Gunstar Super Heroes INFO BOX SYSTEMS Gameboy Advance PUBLISHER SEGA RELEASE DATES Japan - 10/06/05 NA - 10/25/05 Everyone's been waiting over a decade for this one to come out, and it's certain to garner a lot of comparisons to the original. Billed as a true sequel to Gunstar Heroes, it's hard to see past the fact that when you're actually playing the game it feels like nothing more then a remake of the original. This isn't to say the game isn't worth the time, in fact, it's more then worth your time. Even if it is just a remake at it's core, it still offers plenty of new thrills, and a brand new way to play one of everyone's favorite classics! Right off the bat the game throws you into the middle of the action, only this time you need only choose your character and the difficulty you'd like to play at. After that it's straight to the madness. Well, the madness may be slightly toned down from the original. Enemies rarely fire any bullets at you, and often times the bullets that are fired at you will only travel half the distance of the screen. Luckily levels are short and you're often facing bosses as often, if not more often then you're battling with the standard baddies. Bosses are big and animated, just as in the original, and offer the most exciting and challenging parts of the game. You will see your Gameboy Advance pull off effects you never thought possible while keeping the framerate silky smooth the entire time. SILKY SMOOTH. Gone is the slowdown from Treasure's previous Gameboy Advance outings. You might see a lick of slowdown here and there, but it's on such a small scale it's not even worth mentioning. There are still seven levels in this game, which are a mix of shooter stages, boss stages, fixed scrolling stages, and weird rotating stages, not to mention the crazy dice maze. Sure, you saw pretty much everything here in the original, but the stages are so much faster paced, added with the fact you always have 3 weapons in stock and you never have to stop to pick any up keeps things moving constantly. You've also got a super meter that allows you to fire off a super powered shot of any of your three weapons as long as you've got enough power to do so, and this adds a whole new element to the game. Suddenly you've got 6 different shot types at your disposal at any time. You've still got your melee attack as well, including slide kicks, jump kicks, uppercuts, and even a nifty little sword for close combat. Gone is the throw of the original, but you'll hardly notice with all your other attacks to play around with. Music is mostly rearranged tracks from the original, still sounding just as good as they used to, with a few new tracks thrown in at certain parts. The new songs fit in with the old songs so well it's as if they might have actually been in the original and you just never noticed. Graphics are excellent as well. As I mentioned, the framerate is smooth as butter, bosses are huge, enemies are plentiful, and the explosions are all over the place. Definitely one of the best looking Gameboy Advance games around. So what's not to like? It's like a faster paced version of the original Gunstar Heroes, with a few improvements (3 guns at all times, time attack and score attack modes, different stories for different difficulties) and a few parts that don't quite compare to the original (shooter sections, no weapon combos, throwing is gone, and no two player). If it's not better then the original Gunstar Heroes then it's just as good.