Box Copy
An enchanted sword falls into the hands
of a band of young heroes. Assisted by a Knight and a Golden Undead
Warrior, they begin their quest to change the fate of their entire
kingdom.
- Use martial arts, swords, magic,
and muscle to battle the forces of darkness.
- Each character has their own
unique fighting style. Customize your character's attributes as
they increase in level.
- All characters can jump to the
foreground, middle ground, and background to evade their
opponents attacks.
- Choose over 50 different paths
to reach multiple endings.
- Play a One or Two Player Story
Mode, or play the player vs. Player Battle Mode! Use the 6
Player multi-player Adapter to fight with up to 6 players at a
time with 45 characters to choose from!
Discussion
If you don’t know the developer name
‘Treasure’, I want you to go to your room and think about your place
in the universe. Makers of some of the most beloved games in
history, including Gunstar Heroes, Alien Soldier, McDonald’s
Treasure Land, Mischief Makers and more, they brought their 2D
expertise to the Sega Saturn in full force with Guardian Heroes.
At its core, the game is a side-scrolling hack & slash for 1 or 2
players. However, right off the bat you’re presented with choices in
how to proceed. Every few stages you will be asked to make a choice
and that choice determines not only who and where you’ll fight, but
how the ending turns out.
Play-wise, you use Street Fighter-type motions and Mortal Kombat-type
tap moves to perform various special moves and combos. You can
combine many of them to create amazing and often damaging chain
combos. 2 players working together can cause copious amounts of
damage to the enemy horde, all while providing some serious
on-screen fireworks.
The artwork is all hand-drawn, with a good amount of animation for
each of the characters. Where the game shines is both in the amount
of on-screen characters and planes of depth. Like SNK’s Fatal Fury
series, you’re allowed to plane jump between the fore, middle, and
background. This allows for a bit of encircling the bad guys or
getting the hell out of the way of magic attacks. There are
characters that can attack every plane at once, so be prepared!
Besides the story mode, you can bring up to 5 friends and beat each
other senseless in the Arena Mode. Here, you can unlock (via playing
the Story Mode) all 45 different characters to play as, including
bosses and random NPCs. Like modern day games, you can set-up teams
(5 against 1!), allow for handicaps, and if you so choose, even set
a completely CPU controlled line-up so you can sit back and watch
the carnage.
If you have never played Guardian Heroes, it’s worthy of a system
pick-up. It hasn’t aged as gracefully as I hoped, but it still has
enough redeeming features and a fun multi-player option that keeps
it in gaming’s retro limelight.
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Trivia
- So if you'd like a great example
of the programmer's humor, check out bottom right most image.
See that little white thing in between the plant and the timer?
That's an actual playable character! He kicks ass! :D
- The game, though
straight-forward in play, has multiple paths and story outcomes
depending on what you do and choose. This adds a real nice
replay value as the game isn't that long to play through (maybe
an hour or two tops if you're good).
- It's possible to screw with the
combat physics. If you can manage to surround an enemy, the
proper timing will allow two players to literally juggle a
character between the two of them for as long as they can keep
it up, producing huge amounts of damage. Careful though, the
computer can do it to you, too!
- Received a somewhat sequel /
reboot on the Game Boy Advance.
- There are hidden arenas in
several areas of the game. Once you beat all the characters in
an area and stand at a certain spot, you'll enter a new area
that allows for extra battles and Experience Points.
- A Debug Menu can be accessed
that allows you to mess with practically any feature in the
game, right down to the Experience Point system.
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