The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch is a computer game released in 1984 for the ZX Spectrum and 1985 for the Amstrad CPC by Firebird Software. Despite its name, it has no relation to the 1969 film but is set in the Wild West. The title refers to a fictitious gang of outlaws featured in the game, loosely based on the real Wild Bunch gang who were prominent in the 1890s. The game music is the cowboy ballad "Streets of Laredo". Gameplay The Wild Bunch is a text-based adventure game, with limited use of graphics. The player controls a protagonist who finds a dying man who was attacked by a member of the Wild Bunch gang. Before dying he describes the culprit and gives the player his Colt 45, just as the local sheriff arrives on the scene. The player is assumed to be the murderer and the sheriff tries to arrest them, but they escape. The object of the game is to prove the protagonist's innocence by tracking down the real murderer and handing him over to the law. Along the way the player can also arrest and hand in other members of the gang, whose descriptions are obtained from wanted posters. Scoring is based on the money earned from rewards, gambling at poker or finding gold nuggets while travelling. The game ends if the protagonist dies due to their strength reaching zero, they are killed in a gunfight or are arrested. It is, however, won by successfully tracing, identifying and handing in the real murderer, which usually involves not killing him in a gunfight but taking him in at gunpoint.