Games of the Abstract: Gunstar Heroes (1993)

 

Developer: Treasure

Publisher: Sega

One or Two Player

Mega Drive / Nintendo 3DS / Windows / iOS / PS3/ Xbox 360

 

For those in the know, Gunstar Heroes is a legendary game from a legendary developer. This is not the first game they technically made - founded by former members of Konami who worked on titles like The Simpsons (1991), the acclaimed beat 'em-up with the America's favourite yellow skinned family, and Contra III: The Alien Wars (1992)¹, Treasure's first actual game in developer was of all things a McDonald fast food tie-in, the platformer about Ronald McDonald called McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure (1993). This came from Treasure being an entirely unknown quantity to Sega, who wished they proved themselves in their craft², but for Treasure themselves, they wished to have an original project of theirs as their debut release first. Gunstar Heroes may have never been released, or least on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, a console the company wanted to work on as priority, if it had not been for the one Sega executive who actually liked the game³. Regardless of the circumstances behind Treasure's first non-licensed game coming into existence, it nonetheless paved a legacy for an admired developer, the game itself held as one of the best run-and-gun shooters of any kind.

Gunstar Heroes is a very simplistic story - a one or two player game, Red and Blue are two figures you can choose to retrieve gems taken by a sinister mighty cabal of villains with considerable power. In a still-surprising touch for a game in this genre this old, you have an immediate choice to choose between having the ability to fire whilst moving or firing in old directions in exchange for moving at the same time, and that you can choose your initial firepower type, which can (as we will get too) be changed and combined with other firepower power choices you literally have to crouch and pick up during the fire fights. You also have the option to choose the first four levels, for the four gems, in any order. It is clear you should start with the first on the right, but the freeness of the game emphasises Treasure's willingness to stretch and play with a genre they debuted with in the "run-and-gun" genre which I admired from the get-go. Though Gunstar Heroes has its charmingly rough patches, where this has aspects which feel not as fleshed out as others, it is a really fascinating thing to realise how much of the game is both fair for games and also this new developer clearly having fun. Treasure's immediate experience on Konami games beforehand led to them already having the talent, but they both went for broke here, but with game play life saving functions as well included unexpected for this game.

The four initial levels have their personalities. The first involves rescuing a tiny village of sprite creatures. It is an odd touch for a science fiction based game, but before Mischief Makers (1997) it was the first time Treasure was fixated on weird little creatures you interact with and, comically, still have their village blown up even when saved. The boss is a trademark found in Japanese animation and manga, of the beautiful female villainess with her two male henchmen, one thin and one rotund. This has many versions in existence, one of the more famous the animated franchise Yatterman with Doronjo and her henchmen. It is a stock archetype which even influenced Team Rocket from the first Pokemon animated series, only replace the rotund character with a talking cat. Level two is a mine cart level, and we will have to get to Seven Force, the boss for that level, in a later paragraph focusing on one of Treasure's greatest virtues. Level three is a run-and-gun on a flying airship, introducing both a clear parody of M. Bison from the Street Fighter games, if he was a thin henchman who will not stay down, and fighting a muscle man whose idea of an elbow drop, grapping the spinning blade of a small airplane platform at super speed before timing his drop, is insanely impressive.

Level Four literally turns into a board game. Treasure's greatest virtue, discovering them, is already here in that they like making their games have unique levels and turns. You find yourself in a room, after fighting a few grunts beforehand, having to roll the dice with the melee throw from one to three only. You can find yourself with mini-bosses, including a brawl with a curry creature only using fists and kicks which exploits the Mega Drive's polygon capabilities, or be lucky to get the "happy" power-up room. Naturally, you can also hit the square where you have to return to the beginning of the board; thankfully, once you clear any square, until you reach the boss square and progress to the boss fight, they clear after you complete what they require. Including the more rudimentary tangent into a spaceship scrolling shooter near the end, Treasure's willingness to keep the games they make afresh and even change genre is admirable. This is all with a sense of creativity, and with a sense that, even if there are aspects which feel would be polished by the developers in later games, they made sure these changes here in Gunstar Heroes still worked.

