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!!Gunstar Heroes (Game Gear) notes

This is a game resources page for the Game Gear version of Gunstar Heroes. This is a port of the Genesis game Gunstar Heroes developed by M2 with some substantial differences to distinguish it.

!Notable Differences from the Genesis Version

*Gameplay normally runs at 30 FPS but can still have quite a bit of lag, especially with some boss fights.
*Difficulty settings only go up to Hard. There is no Difficult option to be found.
*Single player only game, so no chain chucking Gunstars across the screen.
*The tackle dash input has been changed. Rather than Half-Circle-Forward + Jump the input is now Double-Tap Forward + Shoot.
*Green's stage has the most drastic changes.
**Green's stage is on a silly heli backpack rather than some sort of magnetic cart.
**Seven Force was too big and had to be crunched down to 5 phases despite the name, with Tails Force and Eagle Force having been dropped.
**All 5 phases of Seven Force have to be defeated regardless of difficulty.
**Some of the remaining forces have had their pattern revamped, most notably Crab Force shoots slower moving but spinning walls rather than fast but vertical walls.
*Dice Palace is completely omitted from the port, along with Black's appearance in the refights stage.
*The space shmup section is replaced with a much easier walker section, though the space Seven Force boss fight is referenced in the background.
*Weapon lengths were adjusted for the smaller screen while the sprites generally are about to scale with the Genesis graphics. This leads to a few weapons feeling much stubbier while others feeling wider with screen coverage.

!Memory Addresses

All addresses listed were found with BizHawk's RAM tools.

||Domain||Address||Size||Signed||Endian||Notes||
|Main RAM|{{03C4}}|1 byte|Unsigned|Little|Difficulty setting, ranges between 0 (Easy) to 2 (Hard). Anything higher causes errors.|
|Main RAM|{{0404}}|1 byte|Unsigned|Little|The player's Y-position on screen.|
|Main RAM|{{0405}}|1 byte|Unsigned|Little|The player's X-position on screen.|
|Main RAM|{{0399}}|1 byte|Unsigned|Little|The boss's displayed life points on screen.|
|Main RAM|{{044B}}|1 byte|Unsigned|Little|The boss's internal life point count, updates a frame before address {{0399}}.|

!Rough Weapon Damage Table

Damage values were determined from either per bullet hit on the boss or per tick, where a tick is every time the boss life count was updated when they're hit with a particular weapon. The tick values do vary in frequency and value but I did make a rough average based on bullet/tick values that appeared more than a few times during testing.

All damage values were tested on Soldier Force except for melee damage, which was done on Bravoo Man. Throws were not tested since those are dependent on the bosses they are performed on. These might not be the most accurate since these don't account for how sustained damage can be dealt to a boss but at least it's a nice preliminary look at damage. Note there are some bosses with more defense, such as Papaya Dance.

[TODO]: Figure out the proper average tick damage for weapons. Figure out how often weapon ticks happen with various weapons for a more accurate feel of damage per second.

||Attack Type||Easy||Normal||Hard||
|Melee|100/tick|50/tick|20/tick|
|Solo Force|36 or 48/bullet%%%Roughly 42/bullet|30 or 40/bullet%%%Roughly 35/bullet|24 or 32/bullet%%%Roughly 28/bullet|
|Force + Force|33 or 44/bullet%%%Roughly 38.5/bullet|27 or 36/bullet%%%Roughly 31.5/bullet%%%Saw a 25 bullet once|21 or 28/bullet%%%Roughly 24.5/bullet|
|Solo Lightning|18/tick%%%Saw a 21 tick at the start|20/tick%%%Saw a 15/tick once|12/tick%%%Sometimes 9/tick for 1-2 ticks at the start of contact|
|Lightning + Lightning|18/tick%%%Saw a 21 tick at the start|15 or 20/tick%%%Roughly 17.5/tick|9 or 12/tick%%%Roughly 10.5/tick|
|Solo Fire|18 or 21/tick%%%Roughly 19.5/tick|15 or 20/tick%%%Roughly 17.5/tick|9 or 12/tick%%%Roughly 10.5/tick%%%Saw a 6 tick once|
|Fire + Fire|32/tick%%%Saw a 24 tick once|24/tick|16/tick|
|Solo Chaser|27 or 28 or 36/bullet%%%Roughly 30.33/bullet|18 or 21 or 28/bullet%%%Roughly 22.333/bullet|15 or 20/bullet%%%Roughly 17.5/bullet|
|Chaser + Chaser|21 or 28/bullet%%%Roughly 24.5/bullet|15 or 20/bullet%%%Roughly 17.5/bullet|9 or 12/bullet%%%Roughly 10.5/bullet|
|Force + Lighting|32/tick|18 or 24/tick%%%Roughly 21/tick|12 or 16/tick%%%Roughly 14/tick|
|Force + Fire|18 or 21/tick%%%Roughly 19.5/tick|15 or 20/tick%%%Roughly 17.5/tick|9 or 12/tick%%%Roughly 10.5/tick|
|Force + Chaser|32/bullet|18 or 24/bullet%%%Roughly 21/bullet|12 or 16/bullet%%%Roughly 14/bullet|
|Lightning + Fire|24 or 32/tick%%%Roughly 28/tick%%%Saw a 16 tick once|18 or 24/tick%%%Roughly 21/tick|12 or 16/tick%%%Roughly 14/tick|
|Lightning + Chaser|20/tick%%%Sometimes 15/tick at the start for 1-2 ticks|12/tick%%%Sometimes 9/tick at the start for 1-2 ticks|4/tick%%%Sometimes 3/tick at the start for 1-2 ticks|
|Fire + Chaser|28/tick|20/tick%%%Saw a 15 tick once|12/tick|