Weekending 6/11/16: Gun.Smoke

 

• Introduction:

This week I’ve decided to do a fan request since I was kind of in limbo on a game I wanted to do, This particular game came up twice so I decided to give it a go. This game was developed by Capcom and is a vertical scrolling shoot’em up or Shmup or whatever. Most older gamers just call it a shooter. From now on in this blog I will refer to these type of games as shooters just because I highly doubt I will ever be doing any First person shooters. The goal here is you must get through each level and obtain a wanted poster so you can fight the boss at the end. You can either find one by firing your guns at a hidden spot, or you can buy one from the townsfolk. I believe there is 6 stages but I could be wrong. I remember playing this game at some point when I was a child one of my childhood friends brought it over to play but I never caught the name of the game and I didn’t play it until I figured out the title of the game when I was around 18 years old Emulators had just been popping up on all computers. At that point I really never bothered trying to play it seriously because I could never get into playing NES game on a computer with out a proper controller back then I only had a laptop and I didn’t really care about how well of a computer I had I just used it for simple things like bills and talking on chat rooms or looking up information on current generation games. When I started retro collecting I picked this one up at the local Retro game store in my area that had just opened. He had just hauled in a lot and posted it on Facebook, So I ran on over there and Gun.smoke happened to be one of the title he had. He wanted 10 bucks for it so I took it and have had it since, that was about 4 years ago. Unfortunately that store is a former shell of what it used to be and is struggling so I don’t think I will be finding any good deals there anymore…. Anyway on to the Game!

 

• Day 1

Tonight was my test run on how well I would do and how much of a feel I got for the game, I would also get familiar with how the game works as a whole and how for I could get in one shot. Raymond had woken up once during my first run but it wasn’t too bad. He went down relatively easy so it wasn’t a big deal and I ended up being able to play longer. I got up to Death mountain which is stage four, and this stage was hell for me. I’m not a shooter guy I rarely play them so I’m not the best at them but this did seem fairly easy at first but once I got to Death Mountain the difficulty spiked for me and I couldn’t get past it. It was getting late and I found out that the game has unlimited continues which is a plus since it encourages you to keep pushing forward and keep going. So as a typical NES game I decided to call it a night and get some sleep.

 

• Day 2

Tonight was my late night, I didn’t feel like playing when I got home because I had to get up at 4 in the morning to get ready for work, I got home around 9:30 and kind of just unwinded a little bit and went to bed. I figured with unlimited continues I could easily get this game done no problem…

 

 

• Day 3

Today was a long day, We had moved up little guy’s bed time to 8 so I had spent an hour more playing with him before bed time. By the time I had gotten him to bed, I started playing and the tiredness started to settle in fast. I repeatedly died which wasn’t normal for me in this stage. On day one I got through it unscathed but for some reason I couldn’t continue further, the tiredness was starting to show big time and I just couldn’t get through. I gave up and went to bed.

 

• Day 4

Today was my day off, So I decided to do yard work all morning in preparation for the little guy’s 1st birthday next month. I cut the grass like usual and started trimming hedges and cleaning up extra leaves and just trying to get rid of all types of greenery that had over grown. Afterwards I worked a night Gamestop shift so by the time I got home at 930 I didn’t feel like doing anything else but going to sleep, Another day shot but I had 2 days left and 6 stages to go through should be simple….or so I thought.

 

• Days 5 and 6

I’m going to put these 2 days together because they harvested the same results. Except in Day 5 I did finally get passed Death Mountain but fell short on the 5th and next stage. The problem that I have with this game is that you need a damned Turbo controller or your fingers get tired quickly, I actually have a blister not on my right thumb from bashing in the a and b button as fast as I can to try to fire quickly. Day 6 Same as day 1….coudn’t get passed D.Mountain and it sucks because with Raymond’s Later bed time it just made me more tired while trying to adjust, Also it doesn’t help that he is still teething and I believe he is regressing in his sleep. This morning I saw that he had 4 top teeth cutting in at once, It must really hurt. I feel really bad for him and wish I could just make the pain go away for him so he can have a good night sleep. It seems he hasn’t really slept good in weeks.

 

• Conclusion

This game is incredibly hard later in the game, I can’t even imagine what the final stage is like. None of the bosses seemed challenging it was just the massive amounts of dudes that would appear at any given time, and you can shoot backwards so dodging them and bullets was a must and a very hard aspect at that.  Although this game is going back in the backlog for now, I must say that it was a great game but holy hell I need a turbo controller if I ever want to pick it up again. Yes I know about the other guns you can pick up but they take bullets to use and if you die while they are equipped you lose them and have to buy them back again.  It’s a tough game but fair, I’m just not good at shooters….Hopefully next game is a Plat former!!! YAY

 

 

-Ray