The homebrew scene in video games has been producing some amazing games for systems that have been discontinued. From Dreamcast to SNES, the classic systems live again and the Neo Geo is no exception.
Gunlord was a game developed for the system by NGDEV, and now the developer has brought the game to Switch as Gunlord X. A run n gun game, Gunlord X may actually be the best hidden gem on Nintendo Switch right now.
Gunlord X has a bit of everything, run n gun action ( as mentioned), some good platforming, and a bit of puzzle solving. and lots of secrets to find. The visuals are stunning, and the music really draws you into the action.
The more you play Gunlord X, the more you are drawn into it. There is a large variety of levels, such as a horizontal shooter stage on a jetpack. There is a nice change of pace every so often and you never get bored. Even the enemy design has a great variety and the spawning is limited to ease frustration while still providing a good challenge.
NGDEV improved on the original Neo Geo release, by expanding some of the later levels and adding more content, but the bosses are where this shines. The new bosses go all out with crazy amounts of action, and I love the fights for how fun they are.
In terms of presentation, there are some neat touches besides the music and art style mentioned above. The game has been adjusted for widescreen now, and the scrolling works much better. The developers also added parallax scrolling to the background and brought in more particle effects for added impact. Best of all though is the Scanline and RGB CRT TV shaders, as they let you adjust how you want the game to look. You can make the game resemble how the Neo Geo would look on a CRT TV or go for something more modern instead.
I love that the controls are customizable, so you can adjust if you do not feel comfortable. This made the experience much more pleasant for me as the game went on. The game also makes use of the new control scheme by adding option twin stick controls, which makes the experience very different in my opinion. Even without that last part, the control sticks are both given use here, and give the player a much better feeling of control over the weapons involved, particularly the snake beam.
NGDEV put in a large amount of work into this port and it shows. I highly recommend checking it out, as you will not be disappointed. This is a must play title if there ever was one.