Retro spotlight: Gunstar Heroes

Treasure's first game remains an all-timer nearly three decades later.

This column is “Retro spotlight,” which exists mostly so I can write about whatever game I feel like even if it doesn’t fit into one of the other topics you find in this newsletter. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Maybe the most incredible thing about Treasure’s all-timer of a run-and-gun, Gunstar Heroes, is that it nearly never existed at all. It is simply wild to consider that any video game publisher would do anything besides latch onto the concept and promote the hell out of the eventual game, but that’s not how things went, at not one, but two different companies.

First, Konami. The original eight developers who would go on to form Treasure worked for Konami, on games like Qix, Bucky O’Hare, The Simpsons arcade beat ‘em up, Castlevania IV, the Contra series, and Axelay. A group of them came together and submitted a game pitch to Konami, for what would eventually become Gunstar Heroes. According to one of Treasure’s founders and current president Masato Maegawa, Konami wasn’t interested, and the reasons why led to this group leaving to strike out on their own and make the games they wanted to make:

Basically, Konami is a huge company, so you cannot create games freely. Konami’s big titles are TMNT, Castlevania, etc… I just couldn’t stand making more sequels, but in order to drive sales sequels must always be made. When I presented my idea for Gunstar Heroes they said, “No, it will not sell.” You see, they only want the sure thing because they are such a high profile company.

Gunstar Heroes was developed by Treasure’s small team, comprised of people like Maegawa, as well as Tetsuhiko Kikuchi, often credited as HAN and responsible for the look of so much of what is recognized as Treasure’s style, and Hiroshi Iuchi, who, while with Treasure, would serve as a director, designer, composer, and artist. It was a significant group effort from the start in a way some of their other titles were not: after Gunstar Heroes was completed, everyone split off into small teams to develop a number of games at once, with development on one project finishing and those folks heading over to help with another project in need of it, or start another one, and so on. (As an example, Hideyuki Suganami, who was a programmer on Gunstar Heroes along with Mitsuri Yaida, essentially tried to make Alien Soldier by himself, but as the era of the 32-bit Sega Saturn approached, he knew it was time to enlist more help to reach the finish line.)

Image credit: Mobygames

This setup actually speaks to Treasure’s development ethos, and the reason they left Konami behind. Maegawa wanted Gunstar Heroes to exist, so he and the rest of the developers who left Konami behind for Treasure did what needed to be done to make it so. Suganami wanted to see if he could make Alien Soldier on his own, so he got to give that a shot. Eventually, Iuchi would decide it was time for him to design a game instead of “just” composing or drawing for it, and all he did was go on to develop Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga, two of the greatest examples of what the STG genre is capable of, as well as Treasure’s emphasis on subverting genre expectations in order to make the most compelling, intriguing games, regardless of their sales potential.

This non-hierarchical setup where everyone worked on what pleased them even extended to co-development situations with companies like Nintendo: despite having a chance to make a first-party game for the Big N, Treasure still only enlisted the bare minimum of developers, two programmers and two designers, on Sin and Punishment to create the core of the game until other projects had cleared up and it could be fully staffed to bring it home.

The point of all of this is that there is no way this level of freedom would have existed for these developers at Konami, and while it’s no wonder they left, it’s still incredible that it actually happened. Plenty of people hate their stifling jobs, but not everyone is in a position to risk it all by betting on themselves, and even fewer manage to win that bet. To win said bet while also creating some of the greatest games of all-time in a number of genres? That’s Treasure, baby.

Still, though, there were issues early on. Treasure insisted on making Gunstar Heroes for the Sega Genesis — according to Maegawa, it was the studio’s familiarity with the rival Super Nintendo Entertainment System from their time with Konami that assured them that Gunstar Heroes needed to be on the Genesis:

“People are constantly comparing Genesis to SNES, saying that the SNES has more colors, etc… But the Genesis has a [Motorola] 68000 processor, which is very easy for programmers to work with. I was a programmer for years, making games on the SNES, and I can tell you that the hardware is a pain in the butt. If consumers look at a still shot, they may think the SNES is better, but actually if you tried to put Gunstar Heroes on the SNES there would be no way. See those bosses? On the SNES they would slow way down, that movement requires sooo much computation. It could only be done on the Sega hardware…

…When you look at Sonic and Gunstar you would think that they display more than 64 colors, but they don’t, we just make it look like more [with shadow and lighting effects]. In my opinion the color looks as good as the SNES. We can also make it appear that 3 to 4 screens are present, although you can supposedly only display 2 (background and foreground) at once, as I said the hardware is very easy to work with. All things considered the 68000 is a very good CPU allowing room for experimentation while the SNES hardware limits you to there [sic] design standards. Scaling and rotation can be implemented in the Sega software, forget it on the SNES.”