The game is a hectic run-and-gun, and even if following the tropes, of jumping platforms whilst firing at everything around you in all directions that wants you dead, this has the touches of not only seemingly unlimited continues, but this is not a game with one-live only hits for the player, or even a couple. Instead, able to mix two set of firepower, or even combine them, or even throwing grunts around like missiles, an entire life bar in number form is at hand for you instead. Starting at one hundred, it grows with each Stage you complete in the maximum level you can reach. This is a virtue in that, helping a beginner to the game, Gunstar Heroes is happy to throw lengthy levels with sub-bosses from the earliest levels, even if it means facing a tree creature that spins out balloons, but rewards the difficulty growth with spectacular events and fairness to how it plays at the same time. Seven Force, which you only get a few parts of below the Normal difficulty, is literally seven forms one boss can transform into, and is an incredible showpiece you can play extremely early in Gunstar Heroes. Be it bird, crustacean, or hilariously a giant handgun, which even has to reload, you find yourself in Seven Force facing seven forms even on Normal difficulty, and all of them are unique battles as a marathon. It is a challenge to face at any level of a shooter, but it seems bold to have them that early on; that the game makes sure the difficulty curve is not too extreme is itself virtuous from the developers.

Even into the latter half of the game, nothing undercuts the game. The scrolling space shooter section is not perfect as a replication of another genre, but it is still sufficient. The stage before is a prolonged marathon on a highway gunning through opponents which feels long, but not only does that not feel an issue it also, in an entirely different genre, is something Treasure clearly returned to for Mischief Makers, its longest level as a Nintendo 64 2D.5 platformer being an extended shake and brawl with goons on a highway. The last level, which would be returned too in some form with Sin and Punishment: Star Successor (2009), is a boss rush with (almost) all the villains you have faced before, even having a little platforming section obstacle course in the middle of a couple. It again does not feel pointlessly difficult even if a bit of a challenge. When you are facing a cosmic final boss, as the McGuffin the villains acquires backfires, and are having to fire at the gems themselves, you will have to dodge a great deal, abusing the wall jump in my play, but by that point the game has shown more virtue in playing fair and ramping up to this difficulty.

Treasure wanted to push the technology of the console this was made for. They choose the Mega Drive/Genesis over the Nintendo SNES on purpose¹, and pushed the hardware as far as they could, even animating their own name in the opening credits with polygons. Only seven people worked on the game⁴, and Treasure were a tiny new developer at the time, experimenting with rotation and scaling of animation sprites for effect.  A mini-boss, a spaceship generator, manages to have 3D depth and certain bosses clearly use polygonal effects, embracing the artificial block-like nature for them as robotic. Even beyond the graphics and appearance, with its look and style cartoonish from its character designs and sense of colour, it has a personality that would be continued, whether serious or not, in other games I have seen from them. Norio Hanzawa's score fits the game perfectly as energetic chiptune electronica alongside the rich sound design too, the audio side of the production as distinct. As a debut, it is as good as you can get, and whilst it is not a surprise I admired Gunstar Heroes, it does mean a lot to actually experience the game with this reputation as an experience.

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1) Taken from An Interview With: Treasure, an interview with Treasure's president at the time, Masato Maegawa, from North American magazine Gamefan, Vol 1 Issue 11 from October 1993.

2) Taken from Sega's Masterpiece Album "Gunstar Heroes", an interview with president Masato Maegawa from January 22, 2017.

3) Taken from Sega 16's Interview: Mac Senour (SOA Producer), the interview with the man of Sega of America who indeed argued for Gunstar Heroes to actually be published for the Mega Drive/Genesis as is talked of in the interview, written by Ken Horowitz for October 23rd 2013.

4) Taken from British retro gaming magazine Retro Gamer, volume 50, part of The Making of Gunstar Heroes, published on April 2008 and written by Jonti Davies.