Tierras Salvajes - NEW shooter for Hypseus! (Official Announcement) Now available.
If you're a regular viewer of my YouTube channel then you must already know about Picmatic and their seminal full-motion-video arcade lightgun opus, Marbella Vice. If not, then maybe you should subscribe so you don't miss out in future! 😉
Marbella Vice was Picmatic’s stylish crime drama that looked like it wandered out of a telenovela and into a shooting gallery. It was one of three such LaserDisc-based arcade games that the Spanish company developed, inspired no doubt, by the work of American Laser Games with their better known lightgun classics such as Mad Dog McCree, Crime Patrol, and Who Shot Johnny Rock.
Tierras Salvajes, is of the same breed. It's Picmatic's third and final foray into this world of live-action LaserDisc based shooters. This time set in the fan-favourite mythic American West, complete with saloons, shootouts, and sweeping plains where lawmen and outlaws settled things with bullets and bluster.
The year is sometime after the American Civil War. You play as (I think) a cavalry soldier tasked with hunting down a ruthless gang of bandits who terrorise the territory. Outlaws who commit their crimes disguised as native resistance fighters, sowing fear and hate in their wake. But make no mistake, this is no political struggle. It's a smokescreen for brutality and greed.
You arrive with a rifle, and the weight of justice on your shoulders. And from there, it’s all quick reflexes and cold decisions.
Like Mad Dog McCree or Marbella Vice, Tierras Salvajes uses full-motion video to tell its story, meaning that the entire drama unfolds like scenes from a film. Miss your shot, and you’ll experience your character fall. Time it right, and you’ll gun down your enemies before they even draw. It’s cinematic, and unmistakably European in tone, even when dressed in American frontier garb.
Both the original Spanish performance and its official English-language dub have been fully preserved and are available to use in this Hypseus release. So if you're a Spanish speaker seeking to enjoy the game as it was originally intended, you can. Or if otherwise you don't understand Spanish and favour the export version’s slightly stilted but charming English language delivery, then you still can. Just head into the game's service menu and toggle the language with no fuss, and no patching. Even the on-screen text has been fully translated for both languages.
The game runs on any system that supports Hypseus—Windows PCs, Macs, Raspberry Pis, and so on. And of course, you can use any modern lightgun setup to play it, including the Sinden Lightgun, Gun4IR, and others. If you don't have such a weapon, a standard mouse works just fine (though a lightgun is more fun). And if you're using the recent release of Hypseus 2.11.6, both players can even play using analog gamepads.
Proponents of the Amiga emulator, WinUAE are already very aware of this game as the original game ROM will run in it. But while the game can be played in the emulator, "playable" is perhaps a generous term. The experience is choppy, unresponsive, and lacks the polish needed to enjoy the game as it was meant to be played. And this is where the Hypseus port changes that. Developed once again by LutherGond, the Hypseus port revives the game and restores it to its intended pacing and responsiveness, finally letting Tierras Salvajes shine as a proper arcade experience.
You might remember the name LutherGond as the talent behind the recent Hypseus releases, Fast Draw Showdown, Gallagher's Gallery, and Marbella Vice, and who is also responsible for the two-player adaptations of the classic American Laser Games lightgun shooters. And true to form, Tierras Salvajes also offers two-player cooperative play. So you can choose to either ride out alone or team up with a friend.
Though I co-authored the Hypseus port of Marbella Vice, I wasn't directly involved in this project. But I’ve followed it closely and it’s a thrill to see another all-but-forgotten relic from Picmatic's brief LaserDisc experiment finally recreated in an entertaining and enjoyable form. It's not a difficult game, and it's not a long game, but Tierras Salvajes is fun to play. It's a Spanish take on the American Wild West, told through live-action video, lightgun gameplay, and the grain of analog film.
So load up. Choose your language. And step into the Wild Lands.
But before you do, remember to like my YouTube video, share it with anyone who you think might be interested and subscribe, if you haven't already, so you can be among the first to find out about other releases like this in the future.
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If you use RetroPie, Hypseus can be installed directly from RetroPie-Setup. Otherwise, it is available from DirtBagXon's GitHub repo at https://github.com/DirtBagXon/hypseus-singe
All the files you need for this release of Tierras Salvajes can be obtained from the link at https://tinyurl.com/tierras-salvajes
Support for Hypseus Singe is available from DBX's Discord server at https://discord.hypseus.net
The bezel that I use was created by me and is available in the Bezel's channel of the Hypseus Discord. There are two versions, one that incorporates a Sinden Border and another without.
The logo image at the top of this page was made by me to replicate one of the game's logos i have seen in Picamatic's promotional material. I was not able to find one of a high enough resolution to be usable in my bezel and video thumbnails so I made this one. You can use it too if you need something for your front-end, video thumbnail and so on.
That's all from me today. Now go and play it!
You can support me at https://ko-fi.com/widge
The video of this blog can be seen here:
And my full gameplay video can be seen here: