Gunstar Heroes
Jan. 5th, 2025 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yamamanama73 days until the vernal equinox
I saved the best for last.
I ended up not sticking with the difficulty level. It changes one thing later in the game.
Also, this game has hands-down the best options menu music ever.
First player is always Red. Second player is always Blue. Free Shot allows you to move around while firing your weapon but you can't fire down. Or up if you're hanging from the ceiling.
While Fixed Shot means you stand still while firing. I picked Free Shot.
In Japan, he's called Professor White Gunstar because he's wearing a white labcoat but in America, they changed his name to Dr. Brown because Back to the Future reference.
There are all sorts of story differences between the Japanese release and the rest of the world's release. For one, Dr. Brown was the original Gunstar Hero in the western release while he was working for the Empire in Japan until he had a change of heart.
Chaser gets completely nerfed in the higher difficulties.
You can do the first four stages in any order.
Yellow was Red's childhood friend in Japan. She's a pacifist.
If you play on a higher difficulty, you might want to start with the strange fortress and do the mine level last.
But I'm just going to start with the first stage.
The natives are those tiny guys.
This game gets pretty hectic and yet there's very little slowdown.
The boss is that asparagus stalk.
He'll drop down a grub occasionally.
If you’ve played Dynamite Headdy, you might recognize some of these bosses behaviors. In fact, I should probably redo my writeup.
You want to just spam attack. If you’re too slow, it will regenerate its health.
After beating the boss, we slide down the pyramid.
One of the cool things about this game is that you can combine weapons.
NOT THE BEES!
Some attacks turn this boss into a joke.
Pink and her two henchgoons is a reference to the Secret of Blue Water.
Beating the Pinky Roader gets us the blue gem. And our starting health is increased by 20 points.
Kind of reminds me of Tidal Tempest, in that you only get a brief glimpse of that cool background, except it’s Scrap Brain.
The rest of the level takes place in this mine.
Picking up items is annoying. I don't recommend doing this level first for that reason.
The modified cart can ride down walls and even cling to the ceiling when you double jump.
You can hit the soldiers in the train only when they're standing up.
Colonel Red AKA Smash Daisaku will throw his men at you.
The boss has seven forms. This is not one of the forms.
It always starts out with this form, which is the hardest of the bunch. He attacks by throwing things, shooting its arm out,
and transforming into a car and rushing at you.
I think the sequence might be hardcoded once you start the fight.
The crab form shoots wheels, which have to be jumped over, walls, which can be shot, and bullets, which should be avoided. You might want to have a long range weapon for this part.
The urchin rolls around on the walls.
When it reaches 1500 health, it switches things up a bit.
By sitting there and shooting stuff at you instead. It's a lot easier to avoid than the rolling, which is rather unpredictable.
The gun form will only fire bullets at you until it needs to reload. I accidentally activated my second player when I was doing this fight on expert mode to get screenshots of the missing two forms. The gun form aims at one player, reloads, and then aims at the second player.
The bird form will climb up the shaft and sometimes it will climb up while upside down or sideways.
And you slide through the gaps as it does that.
When it descends the shaft for a repeat, it always folds the wings as it reaches the lower side of the screen.
Touching the blue sparkle trail doesn't hurt you.
It just shows you where the lasers go. But only for a few bounces.
otherwise, it’s pretty easy because it shows you what it’s going to do beforehand. Obviously having infinite health for the purpose of, ahem, screenshotting, helps.
Also, it seems to go in the order it did when I fought this guy on normal. Might be a coincidence though.
On normal, you fight five of them. On easy, you fight three. On expert, you fight them all.
He’s called Orange but his outfit is green. Must be Michael Stipe’s evil twin.
The helicopter blades don't hurt you when you jump into him.
Paradoxically, picking him up and throwing off the edge of the plane does less damage than throwing him on to the plane.
If you try to hang from the plane and shoot from below, he'll fart on you.
Your health resets upon beating a level so don’t be afraid to take damage from bosses.
Lightning + Fire has short range but does a shit-ton of damage and can even destroy projectiles. But the range isn’t that short. I was expecting it to be a lot harder to use.
Maybe I’m thinking of Chaser + Fire which is the most powerful weapon in the game but also requires you to control the projectile manually.
I love this game.
If you're playing a two-player game, you alternate and each player does the square on their own.
I will be showing off every room. I won't be actually playing every room, especially if those rooms result in me having only 20 health when I finish. You know who you are, Curry and Rice.
The dice only has 1, 2, and 3 on it.
Square 1
He'll move around the screen in an easily avoided pattern. It says to shoot the head but you can shoot anything but the tail.
Square 2
In the protoype, there's a door here with "heaven" and the silhouette of a dancing Shiva. It didn't do anything then (or at least, hadn't yet been programmed to do anything before it was removed)
Square 3
Timeron will count up to ten while dropping bombs on the ground. Then he'll count down to zero and its actions will go down to zero.
