Talking NES and History: Capcom Gun.Smoke 1988 US release

This is our third video and written analysis that looks specifically at video games that feature historical themes. While we firmly believe that all video games are historical and can be read as historical sources, in this series we focus specifically on the narratives of history based games and where those narratives fit within the culture that created them. We’re starting this series looking at games developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and we’re working through the games in chronological order over the next few weeks. If there is a game you think we missed, please comment and let us know. Below the video is a companion blog post to go along with the conversation in the video.

Gun.Smoke Capcom 

Playing NES History: Gun.Smoke NES Capcom 1988 US release. 

This game was ported from the 1985 arcade cabinet with quite a few changes that made the game more consistent with home console play. Rather than just being a quarter suck, the NES version added a bit of narrative and added new characters. 

Game Play / Reviews 

Reviews for Gun.Smoke are limited and difficult to find, as the game was released, like the other Capcom titles we’ve reviewed recently, in a period between the publication of popular gaming magazines. The crash of the early 80s had led most publications from the Atari age (in the US at least) to shutter.  When this game was released, “Nintendo Fun Club News,” later (1988) “Nintendo Power” was the only active commercial gaming publications in the U.S.  

“The Fun Club News” (issue six) does however feature a full-page ad for Gun.Smoke where half the page features a portrait of a black hatted gun slinger scowling at the viewer, gun in hand smoking as if it has just been fired. Below the portrait the tagline promises, “It’s High Noon. You’re Alone. You’re Quick or You’re Dead.”  The rest of the ad text tells the story of the game and packs every western trope it can into its short description. The ad copy reads,  

It’s a bad day at [sic] Hicksville. In Gun.Smoke, you’re lightin’ quick, gun-totin’ Billy Bob. Come home to find your peaceful mining town overrun by no-good varmints. So you’d best be gettin’ to work. The action comes fast and furious. The pressure is intense. The excitement builds. Your reactions must be honed and ready. Your thinking sharp and clever. That’s Gun.Smoke. Nonstop action just like the original arcade game. With all the dazzling graphics. So gather up your courage. And load up Gun.Smoke today. (cite...) 

The NES home console version added some depth to the mechanics, provided an in-game economy of sorts and a bit of narrative that was missing from the arcade version. Despite those additions, the British magazine the “Game Zone,” had this to say in later review in 1992, Gun.Smoke is a, “Wild West, commando style shoot ‘em up adventure, where items must be collected, and enemies removed. Nothing New.”  (Game Zone, issue 3, January 1992). The final verdict, three out of five stars.” The premiere issue of Nintendo Power also reviewed the game, or more correctly previewed the game suggesting that players can experience an "old West,” where “the smell of gunpowder seems to reach down every alley and into every building of [this] small mining town.” And where you the lone gunman “stand fearless and ready to face the worst bandits out there...Through a rain of rifle fire, gun shots and dynamite blasts [you] cooly aim to rid the down of the meanest desperados this side of the Great Divide.” (Nintendo Power 001, July Aug 1988). In “How to Win at Nintendo Games #2”, Jeff Rovins was more kind and I think his review is more widely accepted by retro gaming fans who have gone back to the game. Rovin writes that the game is “similar to Commando, Ikari Warriors, and all of them thar [sic] cartridges but the western theme is a refreshing change from all the military, mercenary clones!” He ultimately game a solid B.  

For all intents and purposes Gun.Smoke is just a Western skinned “Commando” that adds Western tropes in lieu of 80s military fantasy; however, its narrative is far more complete because of the western setting and six unique stages that build a complete world rather than repeating the same stages like commando or most space shooters of the time did. The ads, previews, and reviews all expect a certain understanding of the portrayal of the West in popular culture. Here we see the tropes of violence, justice, and a stripped-down version of Turner’s western democracy crossed with a boned-up Remington cum Roosevelt dream of a manly and violent West writ across the game, and we haven’t even played it yet.  The player starts the game with a simple pistol and can buy weapons from townsfolk throughout the game including a shotgun, machine gun, magnum, and oddly a smart bomb.  

