Sounds Like Thunder, Tastes Like Chicken
Prehistoric Safari
Shooting Gallery is a kick-ass add-on to the Magnavox Odyssey. There are four games in the add-on, each with it's own Überlay. Three of the games use game cart #9 and the fourth uses #10. The add-on comes in its own box with a GUN! A realistic looking gun! The kind that will get you playfully blown away if you playfully aim it at an officer of the law. So, uh, DON'T do that, 'kay kids?
In Prehistoric Safari, you have the gun, you are the Mighty Hunter, but you've lost most of your ammunition in the volcano so you only have 15 shots. Player Two, is just the assistant and moves the target light behind each of the animals which you, the Hunter, intends to obliterate. The light sits there until the Hunter takes the shot, then Player Two moves the light behind another target. The roles are reversed after 15 shots, and the person with the most "kills" wins.
There's a variation on the game with an awarding of points for each animal, but we decided it was more fun to just blast away the critters in "cold blood" (heh, reptile joke) without doing any more math than counting backwards from 15.
The "flying lizards", which is what they called them, were the toughest to hit, in fact, I was unable to hit them. I think that it is because there is such a tiny area letting the target light shine through the Überlay that if one doesn't aim just right, it's a miss. The rest of the animals were easy to hit, especially since they sat nice and still for me. Heh. My son wasn't able to do this shooting gallery game. I don't think he "gets" the idea of lining up the gun sites to properly aim and also finds the gun to be a little heavy for his 7 year old arms. *sigh* I'll just have to teach him to kill things with a lighter lightgun from a later era. (probably zombies)
The gun has a nice weight to it, makes a very satisfying noise when fired and provides a great feeling of getting ready for one's next shot when pumped. Its only drawback is that it is a little cumbersome for a child to handle, but one could also argue that this is a Good Thing. I'm going to give it a full point for the Odyssey against Ultraman. I could kill dinosaurs all day!
The Score: Ultrman 6, Odyssey 6
See? Now they're tied. I bet none of you saw that coming!
EDIT: I forgot to mention what happens when you shoot the Target Spot. It disappears! When you reset the gun, by using it's pump action, you're essentially activating what is equal to the reset button on the normal controllers. This restores the light for further targeting.
EDIT: Later, much later, I made a video version of this review. You can see it on YouTube below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gajf3ouIbEk
EDIT: Sadly, I no longer know where that video is. I stupidly deleted that gmail account during a long bout with depression and didn't even realize it also killed my youtube account at the time.
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