It takes less than one round to defeat Timeron with the right weapons.
Square 4: Punching the walls causes them to shift. If you run out of time, you just get sent back.
Square 5
He may be tiny
bu he's dangerous.
Square 6
Melon Bread doesn't do much of anything.
Square 7:
It's like the car smash minigame in various fighting games and beat-'em-ups which originated in Final Fight.
The leftmost crate has a health pickup.
And you get a time bonus.
Square 8:
Avoid the wall while destroying the faces.
Square 9:
Just get through the maze.
Square 10:
I'm not ever going to not use fire+lightning.
The health is nice, at least.
Square 11:
Don't be fooled by his lack of a health meter.
Square 12:
By core, they mean the thing at the bottom. The way the red orbs flash is the way the laser goes.
As free shot, you can only hit him while hanging, or with a homing weapon.
Square 13: Probably the hardest square. You have to fight this guy using only your physical attacks.
Square 14
He'll jump around. The right weapons trivialize this fight. Otherwise, you'll have to slide.
Square 15:
Each part has its own health meter.
If you land on Square 17, you get sent back to start. At least you don't have to do the squares again.
16 is just another item room. There's two health pickups in it.
I think the soul bonus is how long we spent fighting Timeron.
But wait!
Black will roll a dice and take that number of steps.
Then he activates some sort of attack.
Dodge the first gem. Especially if you somehow finished this fight with only two points of vitality left. It's fake.
Shoot him once.
Don't keep shooting at him unless you want to waste time.
He gives you the real gem after that.
Unfortunately.
Oh no!
This level is a mook gauntlet.
It lasts a while! Probably has a less annoying jingle than Tripledent Gum too.
At the end, we encounter the Empire's battleship.
This guy reminds me of M.Bison and I’m not sure if that was intentional but this has nothing to do with Capcom.
Whatever. In the quasi-remake-sequel-thing Gunstar Super Heroes, there’s a painting of him that’s a parody of Napoleon Crossing the Alps that’s a reference to the Street Fighter movie, so even if this wasn’t supposed to be a reference to M. Bison, they certainly ran with it.
Tvtropes’ character page says that Colonel Red and M. Bison are all based on Yasunori Katō of the historical fantasy novel novel series Teito Monogatari, and if you’re not familiar with those, well, it wasn’t translated into English.
There's no checkpoint in this level.
And he's pretty tough.
With two players and the right setup, you can stunlock Red.
This is the last we see of him.
Light speed's too slow. I'm afraid we'll have to go into ludicrous speed!
It's time for an unexpected shmup level.
Although Treasure was founded by ex-Konami employees so it would make sense to have a shmup.
It also makes sense that the music gives me Turtles on Time vibes except it's done via FM synths and not a sample library like the SNES.
When playing on two-player mode, the second player controls a turret that is also invincible and can be used as a shield.
Timeron is back. You can fight Timeron for 100 minutes for a bonus message and some points. "What do points do?" you’re probably asking. I’m asking the same question.
With fire+lighting, this miniboss is trivial.
It's Green!
And instead of having multiple form to defeat and a whole bunch of health bars, he has one health bar and just shifts between mutiple forms.
I like the way those look.
This reminds me of a Dynamite Headdy boss.
He’ll alternate between a ground shot and an air shot because he was expecting you to jump after the first shot. You can also tell by the color.
The original Japanese version called it Duck Battlion.
Do what it suggests.
The first phase, they'll shoot lasers at you and then clank towards you.
In the second phase, he'll jump around firing his gun. Try not to lose too much health.
Slide under to dodge the claw.
The bubbles are the most dangerous part of this fight. Of course, fire+lightning makes it trivial.
Gamefaqs suggests standing on the very edge of the top level and then hang below him and he’ll get stuck in a loop of Final Big Bang. In my experience, this happens about 80% of the time.
His other attack goes upwards. He'll also rush into you.
He'll fly up and send forth mines that you have to navigate through. You can't really see what's going on in this screenshot.
He'll shoot a wave motion cannon downwards. The cannon thing will start sparking beforehand so you have time to get out of the way.
Move to the left and just avoid the shots. This boss is probably the easiest in the level.
He'll throw stars at you.
I love how it shows him watching on the screen and then pans to you walking in the door.
This scene changes in Hard and Expert.
You can ignore Golden Silver. It's the gems that you want to destroy.
His attacks do a lot of damage so either stay away from him at all times and don't waste your time shooting at him.
And that's it.
This guy's name is General Gray.
Don't be fooled by the lack of commentary. I took about 400 screenshots because this game is just so pretty and so cool and so fun and so neat but I don't have the commentary for 400 screenshots. Also I played this back in July.
burning question: well, what else could you call Gunstar Super Heroes other than "quasi-remake-sequel-thing"?
