Gun.Smoke, the Video Game by Capcom Co., Ltd. [Japan]

Type of the machine : Video Game
Gun.Smoke © 1985 Capcom.

A vertically scrolling shoot-em-up set in the Wild West, in which the player takes the role of a Billy; a young Sheriff charged with hunting down and killing a number of infamous 'Wanted' outlaws.

Each level is packed with gun-toting bandits and the Sheriff must shoot his way through the stage, before finally taking on the wanted outlaw 'boss' character at the end. Each outlaw wields a special weapon unique to them, such as a Winchester rifle, knives, darts or boomerangs.

Shooting the barrels that litter the levels reveals power-ups such as boots (for extra speed), rifles (for increased range) and bullets (for rapid fire). The game's 3 directional fire buttons (for firing left, right or ahead) can be combined (pressed Simultaneously) to create a total of 8 different firing directions.

Main CPU : Z80 (@ 4 Mhz)
Sound CPU : Z80 (@ 3 Mhz)
Sound Chips : (2x) YM2203 (@ 1.5 Mhz)

Screen orientation : Vertical
Video resolution : 224 x 256 pixels
Screen refresh : 60.00 Hz
Palette colors : 256

Players : 2
Control : 8-way joystick
Buttons : 3

Released in November 1985.
Licensed to Romstar for US manufacture and distribution.

Gun.Smoke was available as conversion kits (from Romstar - called 'quick-kits') for "Pac-Man" and "Centipede".

Gun.Smoke is based on the old famous T.V. series of the same name, the first TV broadcast was on 10th September 1955, and it ran until 31st March 1975. A total of 633 episodes were aired over the 20 seasons - only the last nine seasons being made in colour.

Jaime Guzman holds the official record for this game with 1,465,250 points.

Alfa Records released a limited-edition soundtrack album for this game (Capcom Game Music - 28XA-94) on 25/08/1986.

WORLD version :
* You can enter 3 chars for your initials.

JAPAN version (but English text though) :
* You can enter 8 chars for your initials.

US version 1 (licenced to Romstar) :
* You can enter 3 chars for your initials.

US version 2 (licenced to Romstar) :
* You can enter 3 chars for your initials.
* Some code has been added for the 'Lives' Dip Switch that replaces the 'Demonstation' one (so demonstration is always OFF).
* Year is 1986 instead of 1985.
* High score is 110000 instead of 100000.
* Levels 3 and 6 are swapped.

* An Interesting Bug : When you're on level 2, make sure you have a horse when you kill Roy Knife. Once he is dead, walk over his corpse and your horse will be killed. Roy raises from the dead as a sort of indestructible zombie. You can shoot him as much as you like, but he won't die. In this way you can play until you get tired of it.

1. Gun.Smoke (1985)
2. Desperado 2 (1989, Amstrad CPC)

From highscore table : Shi2Kura, ?Sakura?, Ota=Big5
Music by : Ayako Mori (Kura<3Aya)
Producer : Kihaji Okamoto

Consoles :

Nintendo Famicom (jan.1988)
Nintendo Famicom Disk (1988)
Nintendo NES (jan.1988) [USA]
Nintendo NES (feb.1989) [EUR]
Sony PlayStation (1998, "Capcom Generation 4")
Sony PlayStation (1998, "Capcom Generations - Blazing Guns")
Sega Saturn (1998, "Capcom Generation 4")
Sony PlayStation 2 (2005, "Capcom Classics Collection")
Microsoft XBOX (2005, "Capcom Classics Collection")
Sony PSP (2006, "Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded")

Computers :

Commodore C64 (1987)
Amstrad CPC (1987, "Desperado - Gun.Smoke")
Sinclair Spectrum (1988)
PC [CD-ROM] (2003, "Capcom Arcade Hits 3")

Game's rom.