Uploaded June 2010 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Developed by Treasure, Gunstar Heroes represents the real masterpiece in Sega Genesis' huge games library. Running at rock solid 60 frames per second, there is more graphical data floating around per frame than the You Tube's video encoder could ever handle. Not only is the game highly addictive but it's mainly technically advanced squeezing out Sega's "powerhouse" video processor so hard that there are occasional sprite overflow problems, as you can see for instance in the monster robot or pistol sections. In fact, in 2 players mode the programmers already are beyond the sprite limits (20 per scanline maximum) and have to use awfull flickering techniques that you wouldn't expect to happen on this kind of a system. The question is if these hardware features could be replaced by software rendering or some sort of sprite multiplexing. I'm not that familiar with Genesis architecture but I guess the VDP is programmed by I/O ports thus you cannot operate on your own that quickly around the screen... The Mega Drive version which I own is correctly reprogrammed for 50 Hz PAL video meaning you don't get screwed with slower speed and sound, unlike many other cheap ass conversions.
Developed by Treasure, Gunstar Heroes represents the real masterpiece in Sega Genesis' huge games library. Running at rock solid 60 frames per second, there is more graphical data floating around per frame than the You Tube's video encoder could ever handle. Not only is the game highly addictive but it's mainly technically advanced squeezing out Sega's "powerhouse" video processor so hard that there are occasional sprite overflow problems, as you can see for instance in the monster robot or pistol sections. In fact, in 2 players mode the programmers already are beyond the sprite limits (20 per scanline maximum) and have to use awfull flickering techniques that you wouldn't expect to happen on this kind of a system. The question is if these hardware features could be replaced by software rendering or some sort of sprite multiplexing. I'm not that familiar with Genesis architecture but I guess the VDP is programmed by I/O ports thus you cannot operate on your own that quickly around the screen... The Mega Drive version which I own is correctly reprogrammed for 50 Hz PAL video meaning you don't get screwed with slower speed and sound, unlike many other cheap ass conversions.
