Title: Western Gun
Manufacturer: Taito
Year: 1975
Hardware: There is no CPU, runs on TTL-based hardware (this information is yet to be confirmed)
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Description
Two-player cowboy shoot out.
I believe this game may be connected to Gun Fight, the oldest game emulated by MAME (at the time of this writing). Gun Fight is a well documented game, below is the typical information you will find regarding the game:
"...Gunfight, which was designed on TTL-based hardware by Taito, which was adapted to 8080 hardware by Nutting, to be the first coin-op to run on microprocessor-based hardware." (Alliance Corporation MAME history.dat file, maintained by Mark Longridge)
"...Midway president Hank Ross decided to import from a Japanese company called Taito a game called Gun Fight and started the Japanese invasion of video games in the U.S." (History Of Arcade Firsts, maintained by Curtis Hart)
After searching the official Taito timeline, I found no trace of a game called Gun Fight, instead I found Western Gun in the 1975 section, the exact same year in wich a japanese Gun Fight was supposed to have been released by Taito. Western Gun is a perfect match for the Taito TTL-based hardware Gun Fight (just take a look at the "How to play" section on the flyer below).
So, what I suspect is that there never was a japanese game called Gun Fight imported by Midway, it was called Western Gun.
In any case, both games run on totally different hardware, and although the gameplay and concept is very similar, the game itself is different, Gun Fight does not have the rocks that appear on the Western Gun screenshot below.
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Emulation Status
Beeing a true arcade video game there is no reason why it can't be emulated, it has no processor or software code so it has to be emulated at the circuit level by writing an entire digital logic simulator. (If this info is incorrect, please let me know)
There is no known emulation under development at this time.
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Screenshots
There are no screenshots available, however I took the liberty to include the Taito flyer
