Let’s Play Gunstar Heroes!
To finish Segatember, I played a game I had never played before in my life. Demonstrating my lack of knowledge of the Sega Library, I went online to find the better reviewed Sega Genesis games and this one is considered a bit of a hidden gem amongst Sega fans. Even a couple of friends of mine who grew up with Sega hadn’t heard of it when I mentioned it to them after the fact.
Let’s Play Gunstar Heroes:
This is your basic fun arcade like shoot em’ up game from the early 90’s. Start with Contra, then add fun and colorful cartoony graphics and clever gameplay elements which help to keep it fresh and you’ve got a basic idea of what you’re getting with Gunstar Heroes.
This game I’m sure is even better if played co-op; it’s made for getting together with a friend and achieving a false sense of accomplishment at fighting through and beating it. I could imagine planning out your gun decisions with your friend ahead of time to decide which combos would best compliment each other between the two of you.
All of this together adds up to me playing this co-op with one of my friends, right? Unfortunately, this let’s play is a big missed opportunity as I played it alone, even going so far as to bemoan the fact that I was playing it alone a handful of times, heh.
Anyway, because I write these far removed from when I played the game initially (though I am catching up to my credit), I don’t remember much of what was going on in this game. I’m not entirely sure I knew at the time, but in these games it never mattered. It’s surprising that kids who grew up in the 90’s have the patience to sit through a backstory in today’s games because of how slight the stories were in these games growing up.
That said, I remember there being a good bit of things going on in this. Some evil-doer trying to get gems or stones with lots of interesting bosses along the way to stop the heroes from getting them back. Kind of Mega Man-ish in a way, especially with the psuedo robots and boss rushes. Maybe Contra meets Mega Man meets Sega?
Does it matter? It’s a good game. If you grew up in the 90’s and have never heard of this game, awesome. Grab a similar friend who also hasn’t heard of this game and enjoy a nice surprise of a solid couch co-op shoot-em-up game.