It’s common knowledge that Nintendo made novelty toys and Hanafuda cards long before they arrived to video games. While they reshaped the industry, their games prior to Donkey Kong are less renowned. There’s good reason for that. Wild Gunman, their first arcade game, is notoriously rare. There is no evidence that a working cabinet exists anywhere in the world. Until now. A Canadian arcade repairman and YouTuber took on the challenge of reconstructing one after coming into possession of its most integral parts.
“One day in July 2025, as I was browsing the arcade parts category on eBay i came across an auction that didn’t make a lot of sense to me,” said Callan “74XX” Brown in his video, “a set of Nintendo branded film reels.”
Dating back to 1974, Wild Gunman was Nintendo’s first arcade game, but it was not a video game per se. Using two simultaneous film reel projectors, the light gun western would alternate between them depending on where you shot, triggering a winning or losing state. Making the game, Gunpei Yokoi requested Fuji use Tetoron, a polyester mix that could be more durable. That said, Yokoi still believed it would begin to wear out after 1,000 play sessions, never mind attract modes. While the full motion game was a novel hit at launch, its lifetime ability to pull a profit seemed dubious, nevermind the video invasion and advent Laserdiscs.
Surviving copies of the Wild Gunman reels are incredibly rare. In 2021, historian Kate Willært believed that the cleanest footage of Nintendo’s first game wasn’t in arcades, but in an underground experimental short film and the boneheaded ‘80s comedy Gas. Later that year, a collector came across two of the four film reels.
Puzzled by seeing film reels in an arcade auction, Brown noticed the quality Nintendo control stickers, painting them as the legitimate article. It’s possible these were the holy grail. After placing a winning bid and buying a classroom 16mm projector from a nearby town (thank you Ontario education system), Brown was able to watch the Wild Gunman reels, likely their first screening in 40 years.
Getting the footage digitized, Brown then got to work reconstructing Nintendo’s historic cabinet himself. Reverse engineering patents and making use of open source software, he’s built a magnificent modernized replica of Wild Gunman. With video projections from scans of the original stock, the elusive films will be spared from further distress. Brown says he intends to showcase his work in local conventions, such as Ontario PinFest.
“Thank you for joining me on my journey to make what might be the only playable Wild Gunman ‘74 in North America,” says Brown, “maybe the world.”
