Blood Bros. is a 1990 arcade shooter from TAD Corporation, the Japanese developer responsible for Cabal back in 1988. This one is a spiritual follow-up to that game, set in a Wild West world and built around the same over-the-shoulder shooting style that made Cabal such a hit in arcades two years earlier.
The story is exactly the kind of setup arcade games of this era did so well. Two blood brothers, one a cowboy and one a Native American, join forces to track down Big Bad John, described in the game as the most wanted outlaw in Dodge City. Up to two players can take on the game together, with player one controlling the cowboy and player two taking the Native American role.
What sets this apart from a lot of shooters of the time is how destructible the world around you is. Barrels, glass bottles, bridges, buildings, mountains and entire landscapes can all be levelled as the action unfolds. When every enemy on a stage is taken out, the remaining structures collapse on their own, the screen clears, and the brothers do a comical victory dance as they walk off into the distance. That detail alone tells you a lot about the personality TAD put into this one.
Players carry unlimited ammunition for their primary gun alongside a limited supply of dynamite sticks, which work in a similar way to grenades and deliver far more damage than standard fire. The working title for the game, found buried in dead code inside another TAD release called Sky Smasher, was "Cabal II In West." A pirate version of Blood Bros. also circulated under the name West Story.
Despite the title screen displaying 1990, the game was not released in Japan until January 1991. In North America the game was published by Fabtek rather than TAD Corporation directly. The game ran on Cabal-related hardware, directed by Hiro Kakiuchi with music composed by Yuji Tezuka and Yusaku Aoki.
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