Thanks to Bliss Brain for the review code
Title: 70s Robot Anime GEPPY-X
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $39.99
Release Date: 07/16/2026
Story
In this PS1 shooting game, you take control of a team guiding components of the mighty robot, Geppy-X as they set out to defeat an evil invading empire!
By far one of the most blatant “we really really love this thing, and want to do our own take on this thing” experiences I’ve played in a very long time, Geppy-X takes place over the course of a fake anime, with each stage being its own “episode”, with a self contained monster of the week plot that slowly adds up to the overarching narrative. True to the title, the formula is just like a 70s Robot Anime, or a Tokusatsu, or even some 80s Robot Anime like Albegas.
Having never left Japan until now, Geppy-X gets a good set of subtitle work, and all the FMVs are subtitled spectacularly, with most of the in-stage dialogue subtitled as well. (usually dialogue pre-boss fight, but not the vocal music or the character quips) The plot won’t blow your socks off or be particularly surprising if you’ve seen any show in this formula before, but the bonuses that poke fun of various aspects of the genre might (from a fake americanized version, to a movie version acting like a boss rush, etc)
Presentation
This game was a port by Implicit Conversions, who’ve already brought over a previous PS1 english translation under a similar wrapper; however, I’ve not gotten around to that one yet, so we’re doing it out of order, and as far as you need to know, this wrapper is pretty useful. The menu comes with a rewind feature, save states, simple CRT filters and screen options, and even a translated manual scan. Bizarrely, the in-game gallery has been moved to this menu as well, and is pretty comprehensive, containing every cutscene and info on every enemy within the game, unlocking as you play.
As for how the game itself looks, Geppy-X really goes all out with the presentation, with the entire game acting like a faux Super Robot TV show with a scary degree of accuracy. This game is crammed full of FMV, (which is why the original game was on four discs) and nearly all of it is of pretty damn stellar quality, drawn in the classic hand style akin to a real anime. There’s an intro and ending theme surrounding each and every stage too, fake commercials for non existent products, and even a “next time” preview. In the original resolution, all of this looks rather excellent, and the only thing close to a corner cut I can point out would be some brief scenes every now and again that use the in-game assets and portrait art in place of FMV, but considering the bulk of FMV on display here, these segments are largely just fluff with the FMV ones being the important stuff.
When you’re playing the actual stages, Geppy-X looks much less impressive. Weird pre-rendered visuals lead to an odd look overall that completely mismatches the hyper accurate anime vibes of the FMVs, and the boss introductions will sometimes even use brief CGI introductions. Still, the FMVs for finishing a boss off will differ depending on which mode of ship you’re currently using, which is a super cool touch. The music both in and out of FMV is pure excellence too, with vocal themes playing during the actual stages and the instrumentals during cutscenes being well composed and a lot like actual anime background music. I already mentioned the intro/ending themes around each stage, but they are truly incredible and my favorite songs within the game by far.
There is an option for HD remastered versions of all the cutscenes, and I found these to be a mixed bag. Old cell animation can look absolutely amazing when remastered properly, and some of the cutscenes look pretty good in this manner, such as the CGI boss intros, but a few of the cutscenes like some of the fake ads and such aren’t as well upscaled as I’d hope, with some details still being pretty tough to make out. They do at least seem to be real remasters using the original source, but I feel something akin to Discotek’s bluray work of Super Robot anime would have been much more impressive with the footage.
Gameplay
Geppy-X is a horizontal shooter, with the main objective being to clear each segment of the stage and get to the bosses at the end of each. Right from the getgo you have the three main forms to switch between, from a winged normal form that’s pretty well balanced, to a yellow melee heavy (and pretty cruddy) form, and my personal favorite, a form with pincer arms skilled at dealing a lot of damage and with what I felt to be the better weaponry of the bunch.
You have your typical rapid shot, a sub weapon attack, and a charge attack you can pull off by holding down the fire button. As you continue to play, a super meter will charge up allowing whatever form you have to perform its most powerful attack, which can really help in a pinch during the boss rights. Unfortunately, even as the epic vocal music plays during the background, and the authenticity of Geppy-X’s homage shines through, the shooting gameplay isn’t really the best here. See, a lot of the enemy placement is pretty haphazard, and clearly done by a dev team not familiar with designing shooting games. More often than not I’d take hits trying to avoid enemy projectiles and kept fumbling it, because outside of the yellow form their hitboxes were pretty darn big.
This likely explains why you have a health bar vs a normal OHKO setup like a traditional shooter, but it’s rather disappointing this couldn’t even pull off a Gaia Seed quality shmup. Luckily the aforementioned rewind/states help mitigate the frustration quite a bit, and upon more practice I realized the cheese technique here is to shift forms right before a bullet comes at you, so you can abuse the invincibility of the form change to not get hurt, and once I got the hang of that and played the game a lot more casually thanks to the rewind, I was able to have a lot more fun going through each episode as its own casual romp.
You take out the first miniboss, cut to “commercial”, go to the second half of the stage, beat that boss, and finish the stage. Rinse and repeat and enjoy the silly story along the way, and what a fun ride that story is. Nothing earthshattering, but an absolute delight for me as a toku fan, since both genres share similar vibes, especially considering Toei made a lot of the Super Robot shows. It’s a shame scoring just absolutely sucks here and isn’t worth paying attention to, but there’s at least fun bonus modes like a boss rush to encourage some minor replayability, along with the aforementioned gallery and all the alternate cutscenes for defeating bosses.
Conclusion
At first I wasn’t really sure what to make of Geppy-X; the presentation is perfectly done and well preserved in this reissue, but the shooting gameplay and scorechasing aspects were incredibly sloppy and felt pretty unbalanced. Once I learned and got the hang of changing forms on the fly as a means of avoiding enemy fire, I quickly grew to enjoy these experience far more as a tribute to the 70s Robo Anime era, than a serious horizontal shooting game. That doesn’t mean you won’t have fun through these stages, but if you’re expecting some high caliber shmup to accompany the outstanding attention to detail, you aren’t going to find one here.
What you will find however, is a phenomenal tribute that aces nearly every presentational aspect imaginable. Outstanding hand drawn animation, a decent remastering job, a great OST with lots of variety, predictable plot twists that still made a smile grow on my face, and plenty more. Add in the great work Implicit has done to translate the Gallery mode, the little extra modes within the game and handy QOL features like Rewind and you have yourselves one fantastic experience that’s a must for Giant Robot/Toku fans; it’s just a shame the core shooting gameplay wasn’t of the standard as some other big robot-adjacent games like Macross II, since Geppy X with that level of shooting action would be one masterpiece of a game. Alas, you’ll have to get the hang of form switching, but once you do this one’s still a worthy romp to experience and a must play for any Toku/Mecha fan.
I give 70s Robot Anime GEPPY-X a 7 out of 10.