Gunstar Heroes Review

Gunstar Heroes arrived on the Sega Genesis almost fifteen years ago. The game, developed by famed studio Treasure, is an action title like no other. Before there was Metal Slug, which is the closest thing I can compare it to, Gunstar Heroes was one of the first titles to put the entire focus of the game on all-out action. You get non-stop action in this game from start until finish. For whatever reason, Sega never decided to release a port until the Wii Virtual Console came around, giving gamers of this generation a chance to try out the fun from my generation.

The Gunstar Heroes storyline was a little unclear to me, so I took it upon myself to research it on Wikipedia. You play as Gunstar Red and Blue (this is a two player game, afterall), members of the Gunstar family which is entrusted with protecting the planet Gunstar 9. When an android named Golden Silver traveled to the planet, sucking it dry of resources, Professor White extracted the robot’s power source (four gems). These gems came into the possession of Colonel Red, a dictator who bears a resemblance to the main villain in Metal Slug, when he brainwashed the Red and Blue’s brother Green to collect them. Now that Colonel Red has the gems, he plans to reactivate Golden Silver. It’s your job to stop him.

One of the unique aspects of Gunstar Heroes is that there is not a linear level layout, at least not at first. The first four levels where you will collect the gems are played out in a mine, ruins, a battleship and a fortress. Not all stages are the same, either. Some may only have a single boss fight like the mine, whereas the ancient ruins level will have three boss fights. The mine boss fight has multiple forms that it will take. Depending on your difficulty, you may face him five times. This does prove challenging, as it took me a few times to beat this one, made more difficult since you will not get any health during any of the boss fights. From here (without spoiling the plot too much), Colonel Red will kidnap your sister Yellow, who you of course will have to follow and save. This is when the game will begin to follow the more traditional linear level layout.

Now, I am sure you are wondering about the action in Gunstar Heroes. The action plays out fairly simply, but allows for a number of neat tricks that will help you avoid damage while inflicting the most on your enemies. Basically each level is a filled with a large number of enemies coming at you, firing their weapons and trying to stop you in your track. As you are not restricted by ammo, you are free to fire away as much as you like without releasing the button. This creates a genuine arcade-like feel to the game. All you have to do is avoid being killed, defeat the bosses and collect the gems. I will talk more about the weapons in a minute, but aside from firing the weapons, you can jump, duck, slide, wall jump and even throw your enemies.

As far as the weapons go, you have four weapons classes to choose from. You have the lightning gun, the chaser gun (which homes in on enemies), the fire gun (good mainly for close range) and you have the force gun (rapid continuous fire). You may think that you sound limited, but what you might not realize is that Treasure enables you the ability to combine these weapons (you can hold two weapon types at once) to customize your attack. You can also opt to select two of the same classes of weapons which in affect upgrades the weapon to a more powerful one. A blast that once looked like baseballs are now looking like basketballs being fired at your enemies.

Simply put, Gunstar Heroes is a frenetic, fast-paced treasure (no pun intended) that any Genesis, or Wii owner for that matter, should not overlook. This could easily be classified as one of the best games ever created. It just goes to show how fun video games used to be and can still be today. This is the type of game that instead of building dust on a collector’s shelf should be building a new generation of gamers. Forget Halo and Grand Theft Auto, this is the real deal. This is what video games are meant to be like.