Volver a Gunstar Heroes le hace a uno preguntarse cómo demonios pudo tener el éxito que tuvo. Desarrollado por una compañía pequeña, nueva e independiente con bajísimas previsiones de venta y sin apenas publicidad, con un diseño de niveles tan disperso que lo hacía parecer un experimento, se convirtió sin embargo en uno de los videojuegos de acción más célebres de la época, influenciando numerosos títulos del género hasta el día de hoy. Todo de cero, a puro boca a boca.

Bueno, yo creo que fue la combinación de una serie de elementos que lo convertían en un run 'n' gun distinto al resto, más frenético y físico. Una mezcla de su sistema de vida numérico (deshaciéndose del one-hit-kill imperante para permitirnos encajar más golpes), su combinación de power-ups (que nos empujaba a experimentar y modificar nuestra maniobrabilidad) y, por encima de todo, un set de movimientos más reminiscente a un beat 'em up súper dopado que a un shooter: no solo disparábamos a hordas de enemigos, sino que les lanzábamos por los aires y contra el escenario y contra más enemigos, nos colgábamos de salientes, empleábamos saltos pared, deslizábamos por el suelo a lo Mega Man, dábamos patadas y puñetazos voladores y, si jugábamos en cooperativo, incluso nos lanzábamos enemigos entre nosotros, como quien juega a tenis. Todo ello acompañado de metálicas melodías upbeat y el mayor número de explosiones en pantalla por minuto de cualquier título de Mega Drive.

Revisado hoy, el juego revela carencias que en su día no vimos o a las que no dimos importancia. Simplemente, no es tan bueno: es farragoso y de irregularidades marcadísimas, lo que en inglés llamaríamos "hit and miss". Eso sí, con mucho encanto y la frescura que transmite no ya algo novedoso en su contexto, sino un diseño que muta constantemente. El jugador casi puede percibir cómo sus creadores experimentan a medida que avanza por sus niveles, cada fase una propuesta nueva. ¿Os imagináis algo así ahora? ¿En un videojuego comercial salido de la nada? No se ve ya casi ni en títulos independientes, ni os cuento en el panorama mainstream. Leñe, si hasta tiene vagonetas.

Creative, original, and barrels of fun. Everything comes together so well; the graphical style, the smooth animations and controls, the weapon combination system that lends a decent amount of depth, and the almost unparalleled variety in the moveset for a Genesis shooter.

Edit: just finished a replay and just had more things to gush about.

Quite atypically for a game made in '93, the game's difficulty level is pretty low. You have plenty of moves and are armed to the teeth, and you can take a lot of hits before going down. The game also does something extremely difficult to pull off: it communicates to you extremely clearly what you need to do, so much so that even though the game was blazingly fast and frenetic, I never once felt like the game was hitting me with 'gotcha' moments to score cheap hits. The game is also very short, and while I do wish it was longer, its short length combined with the casual-friendly difficulty and unlimited continues seemed to be making a ballsy statement. Unlike other games at the time that hooked you in and kept you playing with their difficulty and their length, Gunstar Heroes seems to be saying "yeah, you'll beat the game on your first time through. But it's so much fun that you'll be back to play it again." And play it again I did!

There are 4 basic weapons which can be fused together in various combinations to form 10 different "level 2" weapons. Experimenting with them is a lot of fun, and they push you towards extremely distinct playstyles. The chaser+lightning combo is totally auto-aiming and the best choice for newbies since you can just focus on finding safe spots on the screen and let the weapon aim for you, whereas lightning+flame is an extremely high damage but low-range weapon that pushes you towards a high-risk playstyle. Flame+chaser is a unique weapon that is probably best left to the experts: firing it creates a fireball that you control with the D-pad as it flies around the screen. It sounds interesting and is also an absolute pain to aim. Yeah, some weapons are clearly more efficient than others, but in a game as unabashedly fun and as forgiving of mistakes as this, balance issues seem almost irrelevant.

I have a lot of respect for Gunstar Heroes. This was Treasure's first game they released but it wasn't the first game they finished. They actually finished that stupid McDonalds game first but they withheld its release to finish Gunstar Heroes first because they wanted an original game first under their belt. Even then Sega almost didn't release the game overseas until one board member pushed for its release, which luckily led to the game receiving moderate success and now is regarded as one of the best Sega Genesis games ever made.

If I did grew up with a Sega Genesis I probably would've loved this game. It's colorful, wonderfully animated, and bursting with personality. And its gameplay is relentlessly chaotic with enemies swarming left and right with so many good built-in level set pieces. On a technical level, Gunstar Heroes knocks it out of the park.

However, because this is Treasure's first game there are some cracks I feel weren't exactly ironed out. Weapon balancing is horrendously broken, pair Chaser with almost any other weapon, my favorite being Lightning, and watch as you hold down the fire button and have a blue line make a square around everything around you, decimate it and move onto the next target. I get mixing and matching weapons is the main gimmick of Gunstar Heroes and it is fun to experiment with, but having Chaser be this absurd turned me away from using a lot of the other combinations. At one point, I shredded a boss in about 1.52 seconds with it which was admittedly very funny.

While some may say "well if you don't like how it trivializes the challenge don't use it", my argument is it should be the developer's job to balance the game, not the player.

I can't say however I didn't have fun with breaking the game in half though. The bosses here are very well designed and distinct in strategy, my personal favorite being Seven Force, which much like in Alien Soldier, that boss fight is just as good here, but now with actual seven phases on harder difficulties. Gunstar Heroes will no doubt challenge the player on these encounters, but I think using Chaser and just holding A while dodging attacks makes these fights less engaging.

I enjoyed most of the levels themselves, except for Blacks stage, where I was shocked to see Dice Game from Devil May Cry 4 as the center gimmick of the level, and unlike in DMC4 you can't determine the outcome. I seriously hope these board game levels never exist in any video game after DMC4, because they just are as primitive as in this game.

Gunstar Heroes is definitely made to be played in Co-op but it's also perfectly balanced for single-player too. Which the next time I do another run of this game it'll be with a buddy, as I want to see just how much we can break the game by using 2 chaser weapons.

It's a beautifully charming Co-op shooter that embraces its ridiculousness, and that would soon go onto define Treasure, being the developer that would make the world's most batshit craziest games.

I haven't even FINISHED this yet and I already need to comment on how good it is - it's fucking insane how quickly you learn to parse all the insane shit going on in these levels and reach that state of intentionality + flow, for me stage 5's combat gauntlet became a kind of "holy shit i get it" moment where everything just CLICKED

hoping the last few levels aren't too much of a wall bc i want to get into treasure's catalog so bad, I started this and alien soldier on the same day and both have me v excited to dive in more

update: the last few levels were - in fact - quite the wall LMAO, I've finished harder stuff so this isn't going on shelved just yet but god it's hard to find the motivation to get good enough at the final stage to complete all those consecutive bosses, especially when green is kicking my ass so hard