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It's a little known fact that Guardian Heroes for Sega Saturn was the greatest game ever made.

You might be thinking, "That's crazy talk, WiNG! Everyone knows the greatest game of all time was [insert favorite game here]!"

Yeah, sure... okay!

The fact of the matter is that Guardian Heroes is a masterpiece of storytelling, animation, gameplay, humor, and replayability. It featured nonexistent load times, 6-player versus mode, and more endings than a hacked ROM of Chrono Trigger.

For these and many other reasons, it's now basically impossible to find one outside of dropping a Benjamin on eBay. But let's not focus on the modern plight of GH. For the time being, let's go back to 1995...

I was one of the saps that bought a Sega Saturn. My brother and I saved our hard-earned allowance money for months, and when the time came we chose Sega's black box over the En-Sixty-Fail and the Pee Ess Ecks (before the flames start, I eventually owned and liked all three systems). We were huge Sega fanboys and weren't about to sell out to Mario or Crash Bandicrap.

Flash forward to 1997. The Saturn was already screwed, and all our friends were playing Goldeneye, Twisted Metal 2, and, well, stuff other than NiGHTS. On a trip with our dad to Nobody Beats the Wiz, we spotted a Saturn Clearance Bargain Rack. Every game only $10-20. We scanned through about 100 copies of Bug! and Clockwork Knight before our eyes fell on a box with some of the worst cover art of all time:

I wasn't sure what the hell this was supposed to be. A zombie knight? Some kind of Castlevania ripoff? The back of the box, however, showed off very nice graphics and promised 6-player brawls, branching storylines, and insane beat'em-up action. My brother and I figured it was worth a shot for $14.99.

Best. Fifteen. Dollars. Ever. Spent. Period.

You see, Guardian Heroes was made by Treasure, developers of such top-notch games as Gunstar Heroes, Sin & Punishment, and Ikaruga. Unlike most other crappy Saturn games, it was designed to take advantage of the system's multicore processors and amazing sprite-rendering ability. This was a triumph. 

The premise is simple: you play as one of four (five after you beat the game once) heroes who have stumbled upon a sword with the power to control a powerful undead warrior. The only problem is that the king, an evil wizard, and even God all want to take the sword back. As you play through the game you must decide which groups you trust and which you'll be fighting back, leading to dozens of endings, including one in which you must destroy God. Eat that, Phil Pullman.

The gameplay is half-way betweeen Streets of Rage and Street Fighter 2. In other words, it pwns. You move through the stages beating the crap out of everything in your path. However, unlike SOR/Final Fight, each character has a huge movelist including air juggles, teleport magic, and the ability to throw flaming, flying rabbits at people. Seriously.

All the while you earn EXP for kills, saving civilians, burning rabbits, etc. At the end of each stage, you distribute EXP points into stats a la Diablo, and choose what path (if applicable) your party takes next. By the end of the game your flying rabbit is a harbinger of death, and your ninja shuriken can cut down robot mecha. And it's all done in gorgeously animated, high quality anime-style graphics.

If you somehow manage to reach and beat all 55 levels of Guardian Heroes, there's a multiplayer mode that lets you play as any character you've beaten in the campaign, from useless farmer civilians to Lucifer incarnate. If you happen to have the Saturn multi-tap, you can duke it out with 5 friends. There's an awesome system for setting handicaps, and you can create scenarios like "5 human knights at level 10 versus one computer playing as a level 80 Archangel". Eat it, Brawl.

In short, this game raised me and is probably the reason for my fear of rabbits and God.

So why am I contemplating buying it on eBay for $100?

Well, in 1999 I lent all my Saturn games to my then-girlfriend (who played Saturn with her little brother). Unfortunately, I forgot to ask for them back before our nasty breakup, and to this day have been unable to convince her to give (or even sell) it back to me. Yep, you read it right, I have been begging my ex to sell me my own game. Pathetic.

Now I have to choose between letting nostalgia die, or paying up for the definitive 2D brawler. I have a Saturn sitting at home, and I have the cash in my PayPal account. 

Well, what would YOU do? 

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