Gunstar Super Heroes
(Treasure, 2005)

OH MY GOD. Yesterday D and I went to Shandi’s Music & More in Canton, IL. I picked up a backlit GBA SP—no more sidelighting for me!—and a copy of Gunstar Super Heroes which, as a loose, used cart, set me back just 8 bucks. D bought me an old issue of Atari Force, which cost 50 cents. That was nice of him! I told him to just keep the dumb old sidelit GBA, now that I have upgraded.

Gunstar Super Heroes is amazing! It’s a Treasure game, of course, but while it’s meant to be a sequel to the original Gunstar Heroes, it feels a lot more like Astro Boy: Omega Factor than it does Gunstar. This isn’t a bad thing for me, because I can actually play Astro Boy.

The level design is really cool and creative: the screenshot above, for instance, is from a really improbable level (how is he not falling off the top of the airship?) that riffs off a  Gyruss or Tempest -style tunnel shooter. Neat, right?

Gunstar Super Heroes is so good, it’s kind of the reason I started this Tumblog. From Wikipedia:

The game was almost universally praised by critics as a compelling action game and received high scores, even receiving several “Best GBA Game Of E3 2005” awards. However, the game still did not sell very well, and Nintendo Power has urged gamers on numerous times to get the game, disappointed that it did not appear in the top selling GBA games list.