Following the success of Commando (1985), Capcom repeated the experience in a Western setting: the NES port was fairly delayed, as it was released more than two years after the arcade version. There are many differences between the two versions, which can certainly be explained by the innovations that the genre underwent in the second half of the 1980s. The success of Gradius (1985) and the concept of purchasable power-ups changed the structure of Gun.Smoke, counterbalancing the level amputations caused by the lack of memory.

The player takes on the role of Billy Bob, a young gunslinger, who decides to free Hicksville from the yoke of a criminal gang called the Wingates. The gameplay follows the logic of Commando, but with more subtleties. The hero does not have access to bombs as a special weapon, but the B button is used in a different way: the A button is used to shoot to the right, while the B button to the left. A combination of the two buttons allows the player to fire forward. This choice made more sense in the arcade version, where the variation is even deeper, as the cabinets featured all three buttons, allowing for even finer shooting angles. These are lost in the NES version, which suffers in some cases, as enemies seem very difficult to hit, especially when they come from the bottom of the screen. The title tends to focus on smart movement to get the right positioning against enemies, but the poor readability, typical of NES games, never helps. To reach each level's boss, Billy must acquire a 'WANTED' poster, either purchased from a merchant or found hidden in the level: until he gets this poster, the level will continue to loop. In this respect, the vendors represent the major feature of the title: the points naturally accumulated during the course of the game can be used to buy various upgrades, weapons, a horse or the poster. The idea is rather good, but lacks the depth to be really interesting. The level-design never shines and the random spawns of the enemies end up damaging the experience even more.

In the end, Gun.Smoke remains a rather dull game. As a pseudo-clone of Commando, it never differs enough to be noteworthy. The Wild West setting is a pretext for a pile of clichés, which only serve to feed another virilistic fantasy, that of the lonesome cowboy who delivers the widow and the orphan from the cruelty of bandits, natives and Mexicans. This cocktail, borrowing from the American nationalist vernacular, does nothing to hide its racism: the poster of the black bandit is a blatant indignity, and Japanese creators are too happy to reproduce it – similar representations can be found, among others, in Osamu Tezuka's Jungle Emperor (1950), in the beginning of Black Jack (1973), and even in current works such as One-Punch Man (2009). Gun.Smoke thus remains a forgotten title in the history of shoot'em up, overshadowed by the success of other games from the same period: this is certainly not a bad thing.

Divertido e simples. Não sei se tem outras fases, porém se tiver, não consegui passar da primeira.

Gameplay: 1
Gráficos: 0,5
Trilha sonora: 1
História: 0
Game design: 0,5