Gunstar Heroes (1993): what it is and why it matters

Gunstar Heroes is the first game a new studio called Treasure ever released, and it is still the Genesis game people point to when they want to show what the hardware could do when the programmers were on its side. This page gives you the studio's origin, the dates by region, the weapon system that makes the game what it is, the technical reputation and what stands behind it, and what to know before your first attempt at its seven stages.

Who made it

Time Extension's page lists the developer as Treasure and the publisher as SEGA, with the genre given as action and a player count of two. Hardcore Gaming 101 supplies the backstory: Treasure was founded in 1992 by Masato Maegawa and colleagues who had worked on some of Konami's strongest 16-bit games for the Super Nintendo, including Contra III: The Alien Wars, and Gunstar Heroes was the studio's first release, made as a second-party title for Sega. The same page credits the character art to Tetsuhiko Kikuchi (credited as HAN) and the music to Norio Hanazawa (credited as NON).

When and where it shipped

Platform	Region	Date	Source
Genesis	North America	9 September 1993	Time Extension game page
Mega Drive	Japan	10 September 1993	Time Extension game page
Mega Drive	Europe	1993	Time Extension game page
Nintendo 3DS (3D Gunstar Heroes, port by M2)	Europe and North America	20 August 2015 (4.49 pounds / 5.99 dollars)	Nintendo Life game page

The dataset row takes 9 September 1993 as the first release, the earliest day on the Time Extension page; the Japanese date is one day later on the same page. Hardcore Gaming 101 lists further releases on Game Gear (a separate adaptation, again by M2), PlayStation 2 as part of the Sega Ages Treasure Box compilation, Wii Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, iOS, Windows and 3DS. The European date is given only as the year on the page we could reach, so that is all the table claims.

What the game does

You are one of two Gunstar twins, and the story on Time Extension's page is that a villain named Smash Daisaku has kidnapped your brother Green and is gathering four gems to reactivate an android called Golden Silver on the moon of the planet Gunstar 9. That is the excuse for seven stages of running, jumping, sliding, throwing enemies and shooting.

The design is in the guns. Hardcore Gaming 101 describes four basic weapon types, flame, lightning, homing and force, and the rule that you carry two at once and can combine them, giving fourteen distinct combinations counting the two-of-a-kind pairs (Nintendo Life's 3DS page refers to "all 14 weapons" being unlocked in the port's All Spec mode). Two homing shots make a slow, seeking beam; flame and force make a wide short-range spray; lightning and homing make a searching bolt you can steer. The game gives you a pick-up choice at the start, so the first decision you make is your build, and the stages are designed so that no combination is wrong, only differently effective.

The stages do not all play the same way. One is a side-scrolling board game in which you roll dice to advance through rooms with different enemies; one is a fight on a mine cart that runs along the ceiling as well as the floor; one has you clinging to the outside of a helicopter. Bosses are the studio's signature: a multi-form robot named Seven Force, a pyramid that shifts shape, a tank the size of the screen, all built from many separately animated pieces.

Why it matters

The technical reputation comes down to one observation that both Hardcore Gaming 101 and Nintendo Life make in their own words. Hardcore Gaming 101 says that with everything on screen "the game never slows down," and Nintendo Life calls the original "one of the most technically impressive Genesis/Mega Drive titles" and "a bona-fide classic of the 16-bit era." On a console whose advertising promised speed, here was a game that kept its frame rate while filling the screen with rotating, scaling boss parts, an effect that the Super Nintendo did in hardware and the Genesis did not. Treasure did it in code. The site's hardware article on blast processing covers the marketing; this game is the argument the marketing wished it had.

It also mattered for what came after. The studio founded on this game kept working in the same register, and the Gunstar Heroes template, a run-and-gun with a build system and set-piece bosses made of many moving parts, is the thing people mean when they call something "a Treasure game."

What to know before starting

Choose Free shot on the character select if you want to move while firing in any direction; Fixed shot lets you lock your aim and strafe. Nintendo Life notes the 3DS port lets you switch between the two on the fly, which the original does not.
Your first weapon pair should include homing. It forgives poor aim while you learn the movement.
Play on Normal. The easiest setting trims boss patterns, and the boss patterns are the game.
The dice stage is not a puzzle; the rooms have fixed contents, and rolling badly just costs you time and health.
Two players share lives and can throw each other, which is useful for crossing gaps and for arguments.
For a modern platform, the 3DS port by M2 is the one with the most options; the Sega Ages Treasure Box on PlayStation 2 is the one with the most Treasure games around it.

The row in the dataset

The dataset lists Gunstar Heroes with Treasure as developer, SEGA as publisher, a first release of 9 September 1993 on the Mega Drive/Genesis, the genre run and gun and the era retro, sourced to the Time Extension page. It is the first row whose developer is a studio founded the year before the game shipped.