In Gunstar Heroes, you could pick up practically any enemy and chuck them at your foes – similarly, you could grab bombs in mid-air and chuck them back. The directional pad controls Marina, while the A button is used to jump, and the B button is used to grab objects. You see, the professor has a nasty habit of getting kidnapped – he’s not terribly bright – and it’s up to Marina to dig him out of whatever trouble he’s gotten himself into. As such, there’s a mysterious group controlling a faction of the Clannad, and they’re off to make lives miserable for Marina and her professor pal. Despite their unintentionally creepy appearance, the Clannad are generally friendly, but they’re also pretty naive and are often manipulated by more sinister forces. They’ve just landed on the planet Clancer, which is inhabited by a strange looking race called the Clannad, Practically everything on this planet – creatures, floors, structures, etc – consist of the same face, designed to look after a particular type of Japanese Haniwa statues (similar to the famous Cactuars from Final Fantasy.) It’s an interesting look, but it doesn’t quite cross the cultural gap, and it actually looks more creepy than endearing – it’s actually a bit closer to the classic Halloween mask made infamous by Wes Craven’s Scream franchise of horror movies. Mischief Makers focuses on a crazy scientist named Professor Theo and his robot maid, The Ultra InterGalactic-Cybot G, Marina. It’s actually far closer in structure and function to Super Mario World or Yoshi’s Island than any of Nintendo’s efforts for their own 64-bit system, and does an admirable job at mimicking Nintendo style games while possessing a flair of its own. But while Treasure had attempted to invade the mascot platformer field with their Genesis title Dynamite Headdy, their first attempt at a full blown, Nintendo-style Super Mario Bros. Later, they took on the beat-em-up genre with their Saturn title Guardian Heroes.

Fan favorite developer Treasure made a name for themselves with the Genesis title Gunstar Heroes, which took the action-shooter template from Contra and turned it on its head.

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