Producer: Go!
Retail Price: £8.99 cassette, £12.99 disk
Author: Topo Soft

Being Sheriff of a Wild West town isn't easy. When trouble comes to town, it arrives with a bang. And trouble has just arrived in the shape of Angel Face and his notorious henchmen...

The first level of this vertically scrolling Commando variant sees the player strolling along the street of his beloved town, running the gauntlet of pistol packin' hoodlums who attempt to gun him down. The baddies run towards the sheriff, guns blazing, or charge along on horseback throwing bombs which bounce across the street before exploding.

The player starts the game with four lives, but shooting the stars which appear occasionally reveals an extra life, a points bonus or a stick of dynamite, contact with which proves fatal. Running over each symbol utilises these handy additions.

Once the end of the landscape is reached, a shoot-out occurs between the Sheriff and the end-of-level-baddie, whose face appears on a wanted poster at the start of the section.

The game continues in this fashion, through the railroad station, the canyon and across rapids on a raft, culminating in a meadow where a boomerangthrowing Angel Face is confronted in the final showdown.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: the characters are detailed but too small. Buildings are colourful and distinct
Sound: pop, pop from the guns
Options: definable keys

Another arcade conversion bites the dust. Admittedly a lot of attention has gone into peripheral details, particularly the action-packed loading screen and the gun-spinning joystick selection process, but the central graphics are unspectacular. In theory the game, a sort of Wild West Ikari Warriors, has plenty to recommend it. However, practice proves otherwise. The odds are stacked against the Sheriff: trigger-happy bandits constantly attempt to shoot him in the back although he can only blast diagonally and forwards. At close quarters the sheriff stands stiff and paralysed, while his opponents' ability to run is superhumanly improved. The challenge to beat the faultless computer 'next time' has a frustrating and obsessive edge, but considering the price, it's probably better not to take it up.
KATI

If the arcade game, Gunsmoke, is anything like the computer game I pity the person that's put any money in the slot - the game concept is so boring! However, the presentation is at least up to their usual high standard: the individual people all have their own characteristics and the saloons and ranches are colourful and detailed. What the game lacks, though, is enough variation to get you back to it after finishing a game. I couldn't really be bothered to start again; I knew where I was going and what would result from it. If only you could walk around a larger play area, or even turn around and go back on yourself, the game would be much more of a quest and not so laborious. However, the few that do like the arcade game can't really fault the conversion.
PAUL

After enjoying Bedlam, I loaded Gunsmoke with a great deal of expectation. Although I give GO! merit for the presentation on the control option screen, in-game status display, and the wanted posters, the game itself is pretty dire. For a start play is very difficult, as I found to my cost with life after life being blown away by the hoards of small, black blobby sprites that fire two shots whilst my character thinks about firing one. Another annoying habit the enemy had was to appear from the bottom of the screen with guns biasing. The poor old Sheriff can't do a thing about it, because he can't turn round! I didn't even make it to the end of the first screen, but I'm sure that fact won't lose me any sleep at night.
MARK

US Gold
£8.99
Reviewer: Duncan MacDonald

The Sheriff glanced at his pocket watch. He tried to gulp, but his mouth was too dry. The time was fast approaching high noon; the sky was blue, the air was dry and the sun was beating down relentlessly on his hat. Phew! Wotta scorcher.

A shot rang out, a bullet whistled past his ear. Another shot, the bullet ricocheted off his little silver badge. The time had come, the 'pesky varmint' gang were in town - but this time they had bitten off more than they could chew, because this is where you join in. Playing (of course), the part of the Sheriff.

You view the action from above and behind, as the screen scrolls down towards you. You're in a wild-west town, treading the dusty street as the 'Hollywood facade'scenery flashes by on either side. Whoops - did I say 'flashes'? Then I must have been fibbing; even 'trickles by' would be an overstatement. Nope, it has to be said, this is a femtoscroller; glacial in stealth and going nowhere in a hurry. It's slow by cracky!

Anyway, as the screen scrolls, numerous Cowboys 'leap' (saunter, actually) out of side alleys and also appear from the top of the screen. Shoot them before they shoot you time, but with the added problem that the graphics are so awful that half the time you can't see their bullets. This results as you might imagine in an awful lot of dying. Occasionally you will be charged at by a giant cockroach wearing a coy-boy hat. Yes it's true - that's what it looks like! it throws bombs at you.

