Playing the Hollywood western on repeat: Cinematic realism in Mad Dog McCree

This article explores video game adaptations of American popular history and culture by looking at the 1990 arcade title Mad Dog McCree produced by American Laser Games. Heavily inspired by the Hollywood Western (along with the broader mythology of the nineteenth-century American West) and using light guns and Full-Motion-Video (FMV) technology, the live action title offered players the chance to play an active role in a celluloid-based frontier story. Handling replica pistols, players watched a series of cinematic vignettes, before assuming their own role in the action, shooting their light guns at all manner of renegade gunslingers. Thanks to the FMV, the title recreated in tone and substance a traditional Hollywood Western, placing the player in the role of lead character and hero, and offering a unique ‘film-game’ experience and cinematic realism explored in this article. As well as functioning as a nostalgia piece for traditional cowboy movies, Mad Dog McCree also took the Western in new directions, emphasizing the frontier as, in essence, a landscape of play and play-acting, marked by simple pleasures and constant repetition.