I saved the best for last.
I ended up not sticking with the difficulty level. It changes one thing later in the game.
Also, this game has hands-down the best options menu music ever.
First player is always Red. Second player is always Blue. Free Shot allows you to move around while firing your weapon but you can't fire down. Or up if you're hanging from the ceiling.
While Fixed Shot means you stand still while firing. I picked Free Shot.
In Japan, he's called Professor White Gunstar because he's wearing a white labcoat but in America, they changed his name to Dr. Brown because Back to the Future reference.
There are all sorts of story differences between the Japanese release and the rest of the world's release. For one, Dr. Brown was the original Gunstar Hero in the western release while he was working for the Empire in Japan until he had a change of heart.
Chaser gets completely nerfed in the higher difficulties.
You can do the first four stages in any order.
Yellow was Red's childhood friend in Japan. She's a pacifist.
If you play on a higher difficulty, you might want to start with the strange fortress and do the mine level last.
But I'm just going to start with the first stage.
The natives are those tiny guys.
This game gets pretty hectic and yet there's very little slowdown.
The boss is that asparagus stalk.
He'll drop down a grub occasionally.
If you’ve played Dynamite Headdy, you might recognize some of these bosses behaviors. In fact, I should probably redo my writeup.
You want to just spam attack. If you’re too slow, it will regenerate its health.
After beating the boss, we slide down the pyramid.
One of the cool things about this game is that you can combine weapons.
NOT THE BEES!
Some attacks turn this boss into a joke.
Pink and her two henchgoons is a reference to the Secret of Blue Water.
Beating the Pinky Roader gets us the blue gem. And our starting health is increased by 20 points.
Kind of reminds me of Tidal Tempest, in that you only get a brief glimpse of that cool background, except it’s Scrap Brain.
The rest of the level takes place in this mine.
Picking up items is annoying. I don't recommend doing this level first for that reason.
The modified cart can ride down walls and even cling to the ceiling when you double jump.
You can hit the soldiers in the train only when they're standing up.
Colonel Red AKA Smash Daisaku will throw his men at you.
The boss has seven forms. This is not one of the forms.
It always starts out with this form, which is the hardest of the bunch. He attacks by throwing things, shooting its arm out,
and transforming into a car and rushing at you.
I think the sequence might be hardcoded once you start the fight.
The crab form shoots wheels, which have to be jumped over, walls, which can be shot, and bullets, which should be avoided. You might want to have a long range weapon for this part.
The urchin rolls around on the walls.
When it reaches 1500 health, it switches things up a bit.
By sitting there and shooting stuff at you instead. It's a lot easier to avoid than the rolling, which is rather unpredictable.
The gun form will only fire bullets at you until it needs to reload. I accidentally activated my second player when I was doing this fight on expert mode to get screenshots of the missing two forms. The gun form aims at one player, reloads, and then aims at the second player.
The bird form will climb up the shaft and sometimes it will climb up while upside down or sideways.
And you slide through the gaps as it does that.
When it descends the shaft for a repeat, it always folds the wings as it reaches the lower side of the screen.
Touching the blue sparkle trail doesn't hurt you.
It just shows you where the lasers go. But only for a few bounces.
otherwise, it’s pretty easy because it shows you what it’s going to do beforehand. Obviously having infinite health for the purpose of, ahem, screenshotting, helps.
Also, it seems to go in the order it did when I fought this guy on normal. Might be a coincidence though.
On normal, you fight five of them. On easy, you fight three. On expert, you fight them all.
He’s called Orange but his outfit is green. Must be Michael Stipe’s evil twin.
The helicopter blades don't hurt you when you jump into him.
Paradoxically, picking him up and throwing off the edge of the plane does less damage than throwing him on to the plane.
If you try to hang from the plane and shoot from below, he'll fart on you.
Your health resets upon beating a level so don’t be afraid to take damage from bosses.
Lightning + Fire has short range but does a shit-ton of damage and can even destroy projectiles. But the range isn’t that short. I was expecting it to be a lot harder to use.
Maybe I’m thinking of Chaser + Fire which is the most powerful weapon in the game but also requires you to control the projectile manually.
I love this game.
If you're playing a two-player game, you alternate and each player does the square on their own.
I will be showing off every room. I won't be actually playing every room, especially if those rooms result in me having only 20 health when I finish. You know who you are, Curry and Rice.
The dice only has 1, 2, and 3 on it.
Square 1
He'll move around the screen in an easily avoided pattern. It says to shoot the head but you can shoot anything but the tail.
Square 2
In the protoype, there's a door here with "heaven" and the silhouette of a dancing Shiva. It didn't do anything then (or at least, hadn't yet been programmed to do anything before it was removed)
Square 3
Timeron will count up to ten while dropping bombs on the ground. Then he'll count down to zero and its actions will go down to zero.