All in all what we have here is one little birrova lame qame I'm afraid, chumkins. Wibbly animation, dodgy sprites, jerky scrolling, camouflaged bullets and a giant cockroach isn't (for my money anyway) worth nine quid, knowworrimean? Anyway, just enough room left for one of my incredibly brilliant jokes:

Q: Why do cowboys ride horses?
A. A coconut.

Label: Go!
Author: Toposoft
Price: £8.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tamara Howard

Now look, just because this is a cowboy sort of game, there's absolutely no excuse to start, or even continue, this review along the lines of, I Was Born Under a Wandering Star, Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head, or such other Western-style film tunes. No, I'm not the sort of gal to hang around saloons and drink raw whisky and sing (That's a lie for a start - GT) so I'll just get along with this here review.

Gunsmoke, latest release from Go! is a conversion from a little known coin-op, which was, to say the least, not overly impressive in the first place. Yet again, the scenario is of lone good guy against hordes of screaming bad guys with simply enormous weapons.

Each of Gunsmoke's levels involve ploughing your way through various outlaws of varying nastiness (the weight of the guy's beard is usually indicative of the degree of ghastliness of his character) in order to reach Mister Big, the Last Outlaw, the Final Bad Guy. And he takes an awful lot of killing.

Along the way to Public Enemy Number 1, there's the odd bouncing horse (don't axe me why) and some handy stars a-lyin' on the ground. Shoot the handy stars to reveal bonus points, and the odd stick of dynamite which alternately blows you up, and, er, doesn't. No sign, as far as I can see, of those barrels which appear in the coin-op revealing new boots, guns and other pieces of weaponry.

Apart from the lack of barrels, Gunsmoke on the Spectrum bears a good resemblance to Gunsmoke in the arcades. The graphics are good and clear (despite being that ghastly shade of yellow which seems to be all the rage in games these days) and your character moves with a good, manly swagger. But yet again, we've got the rotten invisible bullets syndrome. Or rather you can see the bullets, but owing to the enormous number of them present on the screen at any one time, the chances of avoiding 'em are pretty slim.

It's a tough game, with the baddies outnumbering you several to one, and things crack along at a fair pace. But it's not a game that's anything out of the ordinary. It's a relatively good conversion of a relatively good coin-op, and that's it. Period. There's nothing to lift it up to the standard of the Cybernoids and Fireflies of this world. If you want a perfectly competent cowboy blast, go for it. If you want innovative and astounding gameplay, p'raps not.

Go! Get 'em Floyd.

Wyatt Earp you ain't, but some over-worked and underpaid sheriff you is. You've got five stages (four on some versions) to complete, and some mean gun-toting critters to avoid.

The first stage is a continually vertically scrolling shoot-em-up set in a western town. Baddies come from the top and bottom of the screen and the idea is simply to shoot them before they shoot you. Extra benefits are available in the game by shooting stars found lying on the floor - you don't get a helpful benefit every time though so you have to be careful when approaching the shot stars. At the end of each level there's a particularly vicious baddie to dispose of before you proceed to the next level. On Level Two you're trying to cause as much damage as possible to the railway station.

Survive this and next you're on your way down a canyon full of blood-thirsty injuns! The next stage has you shooting the rapids avoiding alligators, Indians and a host of other hazards, before you finally come face to face with a young scamp lobbing boomerangs at you in a very determined fashion. Complete all the levels and you can rest assured that the remainder of the citizens can sleep soundly in their beds.

Gunsmoke offers nothing more than the average shoot-em-up, except some poor animation and annoying gameplay. The inability to turn round and shoot baddies that are coming up behind you is particularly annoying. There's nothing here to get the adrenalin pumping for very long.

Reviewer: Andy Smith

RELEASE BOX
Spec, £8.99cs, £12.99dk, Out Now
Amstrad, £9.99cs, £14.99dk, Imminent
C64/128, Under development

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 50/100
1 hour: 58/100
1 day: 50/100
1 week: 35/100
1 month: 12/100
1 year: 0/100