Nintendo Relaunch: REVIEW: Gumshoe

Game: Gumshoe
Original Launch: June 1986
Relaunch: February 2011
Rating: 8 Stars

If you want space ships, commandos, or dragon slaying, the NES has you covered. You’ve got tons of sports games, jet fighters out the wazoo and more ninja than you can shake a wakizashi at. But the NES didn’t get many gritty noir thrillers and if we are being honest, this isn’t one of them. What we have here is a light gun platformer that offers something lacking in a lot of NES games, originality.

*Where am I going to find a 5 inch Black Panther?*

You play a P.I. named Stevenson who runs constantly to the right. Bottles, rocks, gangsters and all sorts of enemies will fly at Stevenson and it is the player’s job to keep him safe. Shoot the enemies before they can hit you and shoot Stevenson to make him jump. You can keep shooting Stevenson to effectively make him fly but often you have to divide your attention between his jumping and eliminating enemies. You don’t have a life bar so one hit kills you and sends you back to the checkpoint. And unless you are using the continue trick you only have a few lives to beat the game. Did I mention that you have limited ammo and have to keep picking up balloons to add ammo? Running out of ammo means you can’t shoot or jump and leaves you dead within seconds. And don't forget about the time limit.

*Not pictured: Unceasing death and aggravation.*

Stevenson is out to save his daughter who was kidnapped by King Dom and to do this he needs to find 5 black diamonds. These diamonds may not appear unless you pick the right path through a level (over or under specific platforms) and missing a diamond means having to repeat levels 1 through 5 all over again. The enemies are a strange and random mix of the obvious to the bizarre. I can see why mobsters want you dead, but why do armadillos hate you? If you make it to the end of level 5 with all of the diamonds you get to fight the one-eyed fireball spitting demon in charge of the mob. They should have ended Godfather 3 the same way.

The important part here is that this game is fiercely difficult. Without using the continue trick (shooting like mad at the Game Over screen) I could barely make it to level 2. The levels get progressively tougher so expect to wear out a Zapper or two if you intend to beat the game. The enemies are typically tiny and fast and most of the time a miss means death. The game is packed with cheap kills and frustration. The game play experience is comparable to playing a blisteringly difficult gun game (“To The Earth” comes to mind) and Balloon Fight at the same time. I remember beating this game back in the day and I remember the last boss fight being pretty slick. However I couldn’t come close now so either I must really suck in my old age or I must have been sitting right on top of the TV back then. The road to hell is paved with broken controllers.

*Diverse environments and a wide variety of enemies will all dance on your grave.*

It might sound like I didn’t enjoy Gumshoe but the fact is that it is one of my favorite NES light gun games. Gumshoe was the first light gun platformer for the NES and this is a light gun sub-genre that isn’t particularly well represented. The game is teaming with strangeness and the bizarre mix of themes keep things fresh right up to the end. And then there is the difficulty. This game is old school hard and it doesn’t apologize. If you can’t hack it, go back to Duck Hunt. But this game rewards the player for time invested in it and fans of light gun games will find themselves coming back again and again. It is by far the most robust and complete game experience of the first generation NES gun games and if you can deal with the difficulty you will have fun.