The (Gun)Stars Are Calling

Although fans would consider it one of the greatest run-and-gun shooters around, Gunstar Heroes is a game that many may not have heard of. It’s the kind of title that, with the right advertising and the right push, could become an easily multi-million seller. Instead it’s one of those rarities on the collectors market, a game beloved by those who were lucky enough to get it, and sought after by those that didn’t. For most gamers, though, it may very well be a title they’d never even heard of before. Which is a pity because it absolutely rocks.

Treasure, the company that developed and released Gunstar Heroes, came at the title with a simple philosophy: anything goes. The point was to make it the best game they could, using any trick and every bit of technology the Sega Genesis could provide. Treasure wanted the game to shine, especially because it was their first release, and it really did. It made their name in the industry, a studio everyone else paid attention to. And Gunstar Heroes went on to inspire other games at other studios, from Shinobi III to Vectorman.

The relative success of Gunstar Heroes, a cult classic that endured, eventually led the company to make a sequel (something, when they first started, they said they’d never do). The title, developed for the Game Boy Advance and released in 2005, was Gunstar Super Heroes and, like its predecessor, it kind of slid under the radar. In part that was because the Gunstar name still wasn’t big with the general mass market… but also because, unlike the original, this sequel simply didn’t feel as fresh or revolutionary as the original, 1993 game.

Gunstar Super Heroes follows the template set, for good and for bad, by Gunstar Heroes. Set after the events of the first game, the God of Run (Golden Silver) was defeated and the resulting explosion of the god created four moons that orbited the Earth. The heroes of the Gunstar team passed into legend, and a new team eventually rose up, taking command of defense of the Earth. Which is good because when a fifth moon shows up, a moon of chaos, it threatens the balance of power on the planet. New villains seek to resurrect Golden Silver and bring ruin and chaos to the world, and only the new Gunstars, Red and Blue, have any hope of defeating the villains and saving the day once more.

Starting the game, you first battle the villains as they invade the Gunstar headquarters, The Third Eye (written 3YE), before the villains make off with the data from the mainframes. This leaves the Gunstar team on their own, with only their weapons to guide them. They then head off on a linear adventure, taking on the villains across several stages, from a ground base to the sky, down into a train tunnel and then over to a board game. Finally they have to head up to the moons to take on the villains once more before finally battling against the new Golden Silver to stop the rise of the God of Ruin and save the day… and if most of that sounds very similar to the first game, that’s because it is. Almost to a tee.

The big issue with Gunstar Super Heroes is that it feels less like a sequel to the original game and more like a remake. Much of the flow of the game feels the same, with stages, and boss fights, clearly inspired by the original game, simply redone over on the Game Boy Advance. By the time you battle against 7 Force before then moving over the enemy barracks to take on their board game stage, you’re sitting there saying, “wait. I’ve played all this before.” And indeed you have as these are set-pieces stolen directly from the original game.

Now, sure, the gameplay in these sections is different. The 7 Force battle features some changed up transformations and differences in attacks. The board game layout is different and the sub-bosses within are, at times, new. But when you consider how bold and different the original Gunstar Heroes was, with stages that could be played in any order and a feeling like you never knew what to expect next, the sequel feels way too safe and similar, like the design team didn’t want to stray at all from what made the original game work.

Except when they do and it feels worse for it. The first big change is the fact that, unlike in the first game, weapons in Gunstar Super Heroes can’t be combined. This was one of the great features of the original game, giving you a wild number of combinations to test so you could find the right kind of weapons for the bosses you were about to take on. That creative, play as you want vibe is completely missing here as there are only three weapons in the game (instead of the four from the original) and they don’t combine at all. Sure, there’s a super move you can charge up and use instead, but the characters feel far more limited here than they did before.

Also, this game is linear in its setup, lacking the stage selection from the original. It’s a small thing, and I don’t know how much most people would care, but it was fun to be able to try out and play through any of the four early stages to find a path you liked. That’s not available here, and a bit more of that play as you like ethos drains away. You can’t find your own path, with your own weapons, at your own speed. You have to play the way Gunstar Super Heroes wants, and that ruins the experience a bit more.

And all of this is for a game that, honestly, feels far too beholden to the legacy of the original. Aside from a few minor creative touches, like the characters having different dialogue depending on the difficulty level you play at, or a single little mini-stage designed to play like Sega’s Flicky, this title feels like it wasn’t to be a remake of the original game and not a sequel that truly lived up to its legacy. That Flicky stage is nice, for example, but could you imagine a larger stage with more arcade homages in it (maybe instead of the redo of the board game stage)? And what about other stages that truly broke free of the standard stage design, not just platformers and flying shooters but stages that feel like they’re trying to create new mechanics.

That’s not pie in the sky to suggest because the first game did that. The first game pushed the bounds of what we expected from run-and-gun shooters, blowing the likes of ContraStarted by Konami in 1988 the run-n-gun platform series Contra was, for a time, one of the flagship franchises for the company. right out of the water. This sequel wasn’t designed to redefine the genre, it wanted to pay homage to what came before. And while it’s a fine title, certainly playable and with moments of fun, it doesn’t do a good job of living up to the legacy of Gunstar Heroes. It’s just another game in the series.

Gunstar Super Heroes needed to be more than just Gunstar Heroes Remixed. It’s not bad, but it’s also not playing at the same level as its predecessor. It’s too safe, too basic, too much the same, and it feels worse for it. If you’d never played a Gunstar game before then, sure, this is a decent entry into the series. But for anyone that has played the Sega Genesis classic, this second title pales in comparison. It just isn’t as good as a Gunstar game should be.