Gunstar Heroes

Voices of: N/A
Developer: Treasure
Directed by: N/A
Rating: GA
Genre: Run and gun
System: Sega Genesis
1993

Times Completed:
Tim: 1

Summary: The gunstars must fight against an evil empire, looking to obtain powerful gems to dominate the world.

Review:
Tim: Treasure's Gunstar Heroes is such an exceptionally fun game. I never played it in my youth, so I finally got to it as an adult. I played the two-player version with my 9 year-old son. We had so much fun playing this frantic, constant action game. The game feels very much like an arcade game- you rarely get a quiet moment, rarely get a chance to take a breath. The game comes at you fast- a series of bad guys that you need to take out. The game isn't overly long, but it throws some ridiculous challenges into the mix. You play, running, gunning down everything in sight. This is definitely a special game.

I have to admit, the story was mostly lost on me. I picked up pieces of it here and there, but I knew the basics- we're the gunstars, we have to take down the baddies and collect the gems. It doesn't do a great job of conveying the narrative and it always feels secondary to the gunslinging action. The colors are bright, the villains continuous, and the action nonstop. One of the best parts of the game is that you can combine different power-ups to customize your guns. That part of the game felt wildly innovative and was a ton of fun. I spent a large part of the game with two flames, creating a powerful flamethrower than I used to mow people down. The other main weapon we used was the double green arrows, which pursued bad guys wherever they went. This "heat seeker" type weapon was deadly for the waves of bad guys. I'm sure there were dozens of other combinations, but my son and I mostly used these combinations.

I have to admit, we played this game leveraging Load Screens. I can't imagine the hours we'd have had to pour into this to complete it without this shortcut. We still beat the game and still perfected certain moments before saves, but this allowed us to save constant replaying of some levels over and over again. The game throws a bunch of bosses in your way- some are easy, some are brutally hard. There's one sequence where you have to fight something like 5 bosses in a row- with no checkpoints. That's just awful. To do it perfectly would require hours of replay, refining every technique and waiting for that near-perfect run. We replayed the bosses, but were able to quickly save it when we had one of those incredible runs. Even with that, the frustration mounted and we died a lot. There's a few sequences where 20 years ago, I'd probably have given up. Even with the saves, we had to learn how to perfect boss battles for either no damage or extremely minimal damage. That's just crazy. One of the most insane stretches involved this board game level where you roll dice to move along the path. One character at a time goes and depending on the space you land on, might have to face a boss solo. This was wildly difficult and a major challenge for us. This game is truly difficult at times.

The challenges aside, I loved playing this game. It's completely crazy and the two-player action was excellent- getting to play with my son, sharing the experience of this insane action shooter, it was just such a fun experience. With the saves, we beat the game in just a few days. I've said this in many other reviews of video games- I'm in it for the experience. We got to experience this game and luckily, minimize some of the frustration- even though we did complete everything the game threw at us.

Gunstar Heroes is an entertaining, nonstop action game that is one of the best on the Sega Genesis. We had a ton of fun playing through this.



Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: N/A



If You Enjoyed This Game, We Recommend: Ecco the Dolphin, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mortal Kombat