Nintendo Celebrates Back To The Future Day By Re-releasing Wild Gunman

Nintendo has found a creative way to participate in the Back to the Future Day festivities today. They announced that they're going to re-release Wild Gunman, an NES game featured in Back to the Future: Part II.

When Marty McFly arrives in the year 2015 in the film, he visits an eighties-themed restaurant and finds an arcade cabinet of light gun game Wild Gunman. He decides to play a round of the shooter and quickly guns down a group of enemies. The kids from the future watching him aren't impressed.

"You have to use your hands?" an eight-year-old Elijah Wood asks, incredulously.

"That's like a baby's toy!" says a second kid, who didn't grow up to be a hobbit.

Wild Gunman, originally released for arcades in 1974, was adapted for the NES and its Zapper in 1985. That short clip of BttF 2 shows you pretty much all you need to know about the game. When an enemy's eyes flashed, you had to draw your gun and take them down before they could shoot you. The game was never re-released on modern systems. The gunmen did make a cameo in Super Smash Bros. Wii U and 3DS, though.

The game will be available through Virtual Console on Wii U starting Thursday. Your old Zapper won't work, though. Instead, you'll shoot virtual bullets with your Wiimote. Only a European release has been confirmed thus far. However, the version being released in Europe is the US edition of the game so that should give hope to American gamers that they'll be able to follow in McFly's footsteps as well.

Back to the Future Day, if you're not aware, celebrates the fact that today is the exact date that Marty McFly arrived in the future. Nintendo's far from the only company commemorating the occasion. For example, Universal Pictures created a trailer for Jaws 19, a fictional movie seen in BttF2. Rocket League developers Psyonix is adding a DeLorean to their game.