Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show

When I first looked at Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, I expected something between a shooter and a theatrical show simulator. Instead, I stumbled upon a weird hybrid creature that doesn't even know if it wants to be entertainment or an educational attempt at a digital variation of a Wild West circus.

This 1992 game puts you in the role of someone in the spirit of the famous showman, trying to organize a wild west show. The format has a sporty feel mixed with management elements — you have to compose acts, shoot at targets, perform tricks with horses and weapons. It's not a real simulation. It's more a collection of mini-games thrown together into one package meant to imitate the authentic charm of the wild west.

As you play, you'll discover that individual sections function at different levels of quality. The shooting mini-games are straightforward — aim, press the button, hope for accuracy. Mouse controls in DOS from that era aren't something I'd write hymns about. The horse acts feel the most half-baked. Overall, the game is pulled along by incomplete courage — sometimes it tries, sometimes it just gives up and leaves you with only animations and waiting.

Over three decades, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show hasn't become a classic or a memory people happily return to. It's more of a curiosity — a reminder of a time when developers tried to do something interesting with very limited hardware. Today I remember it more as an experiment that only partially succeeded.

If you fancy retro curiosity from the days when DOS games didn't need to make much sense, go for it. You can find it in a browser without problems. But don't come expecting something particularly smooth or adrenaline-pumping. It's more about looking at it and saying: "Ah, so that's what an attempt at a theatrical simulator looked like in the early nineties."