Thank you for recommending this. I’d never played it and fired it up on my Genesis the other night. What a great game all around! Some of the boss fights are pretty punishing but I think I’ll get passed them once I memorize their patterns.
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It’s among my top five games all-time. When it came out I got it day one thanks to Diehard Gamefan magazine’s spread on it and I would recommend it to everyone who had a Genesis that came into the Electronics Boutique I worked in at the time. It still holds up so incredibly well and its technical achievement stands out even when you play it in 2020.
I’m glad you got to play it!
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I really need to put the time in to get better at Gunstar Heroes - got it on 3DS 3D Classics about five years ago. I remember it looking mind blowingly good in 3D. But I always messed up at the highway stage. Any tips about weapon combinations or should I just keep playing it until I get it?
Electricity + Chaser is a game breaking combo.
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This, just be careful when it homes in ton the wrong thing. Let go of the button and start again.
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Thanks folks, that sounds very Neo Contra - I’m probably going to feel guilty going through the game like this but it’s going to be fun so who cares?
A recent well detailed write up should contain some useful info, especially if you plan to play beyond normal difficulty.
https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=1423335#p1423335
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I wouldn’t worry about it. I think it’s the way we all experienced the game the first time we played through it.
There are other fun and challenging combos like the fire+lightning laser sword you can try on subsequent play throughs to challenge yourself more.
Thanks everyone. Just dug out my New 3DS XL and Sega 3D Classics Collection for this.
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Gunstar Heroes was my Jam when I was younger. I must have spent so much time playing that game. I remember being super impressed with the ability to melee attack as well as shoot. It blew my mind. I never could consistently pull of the half circle slide attack though and that used to frustrate me greatly.
I loved the varied level design, there were some genius ideas
And the last boss was just beautiful!
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Turns out I had Gunstar Heroes on my Japanese 3DS - it didn’t make it to the western 3D Classics Collection!
Anyway, thanks for the tips everyone, I just finally made it past stage 5. Loving stage 6 so far, and regretting quickly killing off Timeron.
On the subject of effects - I need to get some good footage but the car reflections in Taito PS1 game Ray Tracers really impressed me.
They are over all the windows, and they move/distort in real-time depending on how far left/right your vehicle is. Genki did a similar trick in one of their N64 Rally games (Rally ‘99).
I’m just dying to talk about how good the presentation in 3D Gunstar Heroes is.
The number of distinct “layers” that M2 parsed out of the original visuals often seems to just infinitely stretch out into the background.
So the backgrounds of these games are representations of 3D scenery to begin with, but in most 3DS games the developers just take those backgrounds and separate them into a limited number of flat layers. This was the case with M2’s earlier work on 3DS, presumably due to the simple colours in games like Fantasy Zone.
Not so with Gunstar Heroes. Almost every object in the game is given proper depth since it often seems like each pixel is given its own position in 3D space. So previously “flat” background layers have real depth and volume to them. It’s insane.
The best use of this may well be stage 7, where the baddies are in the foreground staring at you and the action through a glass screen. The glass screen in the level is literally the 3DS’s screen, with the action being “inside” the screen and the baddies and their location popping “outside” the screen. It looks incredible!
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That is impressive. Picked that game up myself a few weeks ago.
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Let us know what you make of it when you do play it, it’s really good with the 3D on full whack.
There’s a vintage/classic filter too, before Sega Ages on Switch did it, but it needs more pixels to look good I think. And the curvature is a bit extreme.
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That’s what my non-Trinitron Philips 14" portable TV (RGB SCART) looked like in the mid 90s
I had a Phillips 14” TV too! Maybe I’ve forgotten. When you turn on the 3D it looks more curved than the flat 2D image at least.
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With all this talk about ray tracing going on the most inventive use of the GameCube’s EFB must be brought up - Super Mario Sunshine’s use of scene reflections is still extremely impressive today:
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The lake in Bianco Hills reflects everything hovering over it, from enemies, to coins, to Mario himself
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The solar panels in Gelato Beach - nothing more to be said about this one!
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The water beneath Pinna Park’s swinging boats attraction
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It’s also used in the mirrors in the hotel, and for reflections from Fludd’s water spray - useful for ‘seeing’ where you’ve sprayed.
It’s really impressive and it honestly never comes across like a gimmick considering the theme of the game is water, and it’s a platformer. Seeing an elusive blue coin reflected in the solar panels gobsmacked me, and those reflections in the solar panels themselves helps to orient yourself during the star where you’ve got to ground pound those nasties off them.
Apparently the EFB is also used to render the ‘darkness’ you see in Isle Delfino when the shine sprites are astray, what’s also cool is you actually see that darkness recede as you progress through the game until it’s gone entirely:
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Growing up with a PS2 the Graphics in “Champions of Norrath” really impressed me, now finally know why. This was one of the few PS2 games to include support for bump mapping, where Gamecube and Xbox hardware could more easily support the feature, a lot went in to getting it working at playable speeds on the PS2 supposedly and as a result this game really sticks out on the system.
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I’ve been playing the PS1 version of S.C.A.R.S. which is quite good fun because of the close racing.
The way the tracks animate in at the start of the race is particularly awesome. “World building.”
This is another PS1 game that holds up remarkably well @ 2x resolution 640x480
@ 0:03 and 5:00
SCARS does what a lot of PlayStation games do now, as the system nears the zenith of its lifespan. It makes use of a highly polished PlayStation engine that’s pushed to the limit, and performs special effects of which only the Nintendo 64 was once thought capable. SCARS, as designer Vivid Image told us, is one of the few games that uses 90% of the PlayStation’s engine power. So, SCARS does look awesome. In fact, it’s beautiful.
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