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While Nintendo has been a prominent force in the game industry for decades, it took some time before they became the absolute powerhouse they are today. Long before their dominance in home consoles, Nintendo manufactured playing cards, toys, and various gadgets–and, during the 1970s and 80s, they invested heavily in creating coin-operated entertainment for arcades. Even years before Donkey Kong became a company-defining hit, Nintendo was doing some wild things in arcades.
Wild Gunman ’74, named such by gaming historian Kate Willaert to avoid confusion with other Nintendo products bearing the same name, was engineered by Nintendo’s legendary creator and inventor Gunpei Yokoi. It was a massive lightgun game that used full-motion video to depict Wild West quick-draw shootouts with outlaws–an absolute technological marvel for the time that earned a lot of fawning press in coin-operated trade magazines. Unfortunately, that impressive technology did not translate to sales for the expensive cabinet, with roughly 100 units being sold, making Wild Gunman ’74 extremely rare. Because of the machine’s age, size, proprietary technology, and obscurity, working Wild Gunman ’74 units are practically impossible to find–only one original machine is known to exist, in the hands of a private collector.
But when Canadian arcade collector
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