It takes less than one round to defeat Timeron with the right weapons.
Square 4: Punching the walls causes them to shift. If you run out of time, you just get sent back.
Square 5
He may be tiny
bu he's dangerous.
Square 6
Melon Bread doesn't do much of anything.
Square 7:
It's like the car smash minigame in various fighting games and beat-'em-ups which originated in Final Fight.
The leftmost crate has a health pickup.
And you get a time bonus.
Square 8:
Avoid the wall while destroying the faces.
Square 9:
Just get through the maze.
Square 10:
I'm not ever going to not use fire+lightning.
The health is nice, at least.
Square 11:
Don't be fooled by his lack of a health meter.
Square 12:
By core, they mean the thing at the bottom. The way the red orbs flash is the way the laser goes.
As free shot, you can only hit him while hanging, or with a homing weapon.
Square 13: Probably the hardest square. You have to fight this guy using only your physical attacks.
Square 14
He'll jump around. The right weapons trivialize this fight. Otherwise, you'll have to slide.
Square 15:
Each part has its own health meter.
If you land on Square 17, you get sent back to start. At least you don't have to do the squares again.
16 is just another item room. There's two health pickups in it.
I think the soul bonus is how long we spent fighting Timeron.
But wait!
Black will roll a dice and take that number of steps.
Then he activates some sort of attack.
Dodge the first gem. Especially if you somehow finished this fight with only two points of vitality left. It's fake.
Shoot him once.
Don't keep shooting at him unless you want to waste time.
He gives you the real gem after that.
Unfortunately.
Oh no!
This level is a mook gauntlet.
It lasts a while! Probably has a less annoying jingle than Tripledent Gum too.
At the end, we encounter the Empire's battleship.
This guy reminds me of M.Bison and I’m not sure if that was intentional but this has nothing to do with Capcom.
Whatever. In the quasi-remake-sequel-thing Gunstar Super Heroes, there’s a painting of him that’s a parody of Napoleon Crossing the Alps that’s a reference to the Street Fighter movie, so even if this wasn’t supposed to be a reference to M. Bison, they certainly ran with it.
Tvtropes’ character page says that Colonel Red and M. Bison are all based on Yasunori Katō of the historical fantasy novel novel series Teito Monogatari, and if you’re not familiar with those, well, it wasn’t translated into English.
There's no checkpoint in this level.
And he's pretty tough.
With two players and the right setup, you can stunlock Red.
This is the last we see of him.
Light speed's too slow. I'm afraid we'll have to go into ludicrous speed!
It's time for an unexpected shmup level.
Although Treasure was founded by ex-Konami employees so it would make sense to have a shmup.
It also makes sense that the music gives me Turtles on Time vibes except it's done via FM synths and not a sample library like the SNES.
When playing on two-player mode, the second player controls a turret that is also invincible and can be used as a shield.
Timeron is back. You can fight Timeron for 100 minutes for a bonus message and some points. "What do points do?" you’re probably asking. I’m asking the same question.
With fire+lighting, this miniboss is trivial.
It's Green!
And instead of having multiple form to defeat and a whole bunch of health bars, he has one health bar and just shifts between mutiple forms.
I like the way those look.
This reminds me of a Dynamite Headdy boss.
He’ll alternate between a ground shot and an air shot because he was expecting you to jump after the first shot. You can also tell by the color.
The original Japanese version called it Duck Battlion.
Do what it suggests.
The first phase, they'll shoot lasers at you and then clank towards you.
In the second phase, he'll jump around firing his gun. Try not to lose too much health.
Slide under to dodge the claw.
The bubbles are the most dangerous part of this fight. Of course, fire+lightning makes it trivial.
Gamefaqs suggests standing on the very edge of the top level and then hang below him and he’ll get stuck in a loop of Final Big Bang. In my experience, this happens about 80% of the time.
His other attack goes upwards. He'll also rush into you.
He'll fly up and send forth mines that you have to navigate through. You can't really see what's going on in this screenshot.
He'll shoot a wave motion cannon downwards. The cannon thing will start sparking beforehand so you have time to get out of the way.
Move to the left and just avoid the shots. This boss is probably the easiest in the level.
He'll throw stars at you.
I love how it shows him watching on the screen and then pans to you walking in the door.
This scene changes in Hard and Expert.
You can ignore Golden Silver. It's the gems that you want to destroy.
His attacks do a lot of damage so either stay away from him at all times and don't waste your time shooting at him.
And that's it.
This guy's name is General Gray.
Don't be fooled by the lack of commentary. I took about 400 screenshots because this game is just so pretty and so cool and so fun and so neat but I don't have the commentary for 400 screenshots. Also I played this back in July.
burning question: well, what else could you call Gunstar Super Heroes other than "quasi-remake-sequel-thing"?
