Gunstar Heroes is up to 2 players awesome shoot-em-up. It was developed by Treasure as second-part company for Sega. Treasure was made up of ex-Konami developers who didn't want to make just another sequel to popular franchises, much to gamers sadness, I bet. Best shooter 1993. All in a mere 8 Megabit power.
There also was a superior port on 3DS. Mostly just 3D and some extra modes.
The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version.
Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "Gunstar Heroes U.bin".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "07 GH_PC_MG_EFIGS_US_v6.pdf".
Has online (in Bedroom HUB only) and local multiplayer.
1993. While some gamers on SNES have been playing the ever slow Contra 3 and PC masterrace was busy with the gimmicky weak title that is Wolfenstein 3D, the Genesis players had a real deal. And that real deal was Gunstar Heroes.
A game that was designed to give a stagnant 2D Shoot-em-up genre a good kick as well as becoming a new role model for the genre. And push Sega Genesis to the maximum. Colorful world. Empirial soldiers coming after you from all the sides. Cartoonish awesome bosses of various wacky areas. Explosions everywhere! Scrolls!! And all without a single slowdown, aside from a stack of boxes in level 5 being too complex for blast processor to handle, apparently. Sounds is bombastic. And so is music. Oh yea, and cool ehcoing out of world voice samples.
It goes even further and makes use of Blast Processing during boss battles as developers go crazy and build bosses out of multiple sprites. 7-Force boss. It's a transforming robot that is made out of individual metal blocks that have pre-made frames for rotations. Crazy.
There is even special effect that is used during Captain Orange boss fight on the wings of a helicopter. They have combined a vertical row scrolling with horizontal row scrolling. If those two are used slightly then they give effect tof a swaying. And they also made background sway in different direction from the helicopter so it really feels impressive.
But hey, it's not all only about explosive presentation. Treasure has also brought some new things into the shoot-em-up genres. It's not hard as nails. You don't instantly die from the damage. You have a numerical Vitality and many hits do around 10-20 damage. Your starting Vitality slowly increases with each stage, at least with the first 4 stages that you can choose to do in any order. So people who find other shoot-em-ups to be too hard are welcome to play this game. But more hardcore audience shouldn't worry as the game includes harder difficulty choices. Also, continues are endless.
There are 4 weapons in the game that you can pick up occasionally from the flying supply bots, some dropping health instead. The game has an interesting weapon system. You can keep only 2 weapons at the same time and can switch between them. But not only that, you can combine those two weapons which can change them drastically. For example, flamethrower and green-chasing-triangles combination will give you a flame that you can control with your movement keys. As you can figure out, there are 10 combinations in total to try out.
Protip: To get the supply bot to drop additional powerups you have to melee it. Jump kick or throw somebody at them. Check out all the additional health!
At the start of a game you also pick between fixed or moving shot. Fixed means that movement keys only aim when you are shooting. Moving shot means that you will both move and aim while shooting. Yep, unlike other games you can't switch these modes around during gameplay. Puts some emphasis on multiplayer as two players can pick their own mode.
Oh yes, and it's not all only about shooting. Treasure have also included some fancy melee moves. There is kick-slide move that is easy to figure out. There is more normal slide move that you do like special move: back-down, forward+attack. There are also jump attack that actually depend on whether you picked fixed or moving shot character. And there is a throw move, just press attack while close to enemy. It's actually best used on human bosses that have strange temporary invincibility mechanic after getting knocked by some amount of damage, the throwing does real damage.
Oh yea, and you can block by pressing and holding attack+jump after which you stay in place like a dummy and take less damage. Seems useless.
And yep, as you see the core gameplay is awesome and Treasure follows it up with inspired levels. For example, Black's dice maze. A simple board game where each square is a separate boss encounter or item room and you get a dice to throw. I actually hated it until I figured each boss out and beat it, now I love it. And in one level you get to chase the flying fortress as it takes off. And there is a level where the game switches to horizontal shmup genre. Good thing it's not too hard. And the last level? A boss rush. But it's not some lame repeat of the bosses like in Mega Man, it's a marathon where each boss comes out with a new toy to get their revenge on you.
Yea, actually the game puts some more emphasis on the bosses than just normal stages that are filled with soldiers that have all the various little animations. I have noticed that some of the best Genesis shoot-em-up are like one big boss rush with occasional break. In Gunstar Heroes it's more of 50 on 50. Not that I mind.
And options. There are usual sound test and key config. But most importantly, there is difficulty setting that is pretty damn good. Changing it to higher difficulty will increase the hitpoints of enemies and aggresiveness. Some weapons nerfed. And they indeed make for a more challenging game, increasing difficulty in some more ways. For example, on Normal you have to beat only 5 forms of 7 Force. On Expert? All 7.
And of course there is 2 player cooperative multiplayer. There is no collision and no friendly fire so go crazy. It's actually one of the best 2 player shoot-em-ups around due to how accessable it is in difficulty while being so bombastic.
The health system also works interestingly in this mode. When one of the players dies he can continue the game which takes away half of the health from the surviving player.
And you can throw each other, actually. It's surprsingly highly damaging on bosses, almost overpowered.
Overall, this game was the first that pushed the system to the maximum while being the most fun around. There were many other system-pushing action games in the later years, however most of them were either gimmicky or too hard. Gunstar is the one that gets it the best.
