"The Destructor exploded resulting in a Genesis"
Years and years ago, the God of Ruin, Golden Silver, was defeated by the Gunstar Heroes. After many years of peace, a new evil has appeared in the form of General Gray who plans on resurrecting the God of Ruin. In order to prevent this, the secret organization 3YE has created an elite group of soldiers codenamed the Gunstar Super Heroes after the heroes of the past. Now, with the torch passed, a new Gunstar Red and Gunstar Blue must save the world.
The Gameplay:
GSH in many ways embodies the perfect action game. The level design is excellent and varied, the bosses will keep you on your toes, but the crowning achievment is the control style. GSH can do more with the GBA’s D-pad and four buttons than the vast majority of games can do with a modern dual-analog eight-button console controller. Aside from the Gunstar’s three weapon types, each Gunstar can perform a small but serviceable variety of martial arts moves and a close-range knife attack. With all these attacks you’d think it would be overcomplicated but actually it is very simple, compared to this game, Super Smash Bros. almost seems to have a learning curve.
Second to the control style is the level design. If there is one problem with many action games it’s that it can get repetitive just running through a level blasting anything that moves. GSH avoids that trap, although partially just because it is fairly short, through the variety of it’s levels. Each level area in the game has its own gimmick that helps separate it from the others. These include references to past Sega titles (no sadly, Dr. Eggman does not make a boss appearance) as well as special themed levels (like one where you are on a game board and advance by rolling the die). Some of these work out better than others though, specifically the Thunder/Spacestrike levels.
The Graphics:
GSH offers some of the best graphics on the GBA, there’s really not much more I can say than that. The sprites/backgrounds are detailed and well animated, the bosses are huge, and the frame-rate is fast. It just doesn’t get much better than this.
The Sounds:
The music in GSH is well enough but what really matters is the sound effects and explosions that will be drowning out the music. These are done well enough, although it would have been better if the guns weren’t so quiet, of course with all the gunfire in this game it might cause the GBA’s speakers to meltdown. There’s some mild voice-work as well, it’s hardly great but at least you can make out what the characters are saying.
The Multiplay:
None, that’s right none. Normally I’d be pretty beat up about it but oh well it’s the GBA. It’s not like I would actually be able to find a friend with a GBA, game-link, and a copy of the game anyway.
The Replay:
There’s no hiding that GSH is a short game, assuming you don’t get too many game overs you should have very little problem beating the game in around an hour. But hey they put in loads of unlockable to make-up for it right? Nope, in fact there are no artificial replay boosters here. There’s two playable characters but they play exactly the same so if you want a reason to play the game again just set the difficulty a little higher and start playing again.
Usually, this would be a huge disappointment for me, but with Gunstar it seems to work to its credit. GSH uses the old-school philosophy of simply using fun gameplay to keep you coming back for more. Even still you’ll find yourself begging for more levels, but perhaps that is to the game’s credit.
The Conclusion:
The thing about Gunstar Super Heroes is that everything it does, it does very well. As my first Treasure-made game I am really impressed because what they did do they did with near scientific precision in terms of game design. However, the fault is not with what they put into the game but what they didn’t: multi-player, replay value, additional missions, or just “new” content in general.
The fact is that if you’ve played Gunstar Heroes you’ve also played this game for the most part because they are just so darn similar. Ultimately I’m confused on whether or not I should judge this as a great remake or a re-hashed sequel. So perhaps if you like Gunstar Heroes and are looking for a new but similar gameplay experience on the GBA you may want to try Astro Boy: Omega Factor (also developed by Treasure) instead.