Gun.Smoke is a vertical scrolling shooter that casts the gamer as a lone gunman, out to save the gold rush town of Hicksville from a fearsome group of bandits known as the Wingates. Each level has a particular target enemy, although his henchmen must also be taken out.
Although it largely takes place on foot, the gameplay resembles Commando, with its diagonal-down action. The screen scrolls at a constant rate, and enemies come at you from the edges, to be shot or avoided. Various power-ups can be grabbed along the way. Finding a horse will allows the player to get hit twice before death rather than just once. There are scenes in which the cowboy rafts up a river and use the tracks of a railway line.
On the NES the controls work differently with the A button to fire up and right, the B button to fire up and left, or A and B simultaneously to fire straight ahead. One-button control systems mimic all this.
