Gunstar Super Heroes

"Impressive, albeit short action game that pushes the GBA to its limits"

Among experienced video gamers, and especially among action and Shoot´em Up fans, former Konami-based developer Treasure has already gained cult status years ago with gems like Mischief Makers, Dynamite Headdy, Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga or Sin & Punishment. And of course, the game that brought Treasure into the spotlight: Gunstar Heroes, praised by most gamers as one of the very best Sega Genesis games ever, having wowed gamers with awesome never before seen visuals and creative gameplay. Over ten years after the original game came out, Treasure finally released the sequel to their all-time classic, this time for the Game Boy Advance and under the title Gunstar Super Heroes. And these more than ten years were well worth the wait, I can assure you.

Basically, Gunstar Super Heroes plays a lot like its predecessor, putting the emphasis yet again on full-time action with some creative little interludes in between the occasional action levels. The amount of enemies you will have to fight in this game is considerable, as hardly a second goes by without an enemy (or several) appearing and trying to stop you. Fortunately, though, you can choose from a variety of ways to dispose of your foes. Three kinds of firearms to switch between, a sword for short range battles and some powerful kicks and punchs make the endless fights with your adversaries surprisingly addictive and fun to play, as you´re always searching for the best way to get rid of them. An extremely nice treat, however, are the boss enemies, who might look powerful at first glance but will prove themselves to be easy to beat with the right tactics being used, which makes these battles so cool to play: once you find out the right way of defeating the boss, it´s a pleasure to blast your huge and impressively designed adversary into oblivion while he is not even able to hit you thanks to your tactics. I also already mentioned the creativity in terms of level design and level objectives, as Treasure did not simply stick to the usual 2D sidescroll-action affair in every single level. There are also some interesting ideas like the chicken-fetch mini game in a rotating area, or a virtual board game level. Still, despite the creativity and fun in Gunstar, there is one minor flaw that kinda puts down the fun a little: the game is simply too short, and experts will certainly be able to beat it in an hour or so, and some of the levels are also too small. I think in this regard, Treasure could have done more in order to make Gunstar Super Heroes an even better action game. Nevertheless, the challenging difficulty level as well as the great level design and the perfect controls make this a great game in terms of gameplay.

The towering highpoint of Gunstar super Heroes, however, are the visuals. To say that they are awesome would be an understatement. Along with games like Golden Sun, this game features the best graphics in any GBA game. First of, the enemy and hero sprites are wonderfully rendered, and the locations astound with a high amount of detail. The scrolling of the game is pitch perfect, and despite the constant shooting-action, there are no slowdowns whatsoever, and the action always remains fast paced - an incredible achievement on the GBA. The huge explosions are impressive to say the least, not only because of the way they were designed and implemented into the game, but also because of how frequent they are, as you can see them whenever you destroy one of your opponents. Once more, it is almost miraculous that Treasure was able to avoid any slowdowns at all with special effects of this quality, and all in all, the game is simply awesome to look at.

Aurally, Gunstar is more than solid, featuring some enjoyable pieces of music in the background that will not disturb while playing. Still, their sound quality is only average, unfortunately, so they will not exactly sound outstanding. The sound effects that will naturally appear frequently due to the explosions, though, are well done and emphasize on the action in the game, and there are even some short voice clips every now and then, but they are not really worth mentioning.

All in all, Gunstar Super Heroes is a definite must buy for action fans. The game might be a little too short, but its fantastic design, the perfect controls and the sheer creativity that went into the making of this game make up for that, so in the end, Gunstar is like a deluxe package that features everything great about classic 2D shoot´em ups, only in portable form.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/31/06