Gun.Smoke

Gun.Smoke is a vertical scrolling shoot 'em up arcade game released in 1985. It was ported to the NES and is also included in Capcom Classics Collection (for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox) and Capcom Arcade Cabinet (for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360). The game has a Western theme and centers around Billy Bob, a bounty hunter who is after vicious criminals of the Wild West. This game is considered to be one of the hardest games Capcom ever made.

Despite the game's name and settning, it has no connection to the 1955 Western TV series of the same name. To emphasize this lack of connection, there is a period between the Gun and the Smoke in the game's name.

Gameplay

Gun.Smoke is a vertical scrolling shooter game, in which the screen scrolls upward automatically. Players only have three ways to shoot; using three buttons for left, right, and center shooting. However, a player can also change the way Billy shoots through button combinations. Players can die by getting shot or struck by enemies but improve protection by getting special items, including a horse, for protection up to three hits; boots, for speed of movement; bullets, for faster shots; and rifles, for shot length. These items are found by shooting barrels and rifles, boots, and bullets can stock up to five.

There are also other items that are used for points like stars, bottles, bags, dragonflies, and cows, but two other items to watch out for are the Yashichi (Capcom's version of a 1-Up) and the cattle skull, which reduces Billy's power. There are obstacles in the game such as streams, buildings, and hills but they do not cause damage to Billy even if he is caught between the screen and the obstacle. The Bosses in the boss battles have a big life gauge with sometimes four to six blocks of life, which proves to be a real challenge to players because they had to survive long enough to take out the boss and various minions.

Levels and Bosses

Arcade version:

Round	Boss	Boss Weapon	Reward
Round 1	Master	Winchester	$ 10000
Round 2	Roy	Knife	$ 12000
Round 3	Ninja	Darts	$ 15000
Round 4	Cutter	Boomerang	$ 15000
Round 5	Pig Joe	Dynamite	$ 20000
Round 6	Wolf Chief	Shot Gun	$ 80000
Round 7	Goldsmith	Double Rifle	$ 20000
Round 8	Los Pubro	Double Pistol	$ 25000
Round 9	Fat Man	Machine Gun	$ 30000
Round 10	Wingate Family	Machine Gun & Rifle	$ 80000

Each level in the game is given a name in the NES version. These are the names of each level and the bosses of them:

Round	Boss	Boss Weapon	Prize Money
Round 1 - Hicksville	Bandit Bill	Rifle	$10,000
Round 2 - The Boulders	Cutter	Boomerang	$12,000
Round 3 - Comanche Village	Devil Hawk	Fire Ball	$25,000
Round 4 - Death Mountain	Ninja	Darts	$20,000
Round 5 - Cheyenne River	Fatman Joe	Bomb Gun	$20,000
Round 6 - Fort Wingate	Wingate	Machine Gun	$30,000

From the arcade version to the NES one, the bosses Master, Wolf Chief, Los Pubro, and Fat Man were respectively renamed as Bandit Bill, Devil Hawk, Wingate and Fatman Joe.

In both the NES and Famicom Disk System versions of the game, the game has to be beaten 3 times in order to obtain the true ending, in which the player is rewarded with a simple message that types out as "THE END".

Credits

Arcade Version

Gun.Smoke, like many other games during this era of gaming, credited its staff in its default Score Ranking Table, which is as follows:

1st 100000 Kura♥Aya
2nd 80000 Shi2Kura
3rd 60000 ?Sakura?
4th 40000 Ota=BigS
5th 20000 웃Okamoto

NES Version

Game Design: Deatch Yan, Watch Kun, Kihajishitsucho
Character Design: Uechon, Kawamucho, Nonnonon, Blacksakachan, Mikichan, Kuramoyan, Makopi, Jasdarian
Sound: Swimmer Tamichan
Program: L.H.R
Special Thanks to: Capcom U.S.A. and Capcom

Music

The music for the NES port of the game was composed by Junko Tamiya (credited as Swimmer Tamichan).

Legacy

Red Dead Revolver, the first game in Rockstar Games' Red Dead series of western action-adventure games, was originally developed by Capcom as a spiritual sequel to Gun.Smoke, before they dropped the project which later got picked up by Rockstar Games.