Here’s the problem with wanting to make a game for the Genesis, though, and involving Sega in that process: it required interacting with Sega. The hardware might be flexible and easily manipulated, but Sega completely destroying their console-based business model across the 90s isn’t a thing that just happened accidentally, you know. The way Sega of America — which had real power in the company due to the market size differences between Japan and North America — treated Treasure is just one example of how they wouldn’t know a good thing if it called them up and pitched itself to them.

Sega refused the initial Gunstar Heroes pitch because Treasure, despite being comprised of exceptional talent which worked on exceptional Konami games for years, was a new developer lacking a “track record.” They eventually gave in when the fledgling indie agreed to make the licensed game, McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure, and impressed Sega with how well it was coming along months into development.

And even then, this wasn’t the end of things. Gunstar Heroes was being made, finally, and financed by its publisher, Sega, but whether it was going to release in North America was another thing entirely. Just one person in Sega of America’s office, Mac Senour, liked Gunstar Heroes — the very last person in the office with the power to work on its localization and release in that territory. (Transcription courtesy John Harrison):

I was last on the list. Clyde came to me and said, ‘Everyone else has turned this down. They don’t want to work on it. They don’t think it’s going to sell well. It’s up to you. So it’s either you, or it goes in the trash…’ So I put it in, and played for about two minutes, and I threw down the controller on the floor. I said ‘This is game of the year.’ Mike Latham, who was sharing a cubicle wall with me, stood up… and said, ‘Mac, don’t say that… I turned that down. There’s no way.’ I said, ‘No, I can take it. This is game of the year.’ In hindsight, it seems that I was right, but at the time I took so much fire for that comment. I can’t explain it to you—the number of people that came by and said, ‘Mac, why would you say such a stupid thing?’

Gunstar Heroes, by the way, sold over 200,000 copies outside of Japan, won Game of the Year honors from multiple publications, and rated exceptionally well at various outlets even at the time, never mind the retrospective side of things that has seen it continue to be considered one of the true greats that has held up phenomenally well, and also led to its constant re-release again and again, on platform after platform. Mac Senour was right and he should say it.

The game still wasn’t marketed well by Sega of America, however, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering a single person in that office appeared to understand what the company had in their hands — Sega of America actually never told Treasure that the game was popular and well-received abroad, and Maegawa had to find out through an interview with Diehard GameFan that this was the case. Sega of America learned nothing from this, of course, choosing to release 1995’s Alien Soldier on the Sega Channel only, and not via physical distribution. That game is also considered a classic at this time, though, it’s admittedly designed for even more of a hardcore audience than Gunstar Heroes. It’s really not hard to see how Treasure ended up working closely with other publishers and on other hardware once the specs of the Genesis were no longer a priority.

John Harrison - Mega Drive Shock @MegaDriveShock

"SOA never told us that our game was popular in the US." Ouch. They probably also didn't tell you that almost none of the SOA producers wanted to release it and they gave it no marketing budget. Poor Gunstar Heroes. Diehard GameFan vol. 2 issue 7

Anyway, Gunstar Heroes: how does it play, and why does that matter? The run-and-gun was an established genre, and Contra a dominating force in it. Contra was and is great, mind you, but there was room to break free from its design, which was intentionally very strict and limiting, in that it was about memorization and distance of and from the things that could kill you in a single hit. Gunstar Heroes literally changed the game by removing both elements from consideration: there were still patterns to recognize in boss’ behavior or enemy movements sure, but Gunstar Heroes was purposefully chaotic in a way that made memorization irrelevant, and the decision to not just add a pair of melee attacks, but make them significantly more powerful than the game’s guns, took care of the rest.

Gunstar Heroes, where you play as either Gunstar Red or Gunstar Blue against a bunch of other characters named after colors in a fight to keep some powerful jewels from being used to power a world-destroying technology, uses health instead of the single-hit deaths of Contra and other run-and-gun titles and multi-directional shooters, and this change did not serve to make the game inherently easier: it instead opened up room for innovation and a freshness that you can still feel today, 29 years after the game’s release. Now, rather than hiding as best as you can and dodging bullets and enemies, you can get right up in their face, grab them, and throw them at another enemy. You can do a slide attack that devastates breakable objects, popcorn enemies, and even does massive amounts of damage to bosses. There are bosses you fight where it makes far more sense to turn this into a physical battle with them than one involving guns, because otherwise, you might not live long enough to inflict all of the damage necessary to take them down.