Once Upon A Time in Pixels 

The American West, more specifically the West of popular imagination, has provided a familiar back drop for game developers going back as far as Midway’s 1975 arcade cabinet “Gun Fight, and Atari’s 1976 cabinet “Outlaw,” As John Wills points out in his recent book Gamer Nation, these games reflected Americas fascination with the west, “reflecting their literary and filmic roots, Western shooters [like “Gunfight,” “Boot Hill,” and “Outlaw” and the later games from the genre] relied on the myth of the lone gunfighter as their pivotal narrative. Recognizing their target audience as teen and twenty something males, electronics companies recreated the classic outlaw with attitudes, providing digital imitations of John Wayne in Stagecoach and Clint Eastwood in a Fist Full of Dollars” (67). At a time when Carter era feminism was blamed for emasculating men and where Reagan’s fantasy masculinity of rugged American individualism was seen by some as a cornerstone of America’s return to greatness, these western themed games provided players with an outlet to express that masculinity and reduced the cold war fears that Americans faced into an easily digestible form of good versus evil expressed through American exceptionalism. An exceptionalism rooted in Turnerverian ideals and Reagan’s “Morning in America” appeals to reignite America’s beacon and place it firmly back on its hill. However, this was a hill that specifically exploited violence and the individual man as the clarion of white, civilized redemption. 

Popular culture responded to Regan era calls and film makers ushered in an era where the Western was once again king, or more appropriately sheriff. Bronco Billy, The Mountain Men, Urban Cowboy, Death Hunt, Hard Country, Silverado, Pale Rider, Poker Alice, Young Guns, Lonesome Dove and many others were released within a few years of Gun.Smoke. For many in the 1980s the West represented a return to the values left behind by the purported hedonism and counterculture of the 60s and 70s. While some 70s auteurs had challenged the western myth in their films, film makers in the 80s re-embraced Turnerverian mythos and tropes from early 20th century novels such as The Virginian or Riders of the Purple Sage and found a broad-based audience for their films. Games at the time embraced these tropes and the values they represented. Gun.Smoke plays on these themes and offered players an opportunity to live out their own western fantasies. Fans of Kevin Costner's “Silverado” would have found a familiar storyline as they grabbed the controller and joined Billy Bob as he returned home to maintain justice in his former home town. 

Setting 

While earlier games featured non-descript settings using 8 bit cacti, tumble weeds and ramshackle buildings to create a western style setting (i.e Boot Hill, Gun Fighter etc) and one that was admittedly effective, Gun.Smoke through its six stages creates a full “Old West” environment from the Hicksville Frontier mining town, to surrounding desert and mountain environments, a Native American village, and ultimately a western fort ala Fort Apache or Fort Wilderness where the ultimate boss is holed up and waiting for the final showdown. Gun.Smoke might be the first game to establish a cinematic style western setting playing on western tropes to build its world. The narrative arc of the game takes our lone gunman across these six stages, like a cinema cowboy riding from town to the black hat’s hideout, the game creates a sense of adventure and an open world reflective of the broad expanses featured in cinematic westerns. 

Characters 

Player Billy Bob—The opening cinematic sets up the tale of the lone gunman as he arrives to town with a sunset at his back to avenge the Sheriff who has been killed by the Wingate gang. This cinematic is only effective because the mythos of the west is at the core of American pop culture. From Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and the pulp novels of the late 19th and early 20th century to the radio, film and television westerns of the 20th century America has come to define itself through the west so thoroughly that the narrative is common place and evocative.  With each fiction built upon a prior fiction, and so on, and so on. The player character’s name, Billy Bob, does little to warrant respect, yet he represents in the idealized independence of the cowboy/gunslinger. Corruption is defeated at the end of a Colt revolver or Winchester rifle (two weapons you can pick up in the game). The gun, with the authority of the individual, becomes the sanctified redeeming vehicle in maintaining a semblance of civilization, a veritable Texas Ranger that has gone solo. And if the history of the Texas Ranger tells us anything, it’s that violence in the West was nominally racialized and oppressive.  

The computer-controlled henchmen/enemies in each stage are a strange collection of mohawked, dynamite throwing, sleeveless muscle bound shootists, who may be Native Americans or not, and a bizarre group of blue jeans clad jumping enemies who drop cash bags when they’re killed, possibly a terrible trope representing Mexican bandolero. The only time these enemies change is in the Comanchi [sic] Village where the sprites are clearly drawn from indigenous stereotypes as they emerge from Plain’s community Teepees, wearing head bands and vests and throwing tomahawks and knives rather than dynamite. Like most Native American representations in popular culture the headband, headdress and teepee come to represent indigenousness. We see this again and again in video games, Native American diversity reduced to a singular set of tropes denying these cultures their agency and uniqueness and dehumanizing them in a way that removes the moral ambiguity of murder and occupation of their land.  Within he Comanchi [sic] Village, the game revels in Native American stereotype out of Wolf Chief and makes a complete enemy out of him with his name changed to Devil Hawk. Like all Native American stereotypes these are just blood thirsty, mindless “injuns” who need to be dispatched like so many vermin. 

