 Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss- NAS STRUNK! When thinking of the Super Nintendo Mouse Peripheral many peoples minds go straight to Mario Paint without realizing that the mouse is actually coordinates with a lot more games. I covered one of them a couple months ago titled ShiENZ Revenge a first-person gallery shooter game where you hurl stars at enemies while defending yourself with a dagger. Another decent playthrough featuring the Super Nintendo mouse is Tinstar developed by software creations the same people behind Equinox, Plock, and Ken Griffey Jr. presents Major League Baseball. Man, it's been way too long since I mentioned that game. Tintstar is a Wild West themed game, similar to Wild Guns. Only in this case, not only can you use the D-pad on a regular controller and the Super Nintendo Mouse, but also the Super Scope, which is nice. You can adjust the sensitivity of the cursor for all three in the options menu. The game is structured in a way that you're following Tintstar, the name of the character you're playing as, in his first week as a new sheriff in town. Each day of the week, or level, has four different sections. You start every level with a training session, which is a nice touch. Gallery shooters aren't exactly the kind of games where you can just pick up and play and be skilled at right away, so I appreciate these sections being here. After that comes the real meat of the game, where you're defending stage coaches and trains, shooting your way through jail breaks and cattle stampetes, stopping bank robberies and bar room brawls. There's some inventive stuff here, and what makes it stand out even further is the art style. It's got a similar robotic Wild West motif as Wild Guns, only Tintstar has much more of a playful Saturday morning cartoon vibe, a comedic earthworm gym kind of a slant, and that's also represented in the story. What I really like is that so much of each stage is interactive. You can shoot just about anything on the screen and either destroy it, or elicit some kind of reaction. It's really well done. The music here is also pitch perfect, recalling some old and neo-morecone pieces. What makes this game much different from other gallery shooters like Wild Guns is that you don't control Tintstar, you're only tasked with protecting him while you clear the screen of enemies and projectiles around him. Once you get past these sections, you move on to one on one fights, and you're shifted to a first person perspective. It's a showdown with just one character, but the game has you shoot the draw icon when it appears in a different spot each time before you can fire a shot at your opponent. In addition to all that, there's also protection missions as well, where, for example, you have to save regular bar patrons from the clutches of evildoers, and failure to do so results in a loss of health. I would not call this game all that difficult, but these sections here are by far the toughest part of the game and take quite a bit of practice to get any good at, and I should mention that this is a long playthrough spanning well over an hour. Some of you may get burnt out on this one before you finish it, because the gameplay is so simple, and that's understandable. But there are incentives to play through this one. For instance, there's three different endings you can achieve based on how much money you're able to accumulate. Finish the game with less than $750,000 and you get the quote-unquote worst ending. Finish between $750,000 and $1 million you get a better ending, and finish over a million and you get the best ending. There are plenty of opportunities to earn extra money throughout the game, with all kinds of bonus games thrown in at the end of certain stages. Money is also required to save your game, and that eats into your total, so keep that in mind as well. So yeah, Tinstar is worth playing today. The developers took a simple idea of a gallery shooter and injected it with tons of personality with the art direction, and gave the game some unique structuring that keeps the shooting aspect from getting old. This is a pretty long playthrough too, so I really appreciated the variety in all of the different missions. Tinstar should be commended for taking a simple idea as far as it did, and in addition to that, this is only one of four North American Super Nintendo titles compatible with both the mouse and the superscope, the other three being T2, the arcade game, Lamborghini American Challenge, and Operation Thunderbolt. It's really nice to have that kind of flexibility, and if I had to recommend the best way to play this one, believe it or not, it's with the mouse, especially with the sensitivity turned all the way up. It worked really well for me. Tinstar is also a cheap cartridge at around $7, so I definitely recommend tracking this one down. Thanks for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.