going as high as 90 dollars, that is ridiculous. I was lucky and found a very cheap listing on Ebay, but don’t expect those to show up very often. Carnival on the other hand is an extremely common game with loose copies on Ebay as low as $3 and boxed copies as low as $9. Despite it being the inferior game everybody has a copy of Carnival while almost nobody has Shootin’ Gallery… It seems Carnival won on the most important category of all… Price.