Lucky and Wild - Arcade

Not the best title, try Cars and Guns

It's not quite on the rails shooter fun, it's not quite off the rails shooter fun, but the sheer idea alone of being able to drive down the street using a sit-down racer and then slap two extra guns into the dashboard, makes for a lot of fun assuming one player doesn't mind not being able to drive and just shoots things. Lucky and Wild actually brings something a little unique to the mix-up of sprite based light gun/joystick games.

Nope, not seeing the appeal of coming to this place. Not at all... ... Maybe...

It rides upon the idea of Lucky is an upstanding member of society, straight laced and smartly dressed with a reserved personality, Wild is a gung-ho crazy man who lets the trigger talk more than his mouth but never has a bad thing to say about anyone, together they fight crime and drive around town getting into more scrapes and driving mishaps than the Blues Brothers do. (Don't watch the 2000 film though).

This guy gets off lightly with just a Road Rash beating.

So what we have in Lucky and Wild is a 2 player shooter where one player also has to be dexterous enough to drive AND shoot while the second player just shoots. As such there's the accelerator and brake pedals (no clutch thankfully, we drive automatic here) and in the right hand for player one is a gun, while player 2 just gets the gun and has no control over where player one is driving aside from punching them in the arm if they drive into hazards. The arm punching becomes a quick and effective control method.

Drive and gun, shoot anything and everything that moves while player 1 drives and shoots.

Lucky and Wild plays out like an 80s cop show involving fast car chases and excessive levels of inaccurate gunfire from everyone involved. Except for the gunfire part. Our two protagonists will happily spout phrases and warnings and become more and more upset while their beloved car (which is about as much of a character in this as our heroes) takes more and more damage because the players are either not driving around trouble or not killing/destroying threats fast enough.

I can hear the Peter Gunn theme in the distance... From here to Chicago.

Each level within Lucky and Wild, has a boss and with that boss is a timer to take them down and decipher their weakness. For example, the first boss cannot be shot or blown up and is only defeated if you kill everyone on board (including guys with rockets and grenades) when they pop out to take a shot at you. Later bosses include trucks, monster trucks and more automobile related fun. While at the end of each level you get to go to a cat girl themed repair shop (a sort of cat-house I guess...) and the points/score you earn are converted into replenished health and an abundance of lipstick marks over our heroes faces.

Get points, score bonus, gather health.

The music and sound effects complement each other like Miley Cyrus does a Wrecking ball, badly and worth seeing once but you then wish you hadn't. The sound effects are over the top and actually add to the high paced action of the game while the music tends to be drowned out though what you can hear, fits almost perfectly as a theme tune to an 80s/90s cop show with a fast car. But for the most parts it's the onomatopoeic noises of Booms, Bangs and Phoomps (I'm claiming this one) that will ring out through the speakers in this arcade more than anything else.

More tank than truck, and this is one of the easier bosses.

Overall, Lucky and Wild is worth the play but I'd recommend having two players for the experience, some of the sections can be brutally painful on the health bar with the act of being swamped and swarmed by grenades, rockets, bombs, choppers, bikes, gunmen and plenty more, ALL AT ONCE. But then it's clear that some of these parts are just credit sucks to empty your pocket out, it's not impossible to beat the game on a credit but could end up being more effort than it's actually worth doing.

That's the best body work I've seen after all the bullets and bombs it took earlier