Gleylancer review

Set in 2025, Gleylancer tells the story of Lucia, a 16-year-old starfighter pilot in the Earth Federation, who is caught in a war between humans and an unknown alien race. Unfortunately, the war is personal for her as her father, Ken, a high-ranking admiral in the Federation Navy, is captured by the aliens. Unable to stay put, our protagonist hijacks a ship and heads off to save her father.

Gleylancer is a 2D horizontal shmup (a.k.a. shoot’em up) that was originally released for the SEGA Genesis/MegaDrive in 1992. The goal of most shmup is pretty simple; avoid everything coming at you and destroy every enemy ship that’s barring down on you. Sounds simple enough right? Well while it *is* simple in theory, in practice it’s that much harder as enemies and their projectiles will be coming from every possible way.

When you first being, your ship only fires straight ahead but was with any shmup, you can pick up power-ups that will give you a leg up on the enemies. In the case of Gleylancer, power-ups work in sorts of two ways. First, you’ll pick up to two small ships that will fire an additional barrage of bullets. Additional power-ups pick-up will change your attack to laser, or bullets; for example. The two little balls that orbit near your ship can fire behind you; either by using the right joystick or holding down the attack button and pointing the left joystick behind; just keep in mind that this will also move your ship.

Before jumping into the action, you’ll be able to choose the behavior of your orbiting buddies. YOu can have them either fire straight ahead, behind, have them search and kill enemies (although it’s not 100% efficient), have them turn around your ship; among others. It’s a nice little touch and each gamer will find one playstyle that will suit them better. Additionally, keep in mind, once you die, you lose your additional firepower and will need to pick them up after respawing. And yes like most shmup, it’s one hit and you’re dead. You get a few additional lives to keep you going, but no continues. Depending on the difficulty level selected, you can either respawn close to a pick-up or right back at the start of the level.

The game’s main issue, which I’ll delve into a bit more below, is the outdated visuals. Keep in mind that this game was released originally in 1992 so visuals from the period could be problematic. The problem is that some enemy spaceships have similar color patterns as flying debris and background colors, so I actually lost count of how many deaths I suffered because I got confused with the color palettes or I missed an enemy. It’s infuriating dying because the screen became such a visual mess.

While on the surface, it doesn’t look like the game was tailored for a 2021 experience, the game offers emulator-like Save states that can be saved at any time and given the game’s sometimes soul-crushing, unforgiving difficulty, this is a welcome addition as you can save and load whenever. It’s recommended to instant save often so you can instantly reload your save after a death and having to lose lives and progress.

Given that this game is a port of a 1992 SEGA Genesis/MegaDrive, don’t expect jaw-dropping visuals. The game looks fine as a whole, aside from the annoying issue above. The cutscenes are great; being depicted in anime-like drawings capturing the anime styling of the 1990s perfectly. The game has a great rocking soundtrack where some tunes will stay with you after you’ve stopped playing. Those who grew up with the Genesis/MegaDrive will recognize the console’s familiar sound bytes.

Gleylancer proves that it can be tricky and problematic in bringing back games from the dead. Despite its quality of life improvements such as accessibility features and modern controls, the game would’ve benefited from a fresh paint of coat in order to make it pop. And while adding a twin-stick shooting mechanic, controls still feel outdated, slow, and archaic. Long time fans of the genre who never had a chance to play this on SEGA’s 16-bit platform will revel in this new challenge. Newcomers might want to look to another shmup.