Part 4: Once Upon a Mine in the West

And now for some arcade talk.

I’ve included only my best shotgun run at the end of the current video, but having recordings from a lot of arcade attempts gives me a nice retrospective to the learning curve and change in style and strategy. First I thought the shotgun needed to be aimed, using ironsights. That turned out to be far too slow. The shotgun is more like a brush that you sweep lightly past your enemies.

Something I didn’t mention in the video but should be clear by now: you get additional points for every ‘special’ shot you combo, and you need to hit or kill something every 4 seconds to maintain the combo. With the shotgun the best you can aim for is Full Blast (point-blank shots), coupled with Headshots, and when you do that in concentration mode you’ll also get a bonus called Eyeblink. If you’re lucky you can stack a few more things on there, like Last Breath for kills when you’re close to death yourself, or Penetration, Dynamite, etc.

Some of those combinations are…unintended. For example, you can go into concentration, then jump, and when you kill someone while in the air, the game counts that as ‘Falling’ and gives a bonus. That sounds kinda dumb and I’d rather not, but that seems to be something the top highscores rely on.

And I just need to say this but I love the little enemy soundbites in the arcade mode. “Why won’t he die?!”, and “He’s a psycho!” are great, but the line “This ain’t right!” perfectly encapsulates the murder-storm you can achieve. You’re a lot tankier in arcade; usually 2-3 bullets are enough on hard difficulty story-mode to put you in serious trouble. The story needs pacing though, so you’re more vulnerable and hit-and-run tactics are better. The arcade is all about action, it’d be bothersome if you’d die too easily while being awesome.


Concept Art



This is a link instead cause even the timg breaks format like a motherfucker


Nuggets of Truth


In the Wild West, where the law either didn't exist or was represented by corrupt authorities, groups of citizens called vigilante committees often took the law into their own hands. These citizens acted as judge, juгу, and executioner, often hanging the accused from the closest tree. Their guilt was often anything but assured. Some of these vigilantes became local folk heroes and often gained considerable influence.

Such was the case with the Montana Vigilantes, responsible for hanging Henry Plummer and twenty-one other suspects. (Ironically, they accused these men of belonging to a mysterious gang called The Innocents.) The last of those unfortunate souls was hung for merely voicing doubts in regards to the guilt of his friends. What was even more suspicious was that after Plummer and the rest of those suspects were hung, the gold robberies continued unabated. Some say that the Montana Vigilantes were the true bandits. Many of the early stories that pointed the finger of guilt at The Innocents were written by a member of the Vigilantes, the editor of the Montana Post.



He was born William Henry Handy Plummer in Addison, Maine in 1832. At the age of 13, he headed west for the gold fields of California. By all accounts, Plummer cut a handsome figure and was quite handy with a Colt. Within two years, he owned a mine, a ranch, and a bakery in Nevada City. In 1856, he was elected Sheriff and City Manager, but that next year Plummer killed John Vedder, the husband of the woman he had been seeing on the side. Sentenced to ten years in San Quentin, the governor subsequently pardoned Plummer as he was suffering from tuberculosis. Plummer's trail eventually led him to the gold fields of Bannack, Montana where he was promptly elected Sherriff.

Crime was on the rise in Bannack as a gang of bandits known as the Innocents were attacking miners and hijacking gold shipments. The locals organized a group known as the Vigilantes to go after them, and the leader of the Innocents was discovered to be the Sheriff himself, Henry Plummer. The Vigilantes hung twenty-two men, including the Sheriff, but before they stretched his neck, some say he made them an offer. "Give me two hours and a horse and I will bring back my weight in gold." Could he have said such a thing?

Who's to say? Some historians believe that Plummer may have been an innocent victim of the Montana Vigilantes. Some even say the Innocents never existed at all and that the Vigilantes were the actual bandits. We'll probably never know the truth as to whether Plummer was a hero or a killer.



Currently, a well-preserved ghost town in Beaver County, it's famous for what happened from 1863 to 1864, when the local sheriff, Henry Plummer, was accused of being the ringleader of a mysterious gang known as "The Innocents". Some believe they were responsible for nearly one hundred murders. A citizen's group known as the "Montana Vigilantes" summarily hanged 22 people for those crimes, including Henry Plummer himself.

Bannack, founded in 1862, was named after the native Bannock tribe. In 1864, it briefly served as the capital city of the Montana Territory. It remained a mining town until it was deserted by its last residents in 1970. During its prime, Bannack boasted a population of over ten thousand residents. There were three hotels, three bakeries, three smithies, two stables, two meat markets, a grocery store, a restaurant, a brewery, a billiard hall, and four saloons.



Gold rushes, typical of the nineteenth century, were large scale, sudden migrations to often remote locations where gold-bearing deposits were discovered. The largest and most famous was the California gold rush of 1848. John W. Marshall found a gold nugget at John Sutter's sawmill in Coloma, California. News of the discovery spread quickly and people flocked to California from all over the world for a chance to get rich quick. Logging camps and military forts emptied out. Sailors jumped ship. Farms and businesses were abandoned. Over 300,000 people came to California. These "Forty-Niners" traveled west overland on the California and Gila River trail or by sea around Cape Horn at the far southern tip of South America. Most who made their fortune did not discover gold, but preyed upon those who came west hoping to strike it rich.

The history of the Wild West is rife with similar gold rushes. One of the largest was The Pike's Peak Gold Rush. An estimated 100,000 prospectors flooded into the Rocky Mountains between 1858 and 1861, when the Colorado Territory was established. Another famous example was The Black Hills Gold Rush of the late 1870s. Thousands of prospectors followed the Custer Expedition deep into Indian Territory. The city of Deadwood, South Dakota was established nearby and to this day is a busy tourist town, complete with saloons and casinos. It is famous for the fact that one of the frontier's greatest gunslingers, Wild Bill Hickok, died there in a saloon, shot in the back of the head while playing poker.