Posted By
MIK
on 2012-04-26
20:29:14
 |  Gun Law
I came across this guy on YouTube who was looking back at some of the games he used to enjoy and towards the end he was saying the hardest game ever made was Gun Law. Made me laugh. 
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3Ve08J-2X8
Yes it is very unforgiving with the random enemies showing up but for me that was the main attraction. As long as you remind your self that no more than 3 bad guys will ever be on screen at once then you can shift their spawn points to your advantage just to hold on to a couple of extra lives - even tho you will die in the end! It's that challenge I like about it, the survival challenge! I don't ever recall finishing it tho but played it many times.
I just quickly jumped over to the Atari page for Gun Law to have a look and felt really sorry reading the guys always started back at the start of a level after every death, (OUCH!). C16+1.
And then one guy said this:
Quote Steve: "As the description above suggests, there's evidence that this was originally meant to be a conversion of "Commando". Someone writing to Page 6 magazine said that they'd been paid to do a title picture for Commando by English Software, who were writing the game on Elite's behalf (Elite had the home license IIRC).
And the loading screen on Gun Law has the same font and appearance as English's other games. Chances are (as the letter suggested) they changed enough of the graphics etc. to sell this *without* the license.
steve - 28/08/2007"
It sort of makes sense in some way because the instructions for Commando also have another printed image in the same style but it's now named Space Invasion which I never did understand... Also the Atari version of Gun Law has BLUE for the hero and GREEN for the enemy which is true to Commando, but the complete reverse of what we have on C16/Plus4. Could be speculation on their part of course?
So then chaps, what do you think about that? Was Gun Law really our port of Commando? For 16k at least Gun Law is a great little arcade game in it's own right in my view and would of been most worthy of the Commando name minus the space ships of course. Shame if it was, but we still got to play it in the end type of thing! 
BTW I'm not drunk, just some appreciation and I was surprised the Atari boys think it was once a version of Commando. 
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Posted By
MIK
on 2012-04-26
20:44:03
| Re: Gun Law
just to add to the notes:
As you progress up the screen you are rewarded 30 points per char line of added background as you walk. For fun see how much you can score without killing anyone.
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Posted By
Jakec
on 2012-04-27
00:11:50
| Re: Gun Law
I thought it was playing through the Treasure Island five minutes. Would have been nice. I've seen it with the Diablo 2 on youtube. Yeah. Gun Law is "so difficult" 
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Posted By
TMR
on 2012-04-27
03:43:21
 | Re: Gun Law
"because the instructions for Commando also have another printed image in the same style but it's now named Space Invasion which I never did understand..."
Space Invasion was how the Commando coin-op was released in some territories to avoid issues with local regulations about realistic violence i think? Some of the home versions exist in both flavours, presumably either for the same reason or because they were released in the same territories or it wouldn't have made sense to put Commando out where Space Invasion was in the arcades.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2012-04-27
14:13:29
| Re: Gun Law
You learn something new every day. Didn't know that and there was me thinking that if you turned the tape over on Commando you would have a different version of the game to play but sadly not.
EDIT:
Just fired Gun Law up on my C16 for a crack and on my Amiga I have the Commodore C64 SID tune of SAS Combat Simulator composed by Steve Barnett for Codemasters blasting out and the room is electric! Makes me play better!
I long forget but with a couple of lives, past 2 space ships and the second house I could enter which might be level 3, I have just walked up a dead end and this is as far down as I can walk... GAME OVER. Yeah the rock is blocking the path. GUTTED!
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Posted By
retroscener
on 2012-04-27
15:28:48
 | Re: Gun Law
I watched that video a few weeks back which is amongst my youtube playlists along with many others, cracking reviews.
Gunlaw is indeed difficult, I had always found Legionaire just as tricky too. I guess my favourite of the genre was always Ikari Warriors.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2012-04-29
19:49:11
| Re: Gun Law
I was thinking of you playing Ikari Warriors the other night remembering you saying you like that one more than the other Commando type shooters.
Tips for Gun Law:
Keep away from the edges of the screen.
Try to shoot enemies horizontally with maximum distance between you and them so you have enough room to move out of their line of fire.
Every step of added scrolling always take one step at a time if your unsure and always fire up! You must also fire at least twice per step as enemies can spawn right in front of you and sometimes there may be two standing in the same spot.
Of course use buildings, trees, rocks & fences as cover.
You don't have to kill all enemy, if you are forced to walk far right or left close the edge of the screen then the more enemies you can leave behind the less that will spawn in tight spots where you need to go. With practice you can past the first set of buildings without even being killed. It gets easier after that with extra lives added and loads of cover ect..
Look for extra points where you can force the screen to scroll up a little higher if there is a narrow path way you need to take so to stop the bad guys spawning right in front of you. This can shift the spawn points to other areas on the screen out of your way.
I have never been able to kill a space ship and not sure if you can. Go far left ot right and time it so you can run past. Be quick else the bad guys will soon spawn behind you.
Also if you see the odd glitch be it bullet than has not disappeared or anything else of that size that is not part of the normal game GFX or looks out of place then keep well away as your die.
Indeed it is a hard game, but with practice and a little patience as there is no need to rush you can play better than what you may believe you can do now. I'm not saying this is the ultimate survival guide as even I die, mostly from stupid play errors and sometimes you die for no reasons which I call, "land mines" because you just stepped on a bug in the game type of thing.
If you do go back to Gun Law at some point, have fun anyway.
EDIT:
Yeah baby! I was on a roll and wow I started to think this game is really BIG. Not long after some spaceship was in the middle of the screen coming down. Not sure if I died or not but the next thing that happened was it looped back to the start again with my remaining lives. So... this is not the hardest game in the world, just one of those lovely C16/Plus4 games that was hard as most were of this quality yet at the same time it offered value for money with the limited amount of memory. Top game and very challenging when you put your mind to it even if it's 25 years on!
See if you can beat this score of 134340.
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Posted By
Romppainen
on 2012-05-03
19:50:01
| Re: Gun Law
"Some of the home versions exist in both flavours."
Both variants are available at least for C64: Back in the days Commando got blacklisted in germany so it was released in there as Space Invasion with some cosmetic changes.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2012-05-04
08:00:44
| Re: Gun Law
Does not make any sense and never will. Political correctness gone wrong back in the 1980's...
In 1986 Germany would release it's own Commando style game for C16/Plus4 called Legionnaire.
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