Cheyenne

Cheyenne is a 1984 arcade release from Exidy, built for one player and presented from a side view. Exidy was among the American manufacturers building light-gun cabinets in the eighties – shooting machines were the company's speciality, and a title with a Western ring to it fits that line.

Shooting cabinets of the period worked on a principle that is hard to reproduce anywhere else: the player aimed a physical object at the screen, and the machine registered hits by reading brightness at the point the gun was pointing. That directness was the selling point, and it kept gun games in arcades long after home consoles had arrived.

1984 found the American arcade industry recovering from a sharp collapse. The market was clearing out, weaker manufacturers disappeared, and the survivors looked for ways to differentiate themselves from home computers, which had just become affordable. The usual answer was hardware nobody could buy for a living room – oversized cabinets and peripherals like the light gun.

Technically the cabinets still held the advantage. Custom boards, more moving objects on screen and sound chips beyond anything an eight-bit home machine offered produced a difference a player noticed within seconds.

You can launch this one directly in your browser on OldGame.cz, where the same page also carries its release year and screen images.