Back in the early 80s, at the peak of the VHS rental craze, a series of videos known as “Force Five” became a bit of a thing. Not to the point where they would produce toys or comics like He-Man, but enough for the videos to be regularly rented out at the video shop. I would watch all of them, except one, which I think someone nicked as it never came back into stock. My personal favourite of the series was the Grandizer set. The reason I mention this is that Geppy-X is somewhat of a parody or a tribute to these Japanese anime.
Geppy Remastered
What we have with Geppy-X is actually a remaster of an old PlayStation 1 game from 1999 that was only released in Japan. It’s a game I didn’t know existed until I started researching this remaster for the review. This would also explain why I kept saying to myself that the graphics had a certain PS1 style to them! In fact, the whole presentation screams late 90s.
You see, the game opens with a long, and I do mean long, FMV introduction where it plays a title sequence to the Geppy-X cartoon. Then it loops it again quickly. There’s a lot of FMV too. Just getting to the start of the actual gameplay can take around 10 minutes if you don’t skip anything and let it all play out. From intros to story-setting scrolling text, to title splash screens, there’s a lot to sit through, which was the style at the time.
It’s Button Bashing Time
Gameplay-wise, it’s a side-scrolling shooter and quite a basic one really. The game is split into chapters, and you control a different giant robot in each one, with different weapons, but all controlling the same. You have two fire buttons and one button to turn you around so you can attack backwards. If you hold the main fire button down, you can build up a charge attack that’s stronger and lasts for a few seconds. Pretty standard stuff for a side shooter.
While it’s the standard scroll from left to right and destroy everything you can, it’s also a kind of bullet hell type game too. I felt that this is its main downfall, as it’s almost impossible to dodge most of the bullets that come your way. Not only are you kind of slow-moving, but your robots’ hit boxes are quite large, too. This can cause your energy bar to deplete at an alarming rate, leaving you wondering how you went from 98% to 26% without really noticing. You can pick up energy and power-ups throughout the levels as you destroy stuff, but I found they were fewer than I’d have liked and I quite often died before I could reach the energy pick-up as it spawned across the screen.
Bite-sized Stories
Each chapter is divided into two sections, with a brief cut-scene between them. The end of each chapter is marked with closing credits, and the next chapter by the same title sequence you see when booting the game, plus another scrolling text sequence. Then you start the new chapter with a new robot, and with it comes another set of weapons to learn.
I found the second robot you control much better than the first, so the second chapter was quite easy. However, I found the third robot to be very weak, with poor weapons, which ended my game, as I couldn’t do much at all with it.
Where’s The Target?
Which brings me to the question of who the game is for. Without a doubt, 9-year-old me would have thought this was the best game in the World as it would have looked just like the cartoons I was watching. However, 49-year-old me expects more from a game these days.
Even though I personally still play a lot of retro games from that era (I’m a small-time collector and still have many games from the 80s and 90s, and I still play them today), I’d still expect more from this type of game. Newcomers will find an unfair bullet hell wrapped in a load of unnecessary FMV. Fans of Japanese Anime from the late 70s and early 80s will find some nostalgia here, but the gameplay is a bit lacking.
This is a hard one to score, as it’s by no means terrible and I did enjoy what I played. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be going back very often. Geppy-X is available on all platforms, but was reviewed on PC via Steam.
Platforms: PlayStation 4/5, PC, Xbox X/S
Publishers: Bliss Brain
Developers: Implicit Conversions
Played On: Steam
Key Provided By: PressEngine
About the Author
