70s-Style Robot Anime Geppy-X by developer Implicit Conversions and publisher Bliss Brain—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
70s-Style Robot Anime Geppy-X is a mouthful of a title, but you know what? It’s quite the challenging game to describe as well. At its core, 70s-Style Robot Anime Geppy-X is a shooter, but that’s actually not the most interesting thing about it. While it is a solid shooter, it’s wrapped in a Saturday morning cartoon aesthetic that elevates the entire experience into something more memorable than it would be as just an action game.
Apparently, this game first released back in 1999, but it was never released here in the US. As a result, I had never even heard of this one until recently when one of the PR’s we work with sent a presser out on it. My first impression upon watching the trailer for 70s-Style Robot Anime Geppy-X was how much it immediately summoned up feelings of nostalgia in me. As someone who has recently turned fifty years old, I grew up on cartoon robots: Transformers, Voltron and Tranzor Z all spring to mind.
However, Geppy-X was never an actual anime. It certainly made me do some double takes when units were combining and they were fighting large semi-organic / robotic hybrid monsters that tickled my Voltron-loving brain as a kid. This being a remaster, the biggest changes are in offering HD cutscenes and English subtitles to make everything accessible to Western audiences.
So how is Geppy-X as a shooter? If I had to summarize it in a handful of words? I’d probably go with “solid but not spectacular”. With the exception of one level that scrolls downward top to bottom, it’s a left-to-right shooting affair. You have a couple of different kinds of weapons – a primary and a secondary, as well as a super attack you can build up to that hits the screen all at once. These can be improved upon by picking up some power-ups while navigating the stages. It’s a pretty straight-forward progression, without much in the way of variety – at least on the surface of it. The chunky mecha you pilot often feels just a smidge too large for the spray of projectiles headed your way, and those same enemy projectiles are all too easily lost in the sea of similarly colored backgrounds or even among your own shots being fired across the screen. It lacks some of the precision the genre is well-known for.
Boss battles can be a bit frustrating, as they just occupy so much screen between their size, movement patterns, and firepower. They’re also absolute damage sponges. One cool feature of the game however, is the ability to turn yourself around and face the other direction. Most stages don’t really leverage this mechanic (outside of the vertical downward stage I mentioned earlier), but it does come to play much more in the boss battles.
All in all, the shoot-em-up part of Geppy-X is fun, with a branching story path about midgame that adds some replay value, but what really makes this game memorable is the overall packaging of it. 70s-Style Robot Anime Geppy-X is presented like the weekly cartoons I grew up watching. Each stage begins with an introductory theme song and movie, then gives you a little plot (something the genre’s not known for – so high marks here for providing that), and then tosses you into the combat.
From there, you encounter a mid-stage boss and then you cut to a faux commercial break. These breaks tease Geppy-X toys, sauces, shampoo and upcoming events in a fun parody that reminded me of how often I’d be watching a Transformers cartoon, only to see a commercial or two featuring toys from the show. Then it’s back into the action where you end up facing the stage’s big boss. Once you beat them, there’s a bit more narrative, a preview of what’s to come next stage (my brain was narrating the old Cartoon Network: “Find out on the next episode of Dragon Ball Z”), and then roll the ‘end credits’ for that stage. There’s some weird narrative jumps that occur, things that aren’t well-explained, and some ridiculous thin characters – but it all just feels right. It’s equal parts parody and veneration for these shows I grew up on, and frankly? I enjoyed it so much that I played through the entirety of the game on the first night I fired it up, unwilling to put down the controller until I was done.
It’s a relatively short game, which could make some people question the price point. It’s not a hard game for the most part either, considering the genre. There’s plenty of different settings (including difficulty) that you can toy with. There’s lives, shields and continues, so even though I felt like I was getting struck by projectiles more often than I would have liked? I never felt like the game was too punishing. The aforementioned branching plot gives some nice replay value, and when you beat the game you can unlock non-narrative versions (think of it as an ‘arcade mode’ – no cutscenes) of the game where you can play with some of the side characters referenced in the story. They aren’t as interesting / polished, but it’s still a fun way to revisit the game.
70s-Style Robot Anime Geppy-X is a love letter to both the shoot-‘em-up genre and classic mecha cartoons. This scratched a nostalgic itch I didn’t know that I had until I fired it up. The music, voice acting, visuals and overall weekly episodic vibe truly make 70s-Style Robot Anime Geppy-X a memorable shooter experience.
Score: 7.75 / 10
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