| The Town with No Name | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Delta 4 |
| Publisher(s) | On-Line Entertainment |
| Director(s) | Fergus McNeill |
| Producer(s) | Clement Chambers |
| Composer(s) | Fergus McNeill (credited as "The Jester") |
| Platform(s) | Commodore CDTV, MS-DOS |
| Release | 1992 (CDTV), 1993 (MS-DOS) |
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure, point-and-click |
The Town with No Name, also published as Town with No Name, is a Western action-adventure point-and-click game developed by Delta 4 in 1992 for the Commodore CDTV. A version for MS-DOS was released in 1993.
Plot
In the American frontier, a drifter with a John Wayne-esque voice referred to as "the Man with No Name" gets off a train at the station outside the Town with No Name. Upon entering the town, he is confronted by a gunman. Once No Name kills him, an unnamed man with a cigarette reveals that the attacker was the youngest brother of Evil Eb, the leader of the Hole-in-the-Head Gang, and hints that Eb will send his bandits after No Name. No Name then explores each of the town's buildings, either by interacting with the residents or by playing minigames, and duels with gang members usually after leaving the buildings.
After killing every outlaw except Evil Eb, No Name confronts Eb himself but only shoots off his hat. Eb, having dropped his gun in surprise and resigning to his defeat, asks No Name to kill him, believing him to be a man called Billy-Bob, whom he had earlier challenged to a duel. No Name explains that he is not Billy-Bob and came to town to meet his sister, believing he is in a town called Dodge Gulch. Eb tells him in turn that Dodge Gulch is at another train station 20 miles away. No Name spares Eb because of their mutual misunderstanding, and the two become friends as they go into the saloon for whiskey.
To trigger an alternate ending, No Name can leave on the train that brought him into town at any point prior to his encounter with the bandit "Wildcard" Willy McVee in the saloon. As the train departs, a small boy yells, "Come back, Shane!", prompting No Name to shoot the child and tell him that his name is not Shane before the train flies away into outer space.
Gameplay
The gameplay is divided into two main forms: a point-and-click format with menus containing multiple options, followed by short animated scenes based on the player's selections; and a light gun-type interface where the player must quickly shoot a target before the target shoots back, ending the game in defeat. Minigames include three-card monte, Chase the Ace, and a quick time event where the player must click a moving drink that the bartender in the saloon slides towards No Name so he can catch it.
The duels with the gang members are typically triggered by entering and leaving buildings. However, the order in which the buildings are entered and the activities that can be done in each have no effect on when, or in which order, the bandits appear; the player can simply enter and leave any combination of buildings and fight the bandits in the same sequence. The exception after killing some of the bandits in the street is the required encounter with "Wildcard" Willy McVee in the saloon; any subsequent attempts to leave will trigger the last few duels, culminating in the showdown with Evil Eb. The one optional duel involves Immortal Isaac, a knife-thrower concealed in shadows in an upstairs room in the saloon.
If the player dies at any point, they must restart from the beginning.
Development
The Town with No Name was conceived by Fergus McNeill, who came up with idea when he saw a friend wearing a pair of cowboy boots. "My mind was turned towards the whole genre of Spaghetti Western", he explained. "It was begging for me to do something with it."
Reception
The game had a mostly negative critical reception, including a D+ from Amiga Game Zone, a 35% from Amiga Format, and 3 out of 10 stars from PC Review. Dave Winder of Amiga Computing was more positive, stating that the game is "let down by its lack of real lasting gameplay, but the interactive elements and the fact that there is so much humour and so many hidden sequences lift it above being just another game."
Retrospective reviews of the game noted its surreal humour and perceived lack of content; while Tanner Fox of Game Rant did speculate on the developer's intentions, he otherwise opined how it was hard to tell if Delta 4 deliberately conceived the game as a parody or not.
Since the game got popular, people started making internet memes about some of the lines in the game. like "Give me a drink bartender!" and "My name's not Shane kid!"
References
- McNeill, Fergus (June 15, 2021). "The Jester was the pen-name of some skinny kid who always more Marillion t-shirts. I think he's number 10 in that lineup 😉" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- "The Town with No Name Credits (CDTV)". MobyGames. Blue Flame Labs. Retrieved 13 August 2020.
- "Psycho Killer Credits (DOS)". MobyGames. Blue Flame Labs. Retrieved 13 August 2020.
- ^ "Town With No Name (Game)". Giant Bomb. Retrieved 13 August 2020.
- ^ "The Town With No Name Review". Ghetto Gamer. January 2020. Retrieved 13 August 2020.
- The One staff (March 1992). "High Noon". The One. No. 42. EMAP. p. 14. ISSN 0955-4084. OCLC 500102497.
- Miller, Geoff (October–November 1994). "Reviews: Town with No Name". Amiga Game Zone. No. 3. Amiga Game Zone. p. 27. OCLC 972162878.
- Noonan, Damien (October 1992). "Town With No Name". Amiga Format. Future plc. Retrieved September 23, 2021.
- Carrington, Tim (September 1992). "A Town with No Name". PC Review. No. 11. EMAP. pp. 60–1. ISSN 0964-4547. OCLC 420940727.
- Winder, Dave (September 1992). "Smokin' CDTV". Amiga Computing. No. 52. Europress. p. 115. ISSN 0959-9630. OCLC 648004040.
- Fox, Tanner (2022-05-01). "10 Video Games That Are So Bad They're Good". ScreenRant. Retrieved 2023-09-11.
- Extension, Time (2023-01-10). "Hypnotically Awful CDTV Game 'The Town With No Name' Receives Unity Fan Remake". Time Extension. Retrieved 2024-12-14.
External links
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