The swan song of TAD.
- They're rough.
They're tough.
They're ready to ride!''
Heated Barrel is a 1992 arcade game made by TAD Corporation. It's notably TAD's last game developed before it's bankruptcy and dissolution, released a year before it folded in 1993.
A western-themed shooter similar to TAD's own Blood Bros, the game allows up to four players at once, granting them ability to shoot in eight directions against hordes and hordes of outlaws, Red Indians, and assorted enemies across six levels.
Stage 1 — Ready!
- Advertising by Association: The game's poster would like to remind players that Heated Barrel is "Another straight-shooting hit from TAD, developer of Cabal, Toki and Blood Bros."
- Bears Are Bad News: The outlaws somehow have bears on their side, showing up as uncommon enemies (and a borderline Unique Enemy, there's roughly four of them the entire game). Their claws can do as much damage as bullets, but they can be shot from a distance.
- Breath Weapon: The Red Indian Shaman and the Red Indian Spirit Final Boss both attacks by spitting projectiles from their mouths.
- Brutish Bulls: The second boss is an angry bull that you fight while in a bullpen.
- Character Level: Rank promotions for your player is depicted as star-shaped Sheriff badges, as seen in numerous Westerns. Collecting enough will increase your speed and firepower, although losing a life resets it.
- Chef of Iron: One of the later bosses is a chubby, overweight chef who attacks you by flinging an infinite amount of meat cleavers in your direction. And occasionally fling a steel wok pan that bounces all over the place that can hurt you on contact.
- Clown-Car Base: One area has a horse-drawn carriage covered by a tarp, which is barely enough to hold four people, having hordes and hordes of mooks suddenly leaping from underneath the cloth to ambush you. In a stream of at least a dozen mooks before it stops dispensing them.
- Comedic Underwear Exposure: The bandit leader, after being defeated, will have the bombs on him exploding and blowing up his clothes, leaving in him rags and boxers. In both his fights.
- Desert Skull: The desert shootout level has cattle skeletons randomly decorating the background while you're shooting up bandits.
- Epic Flail: One of the bosses, a huge, musclebound prisoner, whose sole weapon is a ball attached on a chain that he swings at you.
- Flunky Boss: The ghost and the gravedigger can both summon lesser ghosts and imps to attack you from multiple directions.
- Flying Face: The game's Final Boss is a Red Indian Spirit who's a gigantic floating head capable of spitting attacks at you.
- Gatling Good: Mooks armed with Gatling guns will show up periodically, firing their weapons at you on full auto. They're mostly stationary, save for some whose Gatling guns are attached to moving wagons.
- Giant Hands of Doom:
- What drags the gravedigger - a boss you fight in a cemetery - into the ground once you defeat him. For some odd reason.
- The first phase of the Red Indian Spirit have him summoning his gigantic, disembodied hands to pummel you by clapping and pounding. And sometimes, create an energy ball and throw it among themselves while trying to get you hit in-between. Both hands have a Shared Life-Meter though.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Half of the bosses, technically. Keep in mind you're playing a Western-themed arcade game as a cowboy shooting bandits, but then...
- The third boss you fight in a church is a ghost who suddenly materializes from a portrait, and summons lesser ghosts and imps to attack. Somehow it's vulnerable to your bullets.
- The gravedigger seems at least human, but he's somehow given the ability to control the ghosts in the cemetery you fight him in. And to pull flaming skulls out of nowhere to throw at you. And upon being defeated, a gigantic mummified hand suddenly bursts from underneath him and drags the gravedigger into the earth.
- The Final Boss somehow manage to be weirder than the other two Space Fleas, in comparison. Who would expect a demonic Red Indian head to suddenly appear and spit projectiles at you? But then he reverts to a human once you defeat him, so maybe that's just a curse.
- Guns Akimbo:
- A recurring power-up allows you to wield two revolvers at the same time. If you lose a life and respawn, you're back to a single gun until finding that powerup again.
- Some enemy mooks uses two pistols at the same time as well.
- Mercy Invincibility: Granted upon respawning after losing a life, and also through a power-up badge for a few seconds.
- Playing with Fire: The Red Indian Shaman boss can breathe streams of flames in your direction and create fireballs surrounding him which burns you on touch. If you defeat him though he comically turns into a Man on Fire before being Reduced to Dust. Save for his eyes.
- Portal Picture: The ghost boss appears to you from a picture. There's two in the room, and the ghost will periodically come in and out from one picture to another to attack you until you defeat it.
- Recurring Boss: The first boss, a bandit leader, returns halfway through in the fourth stage. Both his battles plays out in the exact same way, the leader firing at you from behind a row of sandbags and occasionally throwing bombs, and you damage him by waiting for him to stick out of cover. He's slightly faster the second round.
- The Savage Indian: Besides bandits, a lot of the game's enemies are Red Indians who can fling tomahawks and loose arrows at you. There's also a fire-breathing Red Indian Shaman serving as a boss.
- Seesaw Catapult: The method used by Red Indian mooks to launch explosives at you from a distance. With one mook putting the explosive on the seesaw's lowered side and the other jumping on it to send a projectile at you.
- Shovel Strike: The gravedigger boss is armed with a shovel that he uses for whacking you up close or fling rocks on you.
- Throw a Barrel at It: A second giant prisoner boss will repeatedly attempt to crush you with a barrel, though you can make him drop his barrel on himself by shooting him enough. He'll just get another barrel from out of nowhere and repeat the same attacks.
- Tunnel King:
- Some of the Red Indian enemies tunnels their way around, popping from underground to ambush you.
- The gravedigger's version of a Teleport Spam? Digging underground, and then popping up elsewhere in the boss area to attack you. He can somehow dig from one corner of the graveyard to another within seconds, faster than your character could walk.
- White Flag: The Final Boss, a demonic floating Red Indian demon head, turns back to human upon defeat, where he then waves a white flag to surrender.
- Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: The flail-swinging prisoner boss somehow turns into a blue soul that rises into heaven once you beat him.
