HELL YES.
Treasure, a company founded by a team of disgruntled former Konami employees, was one of the most consistently excellent developers of the mid-late 1990s. They produced a remarkable number of cult classics, including Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy, Mischief Makers, Radiant Silvergun, and this week’s Retro Roulette game, the incredible Guardian Heroes.
Released in 1996, Guardian Heroes came at a time when 2D gameplay was well on its way out of favor. Treasure was never one to conform to trends, however. Much like Golden Axe or the Gauntlet series, Guardian Heroes is a hack-and-slash game at its core. Unlike Golden Axe however, it is SO much more than that.
In Guardian Heroes, you play as any of several characters, who each have their own strengths, weaknesses, and selections of spells to cast. In my playthrough, I went with Randy, largely because he appears to have some sort of cat-like rabbity thingy. It’s below on the left somewhere:
Unlike in most hack-and-slash games, your character in Guardian Heroes can be leveled up, allowing you to give yourself more potent spells, more hit points, better attack speed, and so on:
It’s worth noting that these changes are very noticeable in practice – adding to strength clearly makes you hit harder, for instance. This game gives you a real sense of progress and advancement, which feels remarkably rewarding.
The game’s story is also reasonably passable – in short, the backstory largely revolves around an extremely powerful sword, which ends up in the hands of its original owner (who is dead, but comes back as a zombie due to sword magic or whatever). That owner teams up with a team of heroes (including you!) to fight a number of evil forces, including this angry blonde fellow:
Which evil forces you fight can vary from game to game, as Guardian Heroes has a number of branching paths that dramatically change who you fight at the game’s end. This is another major way that it sets itself apart from other games in its genre – it can play out in a ton of different and exciting ways.
Between those numerous endings, customizable characters, cool spells, and great graphics and audio, Guardian Heroes truly lives up to its reputation as a deep and under-appreciated classic. The bad news, if there has to be some, is that it doesn’t come cheap – a complete original copy runs upwards of $150. Fortunately, it got a remastered, digital release in 2011 that is still available on the Xbox 360 marketplace and compatible with the Xbox One. That version is a mere five bucks, making it a no-brainer if there ever was one. There’s also a sequel on the Game Boy Advance, which isn’t as good but is probably still worth checking out if you love the original.
Next week is another amazing mid-90s classic, which takes me back to a specific day of my youth. I look forward to telling you all about it.