Thanks to Flying Tiger Entertainment for the review code

Title: Johnny Turbo’s Arcade: Shoot Out
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $7.99
Release Date: 08/02/2018

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Story

In this arcade gallery shooter, you take control of a vigilante going after a dangerous game, with that being the entirety of the plot as the game infinitely loops after clearing the final level. Per usual for games during this time, there’s little to the experience.

Presentation

Using the same UI as every other Johnny Turbo Game to date, the UI of this rerelease is the same as per usual and everything still applies from my several other reviews, with the different aspect ratios and the filters being available yet again.

For the game itself, Shoot Out looks very similar to Express Raider’s horse segments, likely because it was made in a similar engine. From similar lighting and spritework, the game looks very basic and fitting for the time period, although unlike Express Raider the perspective remains locked throughout every stage. The music is a repetitive loop that plays during each stage that tries to be memorable but ends up not doing so hot. The death noise on the other hand, is surprisingly catchy and upbeat.

Gameplay

Shoot Out is an eight-way shooter that plays very similar to future titles such as Wild Guns and Cabal, where the main goal is to shoot every bad guy in sight and dodge their bullets. You have a button for firing your bullets, and a button for dodging via a roll, which is all you get during your hi-score chase. Playing from a third person over the shoulder view akin to the horse segments in Express Raider, you aim using the left stick and pressing in an upwards direction, while pressing left and right is how you move around. Pressing down-left or down-right is how you aim directly left or right, which leads to a pretty tough control scheme that makes aiming hard to master due to the four different directions you need to memorize in order to quickly respond.

Each stage consists of numerous gang members who will appear somewhere on the screen and fire at you, whether they pop out of windows or run out in the open. Shooting them before they shoot you is all that needs to be done, really, but that’s easier said than done. For one thing, enemy bullets in this game are white to the point that they become really difficult to see, and playing in TV mode caused a lot of frustration from seemingly invisible bullets hitting me, although I do find some stages have better visibility than others.

Another aspect to be aware of is that like Express Raider, there will sometimes be innocent bystanders wandering around, and shooting them will cause a life loss, just like in that game. Otherwise, it’s just a case of levels looping infinitely as you aim for a high score, and like with Express Raider you can choose to continue and keep your score from resetting if you choose to, or challenge yourself in order to keep the experience going.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Shoot Out is another decent entry in the Johnny Turbo Arcade line, and while it is a much better hi-score chaser than Two Crude, it unfortunately suffers from dated gameplay, iffy visibility and the continued lack of DIP Switch options. While it can be a lot of fun once you get the hang of this game’s quirks, I still found that this game’s control scheme didn’t translate as well to the Switch as I would have hoped, which led to me barely playing it compared to Express Raider.

I give a Johnny Turbo’s Arcade: Shoot Out a 6 out of 10.