Gunstar Super Heroes
October 31,2005 -

Treasure has lately been involved in reviving the old-school era of gaming most of us know and love.  On the console side of things, Treasure was welcomed with a warm heart with Ikaruga—a GameCube port of a classic 2D sci-fi shooter.  The developer then lost a bit of respect when they released an uninspiring follow-up to the Guardian Heroes series in Advance Guardian Heroes, but they shortly regained it as soon as Astro Boy: Omega Factor (which was tagged as IGO’s Best GBA Game of 2004) was released.  Now Treasure has revived another Sega classic in Gunstar Super Heroes—a game that is quite possibly the most pleasant surprise to hit the GBA this year.

Gunstar Super Heroes is a follow-up to Gunstar Heroes, a sidescrolling Genesis game that was released over a decade ago.  Gunstar Heroes had an intergalactic team saving the world from the clutches of the God of Ruin.  Gunstar Super Heroes, fittingly, takes place a few years after the events of the previous game, where the forces of evil try to revive the mighty God of Ruin.  The story then progresses like any other old-school game would; you have to actually beat a few levels to understand what it is you’re doing and see some conversations between good and evil, but nobody can care less about the story.

When you start the game, you have two characters at your disposal—Red and Blue.  There aren’t any major differences between the two, besides the obvious looks and weapons.  The levels you play through won’t differ, but some of the dialog is changed, and that’s pretty much what you’d expect.  Either way, aside from the characters, the game immediately asks what mode you wish to play in.  To be frank, the game is quite challenging, so don’t be afraid to take the Easy or Normal modes.

As stated, the game is a 2D sidescroller, and Treasure is not going to make it easy for anybody.  Once you actually get into the action, you’ll be greeted by loads of enemies at a time.  Luckily, you have guns with endless ammunition.  With this, you can hold the B button to fire away with any amount of plasma, fire, or electric sparks you have.  Eventually, you’ll gain other weapons along the way, including a handy homing gun for those bigger, tougher enemies.  Once you acquire different guns, you can change the weapons at your disposal with the left shoulder button, so it’ll be easy to roam, switch, and fire away at the same time (you’ll be doing this a lot).

Aside from just the guns, you have a sword, which you can obviously use to swipe at enemies.  Believe it or not, this is actually more powerful than any gun you have, but it’s also the hardest to use.  You have to be tapping the B button while your character is in motion.  This weapon doesn’t have a long range of attack at all, and you’ll find yourself totally reliant on your guns for most of the game anyway.

Each level starts off a bit differently.  Sometimes you’ll just be required to kill whatever’s in your path and move on.  Other times, you’ll have to backtrack.  Don’t worry though, as the backtracking isn’t that extreme.  There’s even a specific part in the second level in which you’re on top of a ship, and all you have to do is shoot everything that surrounds you.  Sound simple?  Well, you haven’t read about the hard stuff yet.

Also in certain levels are weird minigames that put you in a distorted area, and you’ll be forced to grab every chick you see and lead them to the exit without getting hit.  If you didn’t get that, it’s no different to those bonus levels in Mario vs. Donkey Kong in which you lead the toy Marios back to the toolbox.  Except this time, you can get killed doing it. 

That brings us to how death works in the game.  Since Treasure really isn’t that forgiving, once you die—you’re sent back to the title screen and you start back at where you saved last.  That’s nothing to complain about since a lot of these games have you start out at the beginning.  And besides, there are only six levels to begin with.

At the end of every level is a boss or two to fight.  Like a lot of games back in the day, the main reason why the bosses are hard is because you get a claustrophobic feeling due to the bosses taking up nearly half of the screen, and you can only beat the bosses a certain way.  This is actually have the fun in the game because most bosses actually have only one way to be gotten rid of, and when you finally pull it off, you get a sense of achievement that just feels great.

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