And that’s not to say that the guns are not important in Gunstar Heroes — there are four different weapon types, one of which you will select before you even begin the game, and the others can be collected from fallen foes or airdropped into levels as you go. There is the short-distance flamethrower, the rapid-fire cannon, a homing shot, and a laser. And you get to decide if you want to shoot from a fixed position, that allows for firing in eight directions while standing still, or a free stance, which limits directional firing but allows you to move your character while doing so.

Here’s where the guns become lots of fun, though: you can combine two together in order to make more powerful, or completely different weapons. Want a rapid-fire homing weapon? Combine those two elements together. Want an even more powerful flame attack? Put two flame weapons together into one new one. You’ll find that, situationally, you might prefer one combo to another in different areas of the game, but everything is also designed so you can just stick with what you like throughout, if that’s your preference. So long as you’re willing to get your hands literally dirty instead of just metaphorically so, you’ll be fine with your choice of guns.

Maegawa was concerned that, for all that’s good about the SNES, that it wouldn’t be able to handle Gunstar Heroes’ ambition. And even without taking into account that I’m not a programmer who knows the ins and outs of the hardware to that degree, it would be difficult to say he’s wrong given just I’ve played plenty of games on both platforms. Axelay was big and ambitious, too, and it’s plagued with slowdown, as are plenty of other SNES STGs that emphasized action that doesn’t even come close to approaching the level of Gunstar Heroes’ own. Incessant explosions, both big and small, endless numbers of foes pouring out of the sides of the screen, huge, multi-segmented bosses made up of multiple sprites whose movements were so carefully programmed to be in sync — all of this runs like a dream on the Genesis, which was clearly pushed very far by the game, but not in a way it wasn’t able to handle. Treasure, for all the attention on their creative ambition with gameplay, were also technical masters of their craft, and proved as much with their very first outing.

Those bosses, by the way, are such a huge part of the game. There are often multiple boss fights per level, and some of them continue to astound to this day. Seven Force, in particular, is a standout. A transforming robot with seven different forms, each with their own full boss-sized vitality meter, and in the game’s hard mode, you will fight every single one of those forms. Check it out:

If these were the only bosses in an action game like this, spread out across seven levels, you’d feel pretty good about what you just defeated. Treasure lined them all up in a row, in one stage, and had plenty leftover for the rest of Gunstar Heroes to boot.

It wasn’t just boss designs and behavior that were innovative and impressive, however. The way the game plays, with its running and jumping and grabbing, made platforming a chaotic joy, but then there are also levels like Black’s Dice Palace, where you are forced to pick up a die and roll it in order to move on a game board. Maybe you’ll get lucky, and you’ll be able to pick up an item to help you. Maybe you have some kind of timed platforming challenge you need to solve. More likely, though, is that you’re about to fight a whole bunch of bosses, on your way to the actual boss of the stage.

There’s a well-designed shmup level in space as you approach the final stage — a challenging boss rush before the final battle — and even though the number of total stages is low, all of this variety (and the quality of it) really helps keep Gunstar Heroes feeling both jam-packed and fresh.

You can find Gunstar Heroes just about everywhere now. It was on the Wii Virtual Console, which has since shut down in terms of new purchases, but if you previously bought it there, you should make sure to get it back in storage. You can buy the port to the Xbox 360, and play it on your Xbox One or Xbox Series X or S. It’s part of the Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection that released for the 360 and the Playstation 3, as well as the Sega Genesis Classics release that is playable on both current and last-gen hardware: Playstations 4 and 5, Xboxes One, S, and X, the Nintendo Switch, Windows, macOS, Linux.

The version you absolutely should get if you still can, however, is the one on the Nintendo 3DS, titled 3D Gunstar Heroes. It’s a port by M2 — where Iuchi, no longer with Treasure, now works — and it’s the definitive edition. It lets you do pretty standard emulation, quality-of-life stuff like save or change difficulties, but it also ups the customization to some levels M2 did not have to go to, but did anyway. You can decide which version of Genesis hardware you want the sound to emulate, for instance, or pick a setting where you can freely switch between the fixed and free shooting modes, which previously were locked in for your whole playthrough. There are unlockable game modes, where you have more health or your guns do more damage, in addition to the standard difficulty changes, and the whole thing looks exceptional with the 3DS’ stereoscopic 3D cranked up, too, thanks to the excellent, stylistic pixel art of HAN and Iuchi from decades prior.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter where you play Gunstar Heroes, though. You just should. Some versions let you play in co-op, as originally intended, and others are a solo experience given the nature of the platform or decisions the porting studio made, so just go with the experience you’re looking for, and then experience it. The explosion-filled fight of Red and Blue is a literal and figurative blast, regardless of the format, and holds up as well today as it ever did.

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