The developer behind the recent Amiga port of Zippy Race—a project that quickly became a fan favourite among our IndieRetroNews readers—has set his sights on a new retro challenge. Modern Vintage Gamer is currently bringing Capcom’s legendary 1985 Wild West arcade classic, Gun.Smoke, to AGA Amiga computers. Originally designed by Yoshiki Okamoto, the iconic vertical scroller put players in the boots of bounty hunter Billy Bob as he hunted down dangerous outlaws using a distinct three-button directional shooting mechanic. The original coin-op was a commercial hit, ranking as Japan's sixth highest-grossing table arcade game by the first half of 1986, and this new Amiga version aims to capture that exact high-stakes energy.
To pull this off efficiently, the developer is reverse-engineering the original arcade ROM directly into C source code, utilising a transcode method reminiscent of developer JOTD’s highly regarded work. Modern Vintage Gamer noted that building a port of this scale from scratch—complete with its ten distinct levels, weapon pickups, and boss fights would take a very long time to port. While early builds are already looking highly promising and targeting a smooth 50/60 frames per second, handling the chaotic swarm of on-screen enemies is proving to be a hardware squeeze. The ultimate goal is to have it run on a stock Amiga 1200, though the developer admits that Chip RAM is already running incredibly tight, meaning Amiga owners may ultimately need a bit of Fast RAM to enjoy the full experience.
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Looks great! Really nailed the colours and feel of this game - I fondly remember this one from airport arcades on family holidays as a kid, waiting for flights playing this and Jail break. I like the oldies!
ReplyDeleteAnother great effort from MVG. Note that similar game Commando runs on unexpanded A1200 but it struggles with 25 fps, so maybe requiring a bit of fastmem won't hurt.
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