Released in 1999 in Japan for the PlayStation, 70s-style Robot Anime Geppy-X was a quirky shoot ‘em up game I hadn’t heard about until now. It was developed and published by Aroma, whose final credit happens to be this game. As a swan song to their company, it was one heck of a colorful release, to say the least.
As its full name implies, Geppy-X is modeled after the cavalcade of mecha anime that spawned in the 1970s, one that included a little known franchise that’s still alive these days, if you’ve ever heard of Gundam. To its credit, the game does a fantastic job at capturing the look and feel of that period in Japanese animation, not only including numerous hand animated scenes meant to feel like actual episodes of a real TV show along with an incredibly cheesy theme song with lyrics, but even commercials for the toys that it would try to sell to kids. It’s hilarious on point!
When it comes to gameplay, it’s pretty much what you’d expect out of a horizontal arcade shooter from the time it was originally put out when it comes to moving and shooting stuff. Slow and purposeful, it gives you plenty of patterns to pick up from enemy attacks, with little room to maneuver thanks to the surprisingly big character model that you control. You’re given two different attack options as well as the ability to switch from side to side, the latter comes especially handy due to your overall lack of movement speed.
The real kicker in Geppy-X is that you get to change between the three team members. Each has their own mecha and styles of play, such as more ranged, melee, and run-of-the-mill-master-of-none variations to pick from. Using one to defeat the beast (what the game calls its bosses) at the end of each stage grants you a unique path in the story in form of a special animated cutscene for that character; it works as an added incentive to play through each level again.
As a re-release of a game for a CD-based console, there are some quick loading screens between each section while playing as you would on original hardware, and while weird to think they’d be necessary in this day and age, they work to add some extra charm to an already quite likeable experience. It’s definitely not trying to play like a modern game, that’s for sure.
If you’re like me and appreciate well-crafted, thoughtful nostalgic set pieces in game form, 70s-style Robot Anime Geppy-X is sure to please you as it did me. It’s surely not as deep or as challenging as something like Gradius or Raiden, but it certainly succeeds at what it shoots for, emulating the frenzy around an animated property from decades ago. It’s a concept that would be fun to revisit if someone were to develop a new game in this spirit.
