Gunple: Gunman's Proof (1997)

Beat the game. I was a little dubious about it at first based on the title art, but once I started playing and seen the amalgamation of A Link to the Past and shooter, I fell in love with the game. I missed the alternate guns for the 1st 2 dungeons. I spent a fair time trying out all the weapons and I was not a big fan of the bazooka, ball and shotgun. The flamethrower and drill were my go to weapons and I tried to keep them topped up. The magnum was good too and was my boss weapon because the flamethrower could not last an entire fight. I used the punch to conserve ammo before unlocking the drill. I got D ratings mostly (1 C and 1 E) whatever that means. I could not care less about score and ratings so it was disappointing to find loot that did nothing practical.

Some of the combat and bosses were challenging. More often than not I ran past everything and only stopped to fight if I wanted healing or thought I would not get past without damage. Overall great game with a lot of charm and a good humorous story. A lot more could have been done to make it more like Zelda but I don't think the goal of the game was to be just like Zelda. I only spent money on food a couple times in late game when the free crabs turned into enemies. Game really could have used some other use for money, like buying lives, weapons, bombs and maybe even upgrades.

this review is pretty spot on so i'll just link it and mention a few things:

You might have seen or heard of Gunman's Proof at one point if you are a fan of Link to the Past. This feels very much like binding of issac in terms of gameplay. The dungeons seem like they are geared towards 'challenge' players. at completion it counts your time and what treasure you found. (I totally dont see an audience for that dynamic coming from legend of zelda link to the past fans, but that's the idea here) dungeons are very plain but the bosses are decent. Game look like zelda but doesn't really feel like zelda.

The game is aesthetically reminiscent of LttP, but they actually did their own work as well. If you look closely stuff is modeled lazily after Ltttp, but it's not a carbon copy of it's assets. (The map and menus for instance) It's as if they took a game which was a renown success, used it as a model to make their own game. Often it even looks better, there are also a lot of nice and impressive details, rather than boring and static dungeon walls, some of the dungeons have unique embellishments. the haunted dungeon has opening and shutting shutters over the windows (we wont get into why shutters are on the inside of the dungeon but that's beside the point) I feel this is kind of an important distinction to make in this old era when you would get clones and bad ports of existing games, only to realize you are playing a 'better' game with a different sprite set and background or something like that. Gunple/Ganporu, is definitely not that at all, and i can admire the time taken to embellish some of this. The game is enjoyable to look at and there's a lot of visual elements which are praiseworthy. The game has some item gated puzzles for the progress in the overworld, but i'ts fairly simplistic. the sheriff tells you where to find the next dungeon, and generally item related puzzles are kept simple. make your way to where sheriff tells you and look around and find the item. often the items can be purchased by the mexican (racist?) in town. there are also weapon upgrades in some of the dungeons but these are optional, still if you arent using cheats you are going to want to look for them, and loot every chest. (And why not farm MAC-10 ammo in zelda dungeons like john wayne/link?)

one big difference from legend of zelda link to the past (that i found majorly annoying) is that every time you leave a 'room' or area and come back to it, ALL enemies respawn! this creates a surprisingly different dynamic. enemies themselves move faster and always seem closer to the player. this makes combat quite difficult. often when entering some rooms its as if they get the jump on you in groups. some enemies will drop money (which doesn't really seem to have a big use) and some will drop HP restorations other enemies drop weapon upgrades. so the trick in this game is finding rooms that have HP restoration enemies and farming them and making progress through rooms with money dropping enemies (which suck). a better solution IMHO is to just cheat with action replay code (must be turned off after beating bosses) the game has a kind of charm to it, and it's not bad with the JRPG story and characters. it feels very much like some weird shonuen type anime, the dialog is funny (it's a great translation!) and the character has a lot of expression (similiar to Chrono Trigger) its 'a bit a dated, but still interesting to look at due to it's late release in the snes cycle, as well as the fact it's modeled so heavily from LTTP.... still this isnt a game i would recommend to true zelda fans. Anime people (who like shounen) would probably like it most as well as those who like challenging games. Aside from that it was run of the mill.. It does however bear some historical interest (it's also one of the few snes games i've seen with religious imagery, the other game that comes to mind was also ASCII...). it's also not half bad to play, but ultimately nothing special (i personally found the linearity and gameplay of it to evoke a bit of more open True Lies and Goof Troop without the puzzles while looking a whole lot nicer)

Platform:

Super Nintendo version.

Graphics/Sound:

The graphics almost feel like they were ripped from A Link to the Past, I could swear I have seen one or the other tileset part in that game already. I still love the graphics in this context and everything works pretty well. The sound is nice and fits the atmosphere.

Gameplay:

While it might look like a Zelda ripoff at first, it's a unique game in its own right. There is not a single key for a locked door in the dungeons, so it has a more arcade feel than Zelda. It even features an arcade like powerup system where enemy drop powerups that are then available for a limited amount of shots, much like in Metal Slug. There is stuff like a machine gun, a flame thrower and other gimmicks. I never really got behind the melee attack, for me it felt much easier just to shoot everything from afar. Most of the bosses sadly drag a bit, some of them really could have done with a little less hitpoints. One weird thing I found was that I was constantly finding money but it seemed I had no chance to spend anything because there is no shops that sell anything.

Difficulty:

The enemies are relatively intelligent throughout. There is almost no enemies just walking around randomly, most really spot you and react to you. That makes it a bit harder at the beginning, but once you progress it eases up a bit. It's also not very difficult to find your way. I was never aimless about what I should do next, the game does a great job of letting you know where to go without blocking the other paths for you. You still know when to go where.

It's a lovely little action adventure, a genre that hasn't seen that many games. Sadly it was never officially released to the western world (luckily I found a fan patch for English), which is a shame because it's really a gem. Recommended for everyone who likes a quick action packed Zelda-esque experience with cute humorous characters.