In honor of the Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer from earlier this week, I think it’s high time we take the ‘Shop Contest to the uh, wickey wild wild, wicky wicky wild, wicky wild, wicky wicky wild wild wild west.
The Western genre is one that we don’t get too much of in video games. While the occasional Mad Dog McCree, Gun, or Call of Juarez trickles out, I think we can probably agree that the Official Video Game Genre Rankings have “Western” nestled somewhere between “Pirate” and “Janitor.”
So it’s up to us, the intrepid ‘Shop Creators, to turn other video games into Westerns. We need to make Final Fantasy into Sundown Swordfight. Super Mario Bros.? More like Super Cattle Herding Partners. I promise you that all of your favorite video game characters and creatures would have a better time, or at least a more silhouetted time, if they were crammed into a Western genre work.
In this week’s ‘Shop Contest, I want you to put video games into Westerns or turn Westerns into video games. Whatever you’ve got, I want it, even if I’ve gotta take it at gunpoint. Good luck!
The rest of the rules and instructions are below:
How To Upload Images — Instructions
1. Create your ‘Shop and save it to your desktop. Images must be at least 636 pixels wide.
2. Go to the bottom of this post
3. This brings up a comment window. Click “Choose file” if you’re uploading your ‘shop from your desktop
4. Alternatively, you can upload the ‘Shop to a free image hosting service. I suggest imgur. Then paste the image’s URL into the field that says “Image URL.” Note: this must be the URL of the image itself, not the page where it is displayed. That means the URL ends in .jpg, .gif, .png, whatever.
5. Add editorial commentary and hit submit and your image will load. If it doesn’t, upload the image to imgur and paste the image URL as a comment. I will look at it.
6. Large-size images may not upload properly, though we have seen some animated .gifs upwards of 5 MB. If you’re still having trouble uploading the image, try to keep its longest dimension (horizontal or vertical) under 1000 pixels, or the whole thing under 2 MB.