WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold

Publisher: American Laser Games Developer: American Laser Games Release: 1994

This will be a short one, because honestly there's not much to say about Mad Dog II that I didn't already say about its predecessor.

Once again you play a nameless stranger. Once again you're lead around by the nose at the beginning of the game by same old prospecter. And once again you're hunting for the nefarious Mad Dog McCree. In your way stand “renegade injuns, banditos, and Mad Dog's sleazy crew.”

The general setup is also the same. Rather than sprites randomly popping up over static backgrounds, every scene in Mad Dog II is fully choreographed – the challenge for the player is recognizing which characters are a threat and when. Like the previous game, enemies are only valid targets after a very specific point in the video, and shooting them before that point will yield no result.

Unlike the previous game, there are actually three different paths to follow in Mad Dog II. Early in the game the player gets to choose to follow one of three “guides,” - Buckskin Bonnie, The Professor or Shooting Beaver. No matter which path you choose, though, eventually you'll come back to the final showdown with Mad Dog himself.

From a technical standpoint, Mad Dog II definitely looks a bit better than ALG's earlier games, though it's still not that pretty. This port definitely feels more solid than the first Mad Dog, and the video's cleared up to the point that it's much easier to see targets, though the ones really far from the camera still appear mostly as dark blobs.