Even though I was born in the mid to late 70s, I did watch a lot of older anime in the 80s when I was a kid.  Shows like Speed Racer, Star Blazers, Voltron, Battletech, and others.  But what if you combined the style and animations of these old cartoons and put them in a 2D horizontally side scrolling giant robot shooter, complete with intro and outro credits and theme songs, previews for the next episode, and even toy commercials?  Well you’d get Geppy-X, that’s what!  Originally released on the PlayStation only in Japan back in 1999, you can now play it on modern consoles (reviewed on Switch here).

This game is set up in episodes.  And before you ask, Geppy-X was not a real anime back then, they just made up a fictional one to reflect the style of those cartoons.  You view the intro theme song, and the beginning of the episode with limited low budget animation.  Then you play a short shooter stage but sometimes get interrupted by an animated boss intro.  After defeating the boss, you’ll view a fake toy commercial and then go onto the next area and beat a boss.  Then you view a conclusion and a preview of the next episode.  There are 9 main stages and all, but supposedly there are branching pathways and multiple endings, too.  I really like how they committed to the bit of making this feel like an old school giant robot anime.  I cracked up when I first saw the toy commercials.  And there are a LOT of anime cutscenes here.  I read the original PlayStation version came on four discs!

Unfortunately the shooting sections just don’t match up with the quality of the anime presentation.  You can’t choose what robot form you take, so depending on the episode, you may have to deal with a robot formation you don’t like.  There’s one with just a short range punch that is absolutely useless for instance.  You can rapid fire a main shot, fire missiles, or charge your shot for a longer beam attack.  But if you get hit during the charge, it’ll cancel out.  And the problem there is that your giant robot is so big that it’s hard to dodge bullets with that big of a hitbox.  You can also turn around to hit enemies from behind, but the turning animation is so slow. There’s also a powerful screen clearing attack you can use when a meter is full.   You can take multiple hits and have three lives, but you only get three continues and that’s it.  I wish the game would give you limitless continues, since you’re really just playing this just to see the spectacle of it all, not the quality of the shooting stages.  If it had that, I would’ve probably listed this game on one of the categories of my GOTY blogs.  But as it stands, the shooting sections really pull this game down.

Kid Factor:

Geppy-X is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Blood, Suggestive Themes, and Violence.  I really didn’t notice any blood, and you just shoot giant robots that explode when defeated.  Anything else in this game is presented in that campy anime style and I’d be OK with any kid playing this.  I grew up with cartoons like this when I was a kid and I turned out OK.  Reading skill is helpful for the subtitles and younger gamers may find it too difficult.

Tags: Game Reviews