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Development of ''Gunstar Heroes'' lasted around nine to ten months.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":0" /> It was the team's first experience programming for the Mega Drive, having come off programming for the Super NES at Konami.<ref name=":1" /><ref name="works4" /> They felt the Mega Drive's processor was more powerful, capable, and friendly to experimentation than other consoles. This led them to consider it more suited for action games and the sophisticated graphical effects they were looking to create.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0" /><ref name="works4" /> The team implemented heavy visual effects in an exercise in design experimentation (not an effort to push the hardware).<ref name="works4" /> Some of that experimenting was done with the system's [[Sprite (computer graphics)|sprite]] rotation and scaling capabilities, which evoked a sense of depth.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0" /> The Mega Drive had its limitations however, as it could only display 64 colors on screen at once.<ref name=":0" /> The team placed extra effort on coloring to compensate.<ref name="works4" /> Early backgrounds were drawn with a 16 color palette, but they looked desolate, so ultimately two palettes with 32 colors were used.<ref name=":4" /> The team also used programming tricks to make the scenery appear like three to four layers were present, although the Mega Drive only supports two.<ref name=":0" />
The team approached ''Gunstar Heroes'' with an "anything goes" concept, that led to many ambitious ideas being implemented into the final game.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":1" /> One such concept was the weapon combination mechanic, which was conceived in the early planning stages.<ref name="works4" /> They experimented with weapon attributes until the end of development,<ref name="works4" /> and designed the game so players would continue discovering new weapons and devise new ways to complete stages.<ref name=":4" /> The processor also made articulated multi-limb enemies possible, like the boss "Seven Force", which was programmed by Nami along with all other bosses.<ref name=":1" /> Because moving around large sprites was difficult due to limited [[Video RAM (dual-ported DRAM)|video RAM]], Seven Force was built by combining circles and squares to make one large character.<ref name=":1" /> Maegawa claims the game could have never worked on the Super NES because the boss animations required expanded computing power.<ref name=":0" /> The standard enemy characters, designed by Han, were drawn on the screen by combining a top and bottom sprite, allowing for more animation patterns with lower memory usage.<ref name=":1" /> Han was inspired by the game ''[[Mazin Saga: Mutant Fighter]]'' (1993) to program the enemies manually rather than with mathematical algorithms.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=|first=|date=October 1993|title=ガンスター＆マックふっかーい思い入れのあるシーン|url=|journal=BEEP! Mega Drive|language=Japanese|volume=|pages=112|via=}}</ref> The game was 16 [[megabit]]s but compressed to fit under 8.<ref name=":0" />
== Release ==
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