Gunstar Heroes
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Gunstar Heroes (ガンスターヒーローズ) is a run and gun video game released in 1993 by Treasure Co. Ltd for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and the Sega Game Gear. In many aspects, Gunstar Heroes is considered innovative. It combined a linear, side-scrolling shooter with plot elements, a combo-based weapon system, a dice game, recurring bosses, and combat strategy. It remains one of the most popular games of the 16-bit console, and is often found being traded for relatively high prices (around 10 times the price of a common cartridge). In the console's later years it was re-packed in Sega's Classic Pack along other games such as Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, Altered Beast and Flicky.
Story
Sometime in the future, somewhere not too far from where you live, an amazing adventure takes place...
The Gunstar family has been the protector of the Gunstar 9 (G-9) for generations. Professor White Gunstar, in his youth, defeated the Robot Golden Silver, a machine that traveled millions of miles to suck G-9 dry of all its resources. Professor White was able to extract the four famous Mystical Gems (The robot's power source), and imprisoned the robot on one of G-9's moons.
But now, years later, a new menace has arisen. Colonel Smash, a vicious dictator (and a very bad dresser), found out that the Gunstars knew the location of the Mystical Gems. One day, The Colonel kidnapped the Gunstar twins' older brother Green and used a mind control machine to make Green obey his orders.
With Green's help, Colonel Smash has amassed all four Mystical Gems, has turned Gunstar 9's peaceful worker droids into deadly menaces, and is now preparing to leave for Gunstar 9's moon to reactivate Golden Silver. As one of the Gunstar twins, you must fight your way past Colonel Red's Empire Army and retrieve the Mystical gems, or Golden Silver, the Destructor will rise again and destroy your world! Are you heroic enough for the task?
Characters
- Gunstar Red
Player 1
- Gunstar Blue
Player 2
- Gunstar Yellow
She is very close to Green, and is working together with the Professor to help the Gunstar Heroes on their mission and find out more of Green's brainwashing.
- Gunstar Green
He was brainwashed by Colonel Red, and now he collected the Gems that can reawaken Golden Silver. He also stole the ancient relic "Seven Force" in the mines.
- Dr. Brown
Known as Professor White Gunstar in his youth, he deactivated Golden Silver in the past. He'll provide the twins with gadgets and brief them on their missions.
- Pink
Pink is a well known bounty hunter that was hired to stop the progress of the Gunstars.
- Kain
He is the tall member of pink's group who would do anything for Pink.
- Kotaro
He is the small member of Pink's group who would obey Pink without question.
- G.I. Orange
The Captain of a huge warship, Orange loves melee combat, and is known for his incredible fighting skills and strength.
- Dr. Black
The Lord of the Strange Fortress. Black awaits the Gunstars at his Fortress, which is filled with many treacherous traps.
- Colonel Smash
Not much is known about Colonel Smash except that he aspires to reawaken Golden Silver. He is eager to face the Gunstars, but it seems as though he's not alone...
- General Gray
Not much is known about the General except that he's pulling the strings of Smash Daisaku (who was under the guise of dictator "Colonel Smash") from behind the scenes. Why is he so evil?
- Golden Silver
Golden Silver is a 1000 year old robot that was programmed to go across the universe and suck the energy out of planets. He was deactivated by the Professor earlier, but now an uprising threatens to reawaken him with the Gems taken from him. What is their motive...?
Stages
The first four stages can be done in any order, so they are listed in the order they are presented, left-to-right, on the stage selection screen.
- Stage 1 - Pink's stage. The level encompasses a small jungle village, which promptly moves onto climbing a large pyramid. After defeating Bravoo Man at the top, our heroes slide down the smooth side of the pyramid, heading back into the jungle to face off Pink and her goons, and obtain her jewel.
- Stage 2 - Green's stage. Our heroes chase down and destroy the empire's train, being manned by Colonel Smash, in the underground tunnels. After accomplishing this, Green shows up and attacks in his rapidly transforming mech, Seven Force, in one of the most intense battles in the early parts of the game. After being defeated, Green surrenders his jewel, and then flies off.
- The difficulty of the game determines the length of the fight against Green. On Easy, he battles you in three forms, five on Medium, and in Hard mode, he fights with all seven.
- Stage 3 - Orange's stage. After climbing a tall building to catch up with a flying battleship, our heroes create all sorts of havoc on the deck. After besting Colonel Smash once more, the bulky Orange does battle with them on top of the of a flying helicopter, giving up his jewel once bested.
- Stage 4 - Black's stage. Black has set up a board game security system - anyone who can reach the end without dying gets to face him. After our heroes rush into the system, fight various foes (such as the enigmatic Melon Bread), and defeat Black in his mech, he attempts to distract them with an explosive decoy jewel. When they are not phased by the fake, Black is forced to give up the real jewel.
- Stage 5 - Yellow has been kidnapped by the empire, and she will only be returned if all the jewels are surrendered! After fighting through the stage and besting Colonel Red once again, Emperor Gray forces our heroes to comply and return the jewels to the empire in exchange for Yellow's life.
- Stage 6 - As the empire takes off to resurrect Golden Silver in outer space, our heroes board a spaceship and take the battleship head-on. If two players are in control at this time, one controls the movement, while the other controls a gun-satellite that orbits the ship. After fighting Seven Force in outer space, our heroes board the ship and destroy the core of the ship.
- Stage 7 - The final stage. Our heroes must take on Pink's goons, Pink herself, Orange, Black and Green all over again, as the villains watch the action from the comfort of the control room. Upon reaching it, Emperor Gray attempts to revive Golden Silver - he is successful, but the power of the jewels stuns him and leaves him powerless. Our heroes then take on the evil Golden Silver directly, by destroying the jewels that revived and currently power him as he does his best to kill them.
