Gunstar Super Heroes is a Game Boy Advance

Game Boy Advance

The is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China...

 title created by Treasure Co. Ltd

Treasure Co. Ltd

is a Japanese video game developer, founded by former employees of Konami on June 19, 1992. Treasure is best known for classic-style action games that employ innovative gameplay systems...

. It is the sequel to Gunstar Heroes

Gunstar Heroes

is a run and gun video game developed by Treasure and published by Sega.Treasure's debut game was originally released on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis in late 1993, and later on, ported to the Game Gear by M2. On February 23, 2006, Gunstar Heroes was released as part of the Gunstar Heroes: Treasure...

. Gameplay is similar to that of the original title, but with a fixed set of weapons and the addition of close combat techniques.

Story

Taking place after the destruction of the "God of Ruin" (also known as Golden Silver, the final boss

Boss (video games)

A boss is an enemy-based challenge which is found in video games. A fight with a boss character is commonly referred to as a boss battle or boss fight...

) at the end of Gunstar Heroes, the explosion created four moons orbiting the Earth. However, many years later, the creation of a fifth moon reveals a plan to resurrect the malevolent Empire and Golden Silver once again.

Most of the new characters bear both the names and likenesses of their equivalents in the original game (such as Blue, Yellow, Green, Pink, Kain, Kotaro, Orange, Black, Gray, and Smash Daisaku). The main characters combat the Empire under the organization called The Third Eye, (abbreviated "3YE") under the names Red (female in the North American version, ambiguous in the Japanese) and Blue in recognition and tribute to the characters from the original game, and along with Yellow on the team, they are known as Gunstar Super Heroes. The Gunstars must travel to the moons, stop the resurrected Empire, and recapture the Treasure Gems, four mystical stones with an unknown power that had driven the story in the last game. The game has different storylines based on what difficulty is chosen and which character the player is playing as.

Gameplay

The gameplay makes a number of changes from the original Gunstar Heroes. The controls for Red and Blue no longer distinguish by the Free and Fixed Shot and both have more advanced, equal and versatile controls. The Throw from the original is taken out, and various melee attacks are now performed by using the A and B buttons in combination with the D-pad. The ability to combine different weapons is absent - instead, the player has the option to select from three weapon types at any time in the game. The game also uses a supercharge meter that fills as the player defeats enemies; using this energy allows the player to fire a powerful attack.

Reception

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

Nintendo Power

Nintendo Power magazine is a monthly news and strategy magazine formerly published in-house by Nintendo of America, but now run independently. As of issue #222 , Nintendo contracted publishing duties to Future US, the U.S. subsidiary of British publisher Future.The first issue published was...

has urged gamers on numerous times to get the game, disappointed that it did not appear in the top selling GBA games list.