The Video Game Revue

Gunstar Super Heroes

Lately I've been playing a bit of Gunstar Super Heroes, for GBA. It surprises me just how lasting the appeal of that game is, but what surprises me more is that I'm surprised. After all, Gunstar Super Heroes was developed by Treasure--the creators of Ikaruga and various other hardcore masterpieces. Yet in spite of that, the main reasons that I bought the game were because it had rave critical reviews and because it was half price. Shameful!

You could argue that Treasure has a hit-and-miss track record. Ikaruga, Gradius V, and Guardian Heroes are all cult classics, but then there are games like Silpheed: The Lost Planet, Guardian Heroes Advance, and others that drew reactions ranging from luke-warm to ice cold. Personally, I wouldn't argue that; in fact, I believe that there is another, entirely separate reason why a game like Gunstar Super Heroes doesn't have such a raging draw even for most hardcore gamers (although, believe me, it should have that draw.)

If you could take Gunstar Super Heroes back in time to around 1994 or 1995 and put it on the SNES, it would have been a rampant success. I can say this with confidence because I remember loving games like Darius Twin and Contra 3 on the SNES, which are both easily inferior to Gunstar Super Heroes. Of course, you could say that about most games these days: titles like F.E.A.R. and Valkyrie Profile 2 sure would have swept the market back in '94, what with their snazzy 2006 technology to show off. But the difference is that you couldn't take F.E.A.R. or Valkyrie Profile 2 back that far because the hardware required for regular home gamers to run these games wasn't available. There were no graphics accelerator cards (in fact, an entire $3000 PC back then would have had less RAM than a typical $60 graphics card today) or PlayStation 2 consoles at that time, but there was the SNES. And because the GBA is roughly as powerful as the SNES, I can easily imagine that it would have been possible to create Gunstar Super Heroes back in 1994.

There are two points that I mean to illustrate by this story. The first is that technology isn't just about hardware. Even though the SNES was around back in 1994, the methods to create a game as elaborate and solid as Gunstar Super Heroes hadn't been developed yet. There's a reason why the early games out for a given console (Final Fantasy II/IV for SNES, Metal Gear Solid 2 for PS2) are typically outdone years later by more technologically advanced games running on the same hardware (Final Fantasy III/VI for SNES, Metal Gear Solid 3 for PS2.) Software takes time to develop and be refined, yes, and so does the entire game-making process that goes into creating kick-ass sequels.

The second point, which is the less obvious and more important one, is that the game market is a lot more competitive today than it used to be. Back in '94, if Gunstar Super Heroes had managed to get made, it would have been hailed as a revolutionary SNES game and would be remembered to this day as an all-time favourite. In 2005, the same game gets made--albeit faster and easier due to advances in technology--and only manages to turn a handful of heads. I found that it took me, personally, a while to realise just how good Gunstar Super Heroes is as I was playing it because so many other games (Contra, Mega Man, Metal Slug) have blazed so much of the same territory. And when I realised that, I started to wonder just how much room is left for creativity and innovation in games.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to do something entirely new with video games today. What I am saying is that perhaps it's more difficult than it was a decade ago. It was around 1994 that id Software brought us Doom and spawned a revolution in PC gaming. Does the FPS genre still have the potency for change today that it did back then? FPS games have become so common as to be cliche; they are even one of the first game genres imagined by non-gamers when asked to think of what a typical video game is like. Similarly, Gunstar Super Heroes is a rock solid, spectacular game that is only mildly interesting because, tragically, the state of the art had overtaken it before it was even made.

To me, this is a hidden element of "The Sucking." Gamers today tend to pine for the glory days of the 80's or 90's when games were "real games" because the fantastic games of today have numbed their senses to the point where it's hard to be all that impressed anymore. It's difficult to see what the big deal was about Final Fantasy IV when you've been playing World of WarCraft for two years solid, because one's imagination only carries one so far in picturing that, at the time, FF IV was the most advanced RPG of its kind that had ever been created. The result is that we all have a tendancy to sit around and gripe about how games have lost their magic while regularly playing games that would have made us weep for joy back in the days of yore that we're nostalgic for.

Anyway, if you're a hardcore gamer (and I really mean that--not just some jackass who thinks of himself as hardcore because that's a hip thing to be) and you happen to have the chance to try Gunstar Super Heroes, I highly recommend that you take that opportunity. It might seem typical and unimpressive at first, but if you give it your full attention, I think you'll come to see in it the magical sheen of old-school gaming that we all yearn for from time to time.

posted by Parappa @ 11:54 AM