Gun.Smoke (NES)

Gun.Smoke

Platform:	NES
Year:	1988
Developer:	Capcom Co., Ltd.
Buy:	Amazon

Gun.Smoke follows the Capcom theme of the 1980s. It's really cool looking, but it's insanely difficult. Most people can make it through the first couple of stages without too much trouble. Comanche Village is tough, but doable. However, when you hit Death Mountain, all bets are off. The main problem comes from the gunslingers who always appear behind you and are very difficult to avoid. Only with extremely fast reflexes and an encyclopedic knowledge of the later maps will you ever beat the game.

Difficulty aside, the game is a lot of fun. You are a gun man who is trying to save the people of Hicksville from the evil gang of crooks, the Wingates. The game is a scrolling shoot 'em up, and as you kill off your opponents you receive money to buy better weapons, more ammo, and various other useful items. Each stage ends with a boss, and when you kill them you'll receive bonus reward money.

Screenshots

The title screen.

The first level, the town of Hicksville.

Look at my horse, my horse is amazing!

Save our town... and our economy!

The required Wanted List that unlocks the boss.

Bandit Bill.

Music

Gun.Smoke's music is very professional. The sound is fitting to the Western theme (as fitting as chiptunes can get, anyway), and the quality is above average, like most Capcom games. The soundtrack is also pretty grandiose, with each stage having its own sound, and even each boss having their own theme. Rather than use the arcade score by Ayako Mori, Capcom instead had Junko Tamiya create brilliant original scores. This may be due to a presumed rule by Nintendo that adaptations of arcade games had to have differences.

As traditional with most games at the time, Junko Tamiya had to painstakingly write the music in 6502 assembly macros using hexadecimal numbers. She used Yoshihiro Sakaguchi's sound driver.

Though the Japanese version of the game was released for the Famicom Disk System, it does not use the RP2C33 chip's expansion audio channel, leaving it unchanged from the NES version. However, the NES version's sountrack reigns superior, as it contains more music than the Disk System original.

Recording

#	Title	Composer	Arranger	Length	Download
01	Title	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	0:48	Download
02	Town of Hicksville	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	1:11	Download
03	Bandit Bill	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	0:55	Download
04	The Boulders	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	1:01	Download
05	Cutter	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	0:48	Download
06	Comanche Village	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	1:01	Download
07	Devil Hawk	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	1:43	Download
08	Death Mountain	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	1:01	Download
09	Ninja	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	0:46	Download
10	Cheyenne River	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	1:07	Download
11	Fatman Joe	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	1:11	Download
12	Fort Wingate	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	1:26	Download
13	Wingate	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	1:28	Download
14	Store	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	0:26	Download
15	Weapon Select	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	0:35	Download
16	Game Over	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	0:07	Download
17	Stage Clear	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	0:12	Download
18	Ending	Junko Tamiya	Junko Tamiya	1:06	Download

Credits

Ripper: Chris Covell
Recorder: TheAlmightyGuru
Game Credits:
- Sound: Junko Tamiya credited as Swimmer Tamichan
- Not Credited Sound Driver: Yoshihiro Sakaguchi

(Source: NES, FDS)

Junko Tamiya has personally acknowledged that she is the person behind the alias Swimmer Tamichan.

The credits are the same in both the Disk System and NES releases. The only real difference is the text; The Disk System version uses the standard 8-bit text, and the NES version uses a more western-style text.

We have received verification from various composers at Capcom that the NES sound drivers were programmed by Yoshihiro Sakaguchi.