NG.DEV.TEAM announces Gunlord for NeoGeo and Dreamcast!

[MrSega]

What I personally would like to see if someone can port the Saturn 4MB games via MAMmE,Model 2,CRX,System CS emulation to DC. That would be neat if someone could do that.

[dark]

Here are some comments by someone who received the MVS game - no gameplay comments yet, but they should be coming. So this is basically just a teaser

Good news is that i received Gunlord on MVS today. bad news is i have a few issues to sort through with NGDevteam before i can play it. Nothing too serious, but i dont want to say what they are at this point until i have spoken to NGDevteam about them. i dont think it would be fair. Really great to have the game though Thumbs Up

EDIT : ok all fixed now. Thanks to Timm at NGDevteam for getting back to me so quickly. Basically the limited edition number on my Gunlord was 312, and since i ordered on release day when there were only 150 copies available, i thought this was far too high. (My Fast Striker LE is 133 and i ordered that maybe a month after it was released)

This is the explanation, this may have been somewhere on the website but if it was i missed it.

the numbering scheme for Gunlord is 3xx xx is the LE number
Last Hope Pink Bullets is 2xx xx is the LE number
Fast Striker is 1xx xx is the LE number


so it means that i have the 12th copy of Gunlord which is pretty nice. I never actually sell my games - but it is nice to have a low number copy, esp when you are paying a lot for a game. I didnt want to play the game and get wear marks on it, until i was sure i had received the right one, but i can now Thumbs Up

I also wanted to check the manual was ok, because it has these white smudge/wear marks on the back. It did look like it was printed on, but at the same time it looked pretty random, and i thought it might have been a fault in the printing, but no apparently it's part of the design, so thats all good too.

so the only slightly bad thing is that the one of the 3 stickers that came with the game is a torn slightly and has a corner bent over. When i opened the box they were half falling out the top (hence the damage). Timm (NGDevteam) says these are a bonus and were put in at the last moment. I have asked for a replacement for the one that is damaged. Again not a big deal but when you are paying a lot for something you want everything to be perfect.

So all good, looking forward to enjoying the game Smile

[dark]

THE GAME : (cant play long today because i am with some of my family today but i managed about about a 12 minute play). This won't come as a surprise but really really reminds me of the original Turrican, inc the level design and those small flying enemies. I was never a huge fan of the Turrican but i am enjoying this so far. (its worth noting that a lot of people love the Turrican games so the similarities could be a good thing for many people) I was being quite careless in my play but even so the game starts off fairly easy - as long as you are patient because you could probably destroy most enemies from a distance. Most of the times i died was when i took leaps of faith straight onto spikes. Graphics are great - love the parallax scrolling clouds in the background and there's a bit where it turns stormy which is quite atmospheric. control is very responsive, and i had no trouble jumping between platforms, seemed quite easy to judge distances. Picked up a few different weapons, including a super shot that you could only fire horizontally (a trade off for it's power). Also there's some vertical and ceiling surfaces you can climb and hang from on the first level which add some extra things to do. Good first impressions, all the basics seem to fine so far, looking forward to seeing how much variety they have got in there in the later levels, and also fightng the bosses.

[CD AGES]

Sounds very promising so far. Here's hoping the translation to Dreamcast is nothing short of a perfet port (Fast Striker on DC was less than in a few respects when compared to the MVS ver which quite frankly, pissed me off a bit).

[Neohound]

My appetite's been whetted. I've been holding fire on this game so far.........but now I'm close to buying. It's only my indecision over which version to get that's preventing me from pulling the trigger.

[dark]

According to people who have been able to play around with the game a bit - the levels are "friggin huge"

It is unknown now if the DC version is going to support saving between levels (although I personally think this would make sense and be a likely addition), it is also unknown but rumored that there might be level passwords to retain progress.

[radtastic89]

I hope it will have level passwords. It will be both retro and I can comeback to a hard level or boss.

[dark]

Minor gameplay and level spoilers in the following gameplay description:

I have reached Stage 3 on Gunlord now and i'm learning more about the game. I would have got further but i got killed by a pretty bad bug/glitch on stage 3 (more on that later, hopefully a one-off)

Stage 1 is massive really, the 2nd part is the stormy section i mentioned before where the music changes and you get lightning flashes. I would say when you first start playing the range of powerups can be quite confusing. it's like you can change your gun every 10 seconds if you want to. There are some nice weapons inc one which fires a huge number of laser orbs all over the screen (they bounce off walls), and a flame/laser shot which is powerful and can be fired in 8 directions.

Most useful is the directional beam (the one you always have) which can fire through platforms so you can destroy enemies before they can see you. Its also essential when you attacked by flying enemies which can suddenly appear in flocks. You dont need to aim directly at them - just sweep the beam round. very useful.

I use the spinning wheel transformation in certain areas - like when there are a number of enemies all gathered in a 'pit' or when you need to pass through small gaps. really the places where you are expected to use it are signposted in a way

Like Turrican there are hidden bonus blocks or platforms which appear when you shoot particular places on the screen. Shooting the bonus blocks makes them spew out power up and weapon icons.

The boss at the end of stage 1 is the guy with the big pulsating head and gun from early screenshots. You basically have to dodge his laser attacks and then use your directional laser/diamond beam to kill the flying enemies he releases. He cant be that hard because i beat him first time, though i did use fair few smart bombs in the process.

Stage 2 is the horizontally scrolling shoot-em-up stage. i suspect that these might alternate with the exploration stages. It does look beautiful and is very well executed, though it feels more like a bonus shooter to enjoy rather than a game in itself. There were no powerups so far as i could see. The boss on this stage is the one on NGDevteams facebook banner

http://www.facebo...ngdevteam.

He looks really good in terms of design and he has a huge animated tail. you have to shoot his (obvious) weak point while avoiding his huge laser attacks which are prefaced by a gun flash - so you know when to dodge. Harder than the first boss but not that difficult once you know what you are doing - though it's easy to mistime your dodges and get hit by the huge laser blast.

Stage 3 - it looks like old ruins and there are torches burning. Unfortunately i didnt get very far on this stage . before it said 'boss approaching' and started scrolling the screen to the top of the level. Each time i went off screen i would reappear and die. and i ran out of lives before it got where it was going. This is obviously a bug/glitch, but its one i hope wont happen again, because the levels are huge, so it takes quite some time to get through them.

There are 2 modes - Original mode and arcade mode, though i'm not sure what the difference is yet.

I am enjoying Gunlord even more now than when i started, my only worry besides the bug is the exploration gameplay could get to be a bit of a chore on repeated plays. When i died on Stage 3, repeating stage 1 wasnt that appealling to me. You get a percentage on how much you have completed the level when you reach the end of each stage, so there's obviously some replay value in trying to increase your percentage. Ideal for completists.

This is not really a problem but it does seem you can't stand still and shoot your primary weapon whilst aiming it. I could be wrong about this because i havent read the instructions, maybe there is a button you can press. If you want to stand still and aim you have to use your directional beam.

One more note - the intro text seemed to be cut off by the edge of the screen, not sure if this is because i am using a convertor or a glitch. Will check it next time i play.

[dark]

The MVS version does not appear to have any passwords, so it seems you would have to beat the entire game in one play for the neogeo version at any rate.

[mazonemayu]

The MVS version does not appear to have any passwords, so it seems you would have to beat the entire game in one play for the neogeo version at any rate.

and thats how platformers should be played imo