Gunstar Heroes (Sega 16 Bit)
Let me see, I think I completed this game more than 20 times? Or perhaps it was more than that I don’t know but all I know is that, I seriously love this game. The gameplay, the actions, the music, the stages, they were fantastic for it’s time.
I almost didn’t had the chance to play this game back in 1993. My uncle bought the game cartridge but it couldn’t run due to different regions. The 16 bit my uncle owned was a Japanese set while the game was meant for a US set. Luckily after a few days, he bought a converter which enabled us to change regions by adjusting some switches. That’s when the fun begins.
A Brief Introduction
This game plays similarly to Contra, a side scrolling shooter. You go through stage by stage killing enemies and bosses as well as picking up power-ups to further increase your firepower. One good thing about this game is that, it’s not as punishing as contra where one hit kills. Here you will have HP (health points) which will deplete according the type of damage you get. You character can also perform various attacks such as jump kick, slides and throw
Gunstar Heroes uses a different system where you can choose different combination of power-ups base on your preferences and the character you choose. Altogether there are two characters and four types of power-ups :- Force, Lighting, Fire and Chaser. The two characters are called Red and Blue, or more specifically, Free-Shot and Fixed-Shot. The two have their own distinct differences where you can run and shoot as Free-Shot while as Fixed-Shot, you are able to aim at 8 directions while standing still. I myself personally prefer to use Free-Shot as most of the time I’m playing solo. Using Fixed-Shot would be too tedious. As for the power-ups, you can combine 2 different types to create a more powerful weapon. I leave it up to Wiki to explain them further.
The Reason Why I Like This Game
What makes Gunstar Heroes a huge phenomenon back in the 16 bit days was the gameplay. The moment you step into the game, infinite number of foes will come rushing to you like mad cows. You can say it was pretty amazing for the 16 bit to be able to handle that amount of madness with very minimal hiccups. Believe me, its pretty hard to survive without someone using free-shot with the homing laser (Laser + Chaser power-up) especially on higher difficulty levels. I tried using Fixed-Shot but it always ended up with drastic results when playing solo. Best and easiest combination would be Laser Chaser with Double Chaser.
The music and boss fights is another thing which makes the game very memorable. I don’t know how to describe it but it just gives you that sense of tension when you are going through the stages. Like in stage 5, the music literally gives you the feeling of “I want to destroy you all!” which also fits in the story after an incident happened. As for the boss fights, most of them are pretty simple once you catch their weakness but they can still post a threat on Hard Mode. My favourite boss is Seven Force, where you literally fight through seven different types of form in one sitting. It was truly a test of endurance back then.
This is no doubt one of the best games you can play on the Sega 16 Bit. To make things even sweeter, I heard that the game is out for purchase on Wii’s Virtual Console. So Wii gamers, do give this a game a try if you haven’t play it before. You wouldn’t regret it.
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Ahh, Gunstar Heroes… you’ve come a long way baby. I can feel my hair greying out.
LoL! Old school games FTW!