The Lone Ranger
Main game
3.64 average rating based on 11 ratings
- Developers
- Konami
- Publishers
- Konami
- Franchises
- The Lone Ranger
- Platforms
- Nintendo Entertainment System
- Genres
- Adventure, Platform, Shooter
- Themes
- Action, Fantasy, Historical
Release Dates
User Stats
How Long Is The Lone Ranger?
Are you a Lone enough Ranger to rescue the President?
The Lone Ranger's story is simple: the President has been kidnapped by outlaw "Butch Cavendish", and you, "the Lone Ranger", must kick his butt. Said journey of adventure will take you across eight stages, culminating in the final showdown against Butch Cavendish. It's a decent-length game for the NES, though the length of the stages is rather inconsistent (you only get passwords at the end of each stage). For example, the third area involves exploring a large area and taking down three tricky bosses; the fourth area has a very linear path and only one boss to defeat. You'll face off against outlaws, desperadoes, wild animals, and ninjas. (Yes, there are freaking ninjas in this game. Foreign immigrants = ninjas. They're also the most annoying enemies in the game.)
You have a small arsenal in the game, but most of the time you'll be using the Lone Ranger's signature silver bullets, which always kill mooks in one shot and pass through multiple enemies. You can punch people, which is exactly as useful as it sounds, and the standard bullets occasionally take two shots to kill mooks in the top-down and side-scroller stages—which frequently led me to taking hits accidentally …
The Lone Ranger's story is simple: the President has been kidnapped by outlaw "Butch Cavendish", and you, "the Lone Ranger", must kick his butt. Said journey of adventure will take you across eight stages, culminating in the final showdown against Butch Cavendish. It's a decent-length game for the NES, though the length of the stages is rather inconsistent (you only get passwords at the end of each stage). For example, the third area involves exploring a large area and taking down three tricky bosses; the fourth area has a very linear path and only one boss to defeat. You'll face off against outlaws, desperadoes, wild animals, and ninjas. (Yes, there are freaking ninjas in this game. Foreign immigrants = ninjas. They're also the most annoying enemies in the game.)
You have a small arsenal in the game, but most of the time you'll be using the Lone Ranger's signature silver bullets, which always kill mooks in one shot and pass through multiple enemies. You can punch people, which is exactly as useful as it sounds, and the standard bullets occasionally take two shots to kill mooks in the top-down and side-scroller stages—which frequently led me to taking hits accidentally until I went solely with silver bullets. You can also purchase TNT, which you can only carry 10 sticks of and have a sad blast radius. (They function as smart-bombs in the first-person sections, but have a delay that will likely get you shot.) One of the most unique aspects of The Lone Ranger is that your gun actually has a limited capacity—though you can purchase up to 50 clips of each ammo type, each clip has six shots and must be reloaded by pressing B again when empty. Keeping an eye on your ammo becomes as important as being a good shot.
As mentioned thus far, The Lone Ranger has three main modes of gameplay, and unlike many games, manages to do a solid job with each mode. The top-down mode is most common, with the Lone Ranger walking around towns or hostile areas, dodging bullets and blasting outlaws. Simple, but takes quite a bit of strategy to avoid enemy shots. The side-scroller sections add platforming, and while the Lone Ranger controls well (you can shoot in any direction but downward), there's a few jumps that go from "tricky" to just plain annoying. The first-person sections can be played with the Zapper, and probably should if you value your sanity, because they are extremely difficult. While wandering the first-person areas, you'll encounter ambushes along the way, requiring you to blast outlaws and their thrown projectiles from all sides. Later ambushes requires lightning reflexes to gun down all enemies without taking hits, and one poor move can lead to getting a huge chunk of your health blasted off. There's plenty of bosses along the way, and while the early few can be brute-force beaten in a damage race, later bosses will require thinking and reflexes to avoid damage. (Except for the ninja boss who creates two clones of himself. It's like the developers forgot what silver bullets do.)
The Lone Ranger is quite a challenging game, with plenty of enemies and health pick-ups being rare. Once you get good at dodging bullets and gunning down waves of outlaws, it's a very rewarding game with a decent amount of variety in the gameplay.
