High Noon

High Noon is a western action game for the Commodore 64, developed and published by Britain's Ocean Software in 1984. The title borrows the most iconic scenario the genre has, the midday showdown, and the game delivers exactly that: a dusty frontier town, gunslingers and quick-draw shootouts viewed from the side.

It is a single-player game of the old arcade school. Rounds are short, the rules are readable at a glance, and everything depends on reflexes rather than long-term progression. In 1984 this was the dominant shape of home-computer entertainment, and the C64 with its colourful graphics and distinctive SID sound chip was an ideal host for it.

Ocean Software would go on to become one of Europe's biggest publishers of the eighties, but in 1984 it was still a young company experimenting across genres. High Noon comes from that formative period, and its western theme stood out at a time when cowboys were surprisingly rare on computer screens compared to space ships and mazes.

As a piece of history it shows the early British software scene finding its voice: cheeky, fast to produce and aimed squarely at the pocket-money market.

The controls are deliberately simple enough to learn in seconds, with difficulty rising in the score-chasing rhythm of the era, when friends took turns at one keyboard and kept records on paper. Played in that spirit, the game still makes perfect sense today.

This one is playable, too. OldGame.cz lets you fire up the duel right in your browser and see how a 1984 shootout actually feels.