Bosses 

For the NES version of the game, six of the ten bosses were ported to the home console. In the arcade version they were named Master, Ninja, Cutter, Wolf Chief, Los Pubro, and Fat Man. In the home console version, they were renamed to better suit the American console market and to lend a broader western narrative to the game.  

The Master's name was changed to Bandit Bill and in the changed narrative he has control over the town of Hicksville (Stage One). He and his henchmen must be taken out to secure the town against the Wingate gang and allow Billy Bob to progress to his next stage of vengeance. The town is exactly that -- an immediately recognizable and typical back lot western set, dirt streets, boarded walks, water troughs and buildings that look like saloons, hotels and general stores line the playing field as your character walks through town, until they pick up a horse (because a cowboy needs a horse) shooting up the town as bad guys attack him. Once Bandit Bill is dispatched the player heads out of town seeking the rest of the Wingate gang.  

Cutter (not renamed for the NES), the Second Stage boss, is rendered in the NES version as a bald, goateed and muscle bound western tough, a kind of bulked up Yul Brynner from “Invitation to a Gun Fighter” (1964) or “West World” (1974) who protects “The Boulders” path out of town with his henchmen. This stage, familiar to anyone who watched Saturday afternoon repeats of 60s westerns, replicates the high walled canyon gun fights of many Hollywood westerns, and it again lends a sense of openness and space in a game that is a simple scroller. The shifting environments from mining town to canyon lands and later mountain rivers and fort lend sense of movement through the expansive open spaces that the frontier was meant to have that most games of the era lacked. Unlike “Commando,” “1942” or any of Capcom’s early scrollers the environments in Gun.Smoke are varied and apart from Fort Wingate never feel repetitive or similar. There’s a sense of movement in this game.  

The oddest stage and an incomprehensible one, is led by the boss Ninja, like Cutter’s stage this level transitions us from the Indigenous village to another slot canyon on our way to face the big bad. The inclusion of Ninjas into this stage is comes as a vestige of the original arcade game that was released in Japan, possibly including character types and tropes for a local audience. Otherwise their inclusion makes little sense, as the game is set in 1849 and while many Chinese had begun to immigrate to California during the Gold Rush, there wouldn’t have been any Japanese anywhere in the Wests at that time.  

The last stage in the NES version brings us to Fort Wingate and our final boss. In the original arcade game, the final boss was dubbed Los Pubro a Spanish or Portuguese surname that was changed to the anglicized Wingate for the NES version. Despite the anglicization of his name the character retained stereotypical Mexican traits in his portrayal in the game. In his wanted poster he is shown as a cigar chomping bandito with a low-slung sombrero over a scarred cheek and missing eye, a turned down thin mustache and bandoliers cross his chest. In other words, he resembles “Gold Hat” (Alphonso Bedoya) who accosts Humphry Bogart with the now infamous and oft repeated line “Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges...” from John Huston’s adaptation of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” Like Speedy Gonzales, The Frito Bandito, these ethnic stereotypes were common on television, in advertising, and in much of American popular culture in the 70s and 80s. Their casual/comic racism hid a dangerous anti-Mexican sentiment and a growing fear in America of the Chicano movement and the political ascendancy the Latinx community in America.  As Chon Noriega has written about the Frito Bandito, these types of characters "rather than connote a radical political sensibility toward racial minorities and the Third World, the Frito Bandito [and Wingate] encouraged viewers to co-opt these outside threats to the American way of life...through parodic consumption....These threats were domesticated, rendered humorous and consumed as a sign of surplus capital within the with middle-class home.” (Noriega, “Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema.” 39) 

The only trope missing in this game is a corrupt banker bent on swindling the town of its mining payroll, all the other trope characters are on display. 

Gun.Smoke while ultimately fun and in some ways ahead of its time in terms of openness and narrative plot, does what so many games of that era and even contemporary games do, relied too heavily on tropes that while immediately familiar place an emphasis on the cinematic rather than creating a vernacular of their own and ultimately reinforce stereotype and exceptionalist history.