70s-style Robot Anime Geppy-X Key Art
Image: Implicit Conversions & Bliss Brain

Oddball games getting localized happens so often now that we take it for granted, but there's a vast archive of fantastic games from the PS3 era and earlier that just never made the leap across the pond. That list is one shorter today, with Implicit Conversions' loving remaster of PS1 cult fave 70s-style Robot Anime Geppy-X landing on Steam, originally developed by little-known Japanese studio Aroma.

Geppy-X is a loving pastiche of early Super Robot anime like Mazinger Z or, in this case, riffing off the three combining machines that became Getter Robo. The game is a side-scrolling shmup with big, chunky, lovingly animated sprites, book-ended by authentic anime cutscenes and a story arc that feels like an abridged airing of a show that never existed, mid-season robot design upgrade and all.

While it would have been comparatively easy for Implicit Conversions to just emulate the game (which behaves well via emulation), they've gone above and beyond on this version, tracking down the original hand-drawn animation cutscene cels and rescanning them to modern spec. No longer is the game held back by blotchy PS1-era video files (which still filled up four CDs!) - this feels like the Blu-Ray edition, at a price to match.

The game itself remains respectably chunky, the already-slick sprites remaining unchanged while the game runs in an authentically retro 4:3 aspect ratio with bumper art at the borders. The rendering does appear a little cleaner than the original PS1 release, but this is still an old-school game, which is really all that I wanted here.

While lengthy by shmup standards, Geppy-X is still a relatively short experience, but it does have some fun ideas to keep you playing. As with the original PS1 release, replay value comes in the form of several unlockable alternate robots, riffing off other classic anime franchises of the past.

The funniest unlockable is Star Geppys, inspired by American anime localizations of the 70s and 80s and the creative liberties they took with the source material - one of the few instances of Japanese media parodying that bizarre time in media. You can read more about it over at our sister site, Time Extension, where our man Damien McFerran went into more detail.

70s-style Robot Anime Geppy-X is out now for a surprisingly steep £33.50/$40, with a slim 10% launch discount available until July 22nd. While this pricing might work well for the Japanese enthusiast market, who are used to paying top dollar for even single anime Blu-Rays, it's a bit much for me, and I have a feeling most others who were looking at picking this one up.