Weapons
When the game begins, players can choose to pay with either Fixed Shot, or Free Shot.
- Free Shot - Allows the player to move while firing(Similar to the Contra series), and can do a diving attack on enemies. The sprite for a player using Free Shot has short dark hair.
- Fixed Shot - The player must stop to fire, but may fire in all eight directions while standing. In addition, he performs a flying kick, which can be directed forwards or downwards. The sprite for Fixed Shot has lighter and slightly longer hair, held back with a headband(resembles Gunstar Blue in Gunstar Super Heroes).
The weapon system gives each player space for two weapon shots. The player can then combine any two simple shots to form a combo shot. This isn't to say that the player is forced to use the combination; with the press of a button the player can choose to rotate from the combo to only one weapon, then to the other, and finally back to the combo. Generally, though, the combo shots are more powerful.
Although players choose their main shot at the beginning of the game, the weapons are dropped very frequently from bird-like robots that fly by during the heat of battle. If the player only has one slot selected, then they can choose to swap that weapon out for the new one, creating entirely different combos.
In addition to all the weapons, it is also possible to grab enemies that get too close, and toss them into other enemies, damaging both enemies involved. This can be risky since several enemies are capable of melee attacks, but is an effective last resort. Less risky but also useful is the sliding tackle movement, which allows the player to dodge and attack a nearby opponent at the same time. The characters can also use a jumping attack that depends on the character used, and a long-range skid attack that's good for destroying boxes.
Basic Shots
- Force Shot - A ball of energy. Medium-powered.
- Lightning Shot - A rapid laser blast of blue lightning that passes through enemies.
- Chaser Shot - A rapid fire, target-seeking gun that shoots stars; it is the weakest single shot.
- Flame Shot - A fairly short-ranged but powerful and continuous flamethrower.
Combo Shots
- Force+Force - A strong, rapid-fire gun that shoots fireballs with a slight spread. Good all-around weapon.
- Force+Lightning - Slightly less strong than Force+Force, this is a rapid-fire laser gun that travels through its targets, and when the player moves their aim the shots "sweep" to cover a greater area.
- Force+Chaser - A single stream of the Force+Force shots, which can turn up to 80 degrees in either direction to home in on enemies.
- Force+Flame - A strategic weapon that launches single fireballs, which burst into flames when the Fire button is released or they hit something.
- Lightning+Lightning - Continuous stream of lightning that does heavy damage.
- Lightning+Chaser - A chasing Lightning gun remains homed in on a single target until it is destroyed, or when the button is released.
- Lightning+Flame - A very strong but short-range lightning sword, that can easily destroy enemy bullets.
- Chaser+Chaser - A moderately-strong gun that rapidly shoots homing energy stars.
- Chaser+Flame - A Flame gun that launches a single large fireball, which can be controlled with the direction pad. Best used with Fixed Shot.
- Flame+Flame - Similar to the single Flame weapon, but with nearly twice the range and more power behind it. The flames are launched forward when the Fire button is released.
Technical Power
Gunstar Heroes was one of several games on the Sega Genesis known to have pushed the system to its absolute limits, mostly for the special effects and sheer speed of its gameplay. Many effects that Gunstar Heroes did, from scaling and rotation to huge bosses, where absolutely awe-inspiring, even bringing the system up to par with its biggest rival, the Super NES. To this day, Gunstar Heroes remains one of Treasure's most important games, one major factor being the way that it pushed the Genesis so hard.
Here's a quick list of some of the special effects Gunstar Heroes was famous for:
- Scaling and rotation, although not as smooth as the Super NES's Mode 7, but still extremely impressive.
- Raster effects, which boosted the color palette a little. The Genesis normally can only display 64 colors on screen at once, but Gunstar Heroes used carefully timed palette changes technique to boost the on screen palette by a small margin.
- The 3d title screen is done using Raster effects.
- Multi-segmented bosses. To create such huge bosses, Treasure had several smaller sprites chained together to form a much larger entity. Seen best with Seven Force, but nearly all of the bosses were multi-segmented. They used a hack that simulate rotations on every elements of those bosses, they store in the rom several copy of image but rotated, since genesis cannot do rotations on sprites.
- Heavy optimization of the 68000 programming code, making the game run MUCH faster.
GameGear and Sega Master System Versions
Not too long after its original release, Gunstar Heroes made its way to Sega's handheld machine, Game Gear. As the console's power couln't be matched to that of Genesis / MegaDrive, the game was significantly scaled down, stripping its multiplayer mode, among other minor changes, such as graphic effects. Today the Game Gear version is extremely difficult to find, which makes it a rare treat for all of the Treasure game collectors.
Gunstar Heroes also made its way to Sega Master System, and was released for this platform in Brazil, by the local Sega division named TecToy. This version is virtually identical to the Game Gear release and is equally difficult to find.
Sequels and New Releases
On October 6th 2005, Treasure and Sega released a sequel, Gunstar Super Heroes for the Game Boy Advance, which made a few changes, such as having a fixed weapon selection (instead of allowing players to pick their favorite combination) and the addition of overpowered attacks controlled by the trigger.
On February 23rd 2006, Sega released a Treasure-oriented entry in their Sega Ages series for PlayStation 2. Named "Treasure Box" [ トレジャーボックス ], it contained Gunstar Heroes prominently (to the extent of it being on the front cover), along with Dynamite Headdy and Alien Soldier. The title also contains the various versions of these titles (such as Game Gear versions, or versions from different countries), as well as digital manuals and other bonus materials.