It's Strange World: Gunman's Proof is a cowboys and aliens themed Legend of Zelda clone with Smash TV combat, Contra weapon power-ups, and a treasure collecting score system straight out Kirby Super Star's The Great Cave Offensive.
The game is extremely easy, not only because of how frequently it doles out new abilities and permanent upgrades to your base equipment, but also because almost none of the enemies can shoot diagonally. The few enemies that do shoot diagonally can't really aim, they just fire in random directions (or all directions at once). The player, on the other hand, can shoot diagonally while moving, and pretty much nothing in the game really knows how to react to this. From start to finish, this is the winning technique. Though I will say, even if the game is consistently not much of a challenge, it is also consistently quite fun.
The soundtrack is fantastic. The village theme (which will greet you at the start of each play session) is chill, whistling elevator music. The overworld themes serve as excellent background for galloping across the landscape, and the theme that plays while you ride your donkey is joyful without being overly bombastic. The dramatic theme that plays during certain cutscenes carries all the weight of more classic themes from the game's contemporaries.
The game's characters, in terms of animation and dialogue, are charming in a way similar to Earthbound. The main character is basically the town failson until he's possessed by an alien at the start of the game, becoming the only fighter in town competent enough to face the Demiseeds. By around the halfway mark of the game, some of the townspeople start to wonder if something's the matter with you, while your dad (who kicks you out of the house at the start of the game) claims to have always known you were destined for greatness. The main character is extremely well animated, with smooth animations for 8-direction walking, shooting, crawling, punching, not to mention all of the little poses he does when finding treasure or interacting with other characters.
I'm gonna talk about the racism.
So, a lot of the enemies in Gunman's Proof are typical video game fare, giant bugs, slime monsters, etc. But a common enemy, probably the first one that the player will see, is basically a cowboy golliwog. Now, in this wild west themed island setting, the heroes are obviously colonial settlers. The enemies are the native people and wildlife of this "new" land, and killing them is justified by the fact that they are all possessed by a space alien. Yet, in order to defeat them, the hero too must carry this same otherworldly spirit.
The townspeople are obviously an invading force, but they project their alien nature onto those who were there before them. It's a strange world, but it can be made normal. In the end, with the alien defeated, so too can the alien be expelled from our hero's body, and everything will retvrn to the way it ought to be.
When you defeat an insect in this game, you don't kill it. It just turns back into a normal insect.
When you defeat a late-game boss consisting of two twin sisters, they don't die, they regain consciousness and remark on how exotic their attire is.
When you defeat a wild west Mr. Popo, nothing remains.
It sucks. It's a pretty substantial blemish on an otherwise really charming game.
Gunman's Proof is a fairly short game, if you want it to be. You can beat it in a couple hours or so. I would recommend taking it slow, play one or two dungeons each session. Talk to all the NPCs, they usually have something new to say. Explore around and find any health upgrades or new moves you might have missed.
It's speculated that the reason this game is as short as it is, is because it wasn't really finished. It was the last game developed by Lenar, and it doesn't even have an end credits sequence, nor could I find that information online. If you try to open a chest while riding your donkey, you get a text box that specifically says
"You can't open chests while riding Robaton. We're real sorry, honest."
Edit: 3/16/24
I do think perhaps as others have pointed out that the racist aspects of the game are sort of blown out of of proportion in discussion of it, and I want to make it clear that in accusing the game of having racist imagery or colonialist themes that I don't think the game is truly worth condemning or erasing. This review was originally written as a sort of companion piece to a review of Resident Evil 5 that I never finished because I never finished playing the game either, because that game isn't very good. The point though, was that Resident Evil 5 is, perhaps on accident, a very valuable work of fiction in the same way that something like those WWII era cartoons. It shows the exact kind of post-9/11 hysteria that was going on in the minds of most of the first world at the time, and the virus and bioweapons serve as an effective symbol of how wartime propaganda is used to paint civilians as equivalent to combatants. In the same way, I think a game that makes the undertones of games that encourage the player to plunder and conquer a space in the name of ousting an outsider more literal and surface level is interesting. Plus, even if we assume that those pixels on the screen aren't meant to have a golliwog-esque appearance, it's not like such images were unheard of in Japanese games from this time, and it's not unreasonable to assume that's what your looking at.
