The cult favorite PlayStation mecha shmup Geppy-X is getting an HD release later this year, which will finally make this game more widely available.
Released back in 1999 for the original PlayStation, Geppy-X was a tongue-in-cheek love letter to the super robot anime of the 70s.
With songs by famous anime theme tune artists, and mecha designs that looked straight out of a Go Nagai manga, Geppy-X was a very knowing send-up of the super robot genre.
As it was towards the end of the PlayStation’s life, it was mostly ignored and wasn’t overly successful in Japan either, which is why there aren’t many copies around these days, and the few that are tend to be very expensive.
That’s the point, really. Geppy-X wasn’t the greatest of shmups, but it did “get” what it was parodying, and its rarity resulted in the game getting inflated prices in the collector’s market.
That’s clearly what this new HD release is cashing in on, but there are a few caveats.
This is really just an emulated port for the most part; the core game hasn’t really been updated. To be honest, this is a good thing. The issue with Geppy-X was its rarity, so re-releasing it on modern consoles as-is is preferable here.
The other point that needs mentioning is that the original game used a lot of anime cutscenes. Now, the new trailer for the HD release (shown below) claims this footage has been re-scanned from the original masters.
The “original masters” being the tapes that the anime was recorded to, and not the rescanning of thousands of cels. The footage looks nice, but this isn’t a remaster from film, as the original game likely didn’t use that anyway.
That minor niggle aside, I’m genuinely happy to see Geppy-X get its day in the sun after all these years and finally being made more widely available. As that will likely ruin any scalper’s day, and that’s always a good thing.
Personally, I was never the hugest fan of Geppy-X, but it did have its charms, and its rarity has often bugged me.
Geppy-X will be released on July 16 for Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.
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