I had always heard the name Gumshoe bandied about when folks talk about old NES games, but never really played it or knew what it was. The other day I got my chance to play it, and it turns out to not be that good.
Gumshoe is the story of a guy, a former Private Investigator of some sort. This guy has had his daughter kidnapped and he must get some black diamonds to get her back. As is happens, the diamonds are in the hands of some kinds of enemies, enemies that can be reached by running to the right.
When running to the right, your guy has to avoid obstacles and collect powerups. Pretty standard fare, really. Where this game differs from the norm, however, is the way you control your character. You don’t directly control your character. You control the game with the Zapper. You shoot some of the obstacles to remove them from play. To avoid the other obstacles and to collect the powerups you have to shoot your gumshoe friend, since shooting him will make him jump.
I don’t really know any more than that, the clunky controls made this game pretty unexciting to play and I gave up partway through stage 1.