Ed Hunter (PC) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
1,196A playthrough of Iron Maiden and Synthetic Dimensions' 1999 light gun shooter for PCs running Windows 95, Ed Hunter.
I played with the mouse, but the game did officially support PC light guns in Windows 9x.
Ed Hunter, Iron Maiden's video game, launched as part of the band's 1999 hits album of the same name. It was a three disc set, with the game occupying one of them (though its install program takes up a small amount of space of another).
Ed Hunter is a first-person rail shooter, much like Virtua Cop and House of the Dead. You play as Eddie, the iconic character represented on all of Iron Maiden's album covers. He has to shoot his way through landscapes based on some of these album covers, based on (in the following order): Killers, Piece of Mind, Number of the Beast, Live After Death, Powerslave, and Somewhere in Time.
The prerendered graphics look a bit dated for a game from 1999, but they capture the feel of the awesome album art really well. The sound is obviously the high point of the presentation. Unfortunately, I could not include such a large portion of an Iron Maiden's greatest hits album in this video. Obviously.
But, not being satisfied with leaving the recording silent but for the shots and yells, I got midi files of all of the default tracks for the levels shown (thanks to www.maidenmidi.com, be sure to check them out!), and recorded them through the WinGroove software synthesizer that was popular with users of Win 3.1/9x. They certainly aren't satisfying replacements, but I did what I could within the limits set by YouTube. In the game itself, they're all full-length unedited tracks directly from their original album recordings.
As far as the game itself goes, it's alright. It's not on the level of Sega's arcade efforts, but it plays pretty smoothly. The thing that holds it back is the length of the levels. In order to make the game appear longer than it really is (I assume), the camera will often pan back and forth, reusing the same angles multiple times to throw more waves of gun-fodder your way. It would have been much better without the repetition, but it's still pretty good the way it is.
If you're a Maiden fan, you probably already own a copy of this since it was part of the CD set, and you already know how awesome it is. If you aren't a Maiden fan: 1. What's wrong with you? and 2. You probably won't really appreciate what has been done here.
If only all bands showed their appreciation to their fans in such awesome ways!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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