The game is extremely easy, not only because of how frequently it doles out new abilities and permanent upgrades to your base equipment, but also because almost none of the enemies can shoot diagonally. The few enemies that do shoot diagonally can't really aim, they just fire in random directions (or all directions at once). The player, on the other hand, can shoot diagonally while moving, and pretty much nothing in the game really knows how to react to this. From start to finish, this is the winning technique. Though I will say, even if the game is consistently not much of a challenge, it is also consistently quite fun.
The soundtrack is fantastic. The village theme (which will greet you at the start of each play session) is chill, whistling elevator music. The overworld themes serve as excellent background for galloping across the landscape, and the theme that plays while you ride your donkey is joyful without being overly bombastic. The dramatic theme that plays during certain cutscenes carries all the weight of more classic themes from the game's contemporaries.
The game's characters, in terms of animation and dialogue, are charming in a way similar to Earthbound. The main character is basically the town failson until he's possessed by an alien at the start of the game, becoming the only fighter in town competent enough to face the Demiseeds. By around the halfway mark of the game, some of the townspeople start to wonder if something's the matter with you, while your dad (who kicks you out of the house at the start of the game) claims to have always known you were destined for greatness. The main character is extremely well animated, with smooth animations for 8-direction walking, shooting, crawling, punching, not to mention all of the little poses he does when finding treasure or interacting with other characters.
I'm gonna talk about the racism.
So, a lot of the enemies in Gunman's Proof are typical video game fare, giant bugs, slime monsters, etc. But a common enemy, probably the first one that the player will see, is basically a cowboy golliwog. Now, in this wild west themed island setting, the heroes are obviously colonial settlers. The enemies are the native people and wildlife of this "new" land, and killing them is justified by the fact that they are all possessed by a space alien. Yet, in order to defeat them, the hero too must carry this same otherworldly spirit.
The townspeople are obviously an invading force, but they project their alien nature onto those who were there before them. It's a strange world, but it can be made normal. In the end, with the alien defeated, so too can the alien be expelled from our hero's body, and everything will retvrn to the way it ought to be.
When you defeat an insect in this game, you don't kill it. It just turns back into a normal insect.
When you defeat a late-game boss consisting of two twin sisters, they don't die, they regain consciousness and remark on how exotic their attire is.
When you defeat a wild west Mr. Popo, nothing remains.
It sucks. It's a pretty substantial blemish on an otherwise really charming game.
Gunman's Proof is a fairly short game, if you want it to be. You can beat it in a couple hours or so. I would recommend taking it slow, play one or two dungeons each session. Talk to all the NPCs, they usually have something new to say. Explore around and find any health upgrades or new moves you might have missed.
It's speculated that the reason this game is as short as it is, is because it wasn't really finished. It was the last game developed by Lenar, and it doesn't even have an end credits sequence, nor could I find that information online. If you try to open a chest while riding your donkey, you get a text box that specifically says
"You can't open chests while riding Robaton. We're real sorry, honest."
Edit: 3/16/24
I do think perhaps as others have pointed out that the racist aspects of the game are sort of blown out of of proportion in discussion of it, and I want to make it clear that in accusing the game of having racist imagery or colonialist themes that I don't think the game is truly worth condemning or erasing. This review was originally written as a sort of companion piece to a review of Resident Evil 5 that I never finished because I never finished playing the game either, because that game isn't very good. The point though, was that Resident Evil 5 is, perhaps on accident, a very valuable work of fiction in the same way that something like those WWII era cartoons. It shows the exact kind of post-9/11 hysteria that was going on in the minds of most of the first world at the time, and the virus and bioweapons serve as an effective symbol of how wartime propaganda is used to paint civilians as equivalent to combatants. In the same way, I think a game that makes the undertones of games that encourage the player to plunder and conquer a space in the name of ousting an outsider more literal and surface level is interesting. Plus, even if we assume that those pixels on the screen aren't meant to have a golliwog-esque appearance, it's not like such images were unheard of in Japanese games from this time, and it's not unreasonable to assume that's what your looking at.