Beat. When I started going around the 1st town in top down view, talking to people and visiting the shop, I was getting Jrpg vibes. Until I bought the short barreled and shot some hostile guys around town. However upon restarting I noticed I already had a gun with bullets so opted not to buy the short. No idea if it actually was an upgrade from the starter gun. As I moved around the overworld checking out other towns and getting into a couple field battles, the thing that struck me the most was that enemies dropped $5 while 1 bullet cost $10, and some enemies took 2 shots to kill. Combat was not profitable! Then on top of this were $50 to heal, $20 for better silver bullets, $30 for TNT and 2 better guns to buy. So I resolved to kill as many enemies as possible using fists. Some guys in town had no weapon so they were easy to punch. The knife throwing guys were also easy, but gun guys were tricky and I did a lot of save state scumming for melee without taking hits. The biggest problem was the long range of both my melee …
Beat. When I started going around the 1st town in top down view, talking to people and visiting the shop, I was getting Jrpg vibes. Until I bought the short barreled and shot some hostile guys around town. However upon restarting I noticed I already had a gun with bullets so opted not to buy the short. No idea if it actually was an upgrade from the starter gun. As I moved around the overworld checking out other towns and getting into a couple field battles, the thing that struck me the most was that enemies dropped $5 while 1 bullet cost $10, and some enemies took 2 shots to kill. Combat was not profitable! Then on top of this were $50 to heal, $20 for better silver bullets, $30 for TNT and 2 better guns to buy. So I resolved to kill as many enemies as possible using fists. Some guys in town had no weapon so they were easy to punch. The knife throwing guys were also easy, but gun guys were tricky and I did a lot of save state scumming for melee without taking hits. The biggest problem was the long range of both my melee attack and enemy contact damage. I often moved far too close and took damage when the characters did not have to be touching at all during the melee animation. Getting shot was also a problem especially if a new enemy appeared from behind or as the screen scrolled. The best time I found to melee was against an enemy that could be approached from the left or right with enough room to line up my guy's head below their shot, then punch them in the leg. Around corners was another good time for melee by timing the rush between shots. It was also possible to weave around shots to close in if the guy was out in the open but that was the most tricky. Shooting was more fun and safer. With regular punching against opportune enemies I was able to easily afford everything, ending with about $1700. I think there must have been other sources of money that I did not notice. There was a target shooting and poker minigame for gambling income but I would rather grind random enemies. Shop prices doubled for 1 stage around the half way point so I did not buy ammo there. Enemies also dropped double there. I did find that there were plenty of unnecessary areas with no reward, such as some entirely optional towns, dead end buildings with enemies, and even npc buildings.
Most of the game took place in this top down mode, the rest was split between 2D side view platforming straight out of Castlevania, and 1st person dungeon crawling/light gun shooting. The light gun parts were by far the most difficult parts of the game and I had to turn on slow motion mode. They featured ambushes from all 4 directions and you had to press the talk/jump button + direction to face that way. It was too much to keep up with at normal speed. Some enemies dropped ammo and health but it was always the exact same ones. This became more apparent later on with the horseback light gun field battles that could occur many times. It was the exact same sequence every time. I almost ran out of ammo in the 1st dungeon so made sure to keep topped up for the rest of the game. The dungeons were not large or complex though. The most complex areas were in top down view. The side view combat was the most difficult because of fewer directions to move, but the guy could shoot in every direction except straight down, crouch, and drop down through platforms. Some enemies could still be safely meleed by either punching their shins or landing next to them. The final 2D stage was the only place I used TNT because of enemies shooting at me from pits. I only used silver bullets on the mirror image ninja boss and final boss. I should have used more because some bosses were very difficult. 1 boss was in light gun mode while the rest were split between the other 2 modes, including the final boss being 2D. It took a lot of save state scumming to beat him as I figured out where to move to avoid getting shot. By the end he was jumping constantly between the back of the train and tracks as I timed shots to hit him every time he landed and never giving him a chance to shoot back. A lot of the bosses were deadly until I figured out a trick to exploit their behavior. All but the early bosses required slow motion.
This was an impressive game for the NES with every mode solidly crafted. Difficulty was a bit high and I would have preferred ammo drops from enemies and loot caches in out of the way places instead of having to save and scrimp money. Perhaps even with more things to buy. Bosses were annoying with how many hits they took, especially that damn eagle, but if it was realistic it would be too easy.
7.8/10