Gynoug (Nintendo Switch)
Gynoug is a side scrolling shooter originally released on the Sega Mega Drive in 1991. This game hits hard with nostalgia for me as a kid I traded in a bunch of my games for this based solely on the box art, so I had to get my play time value out of the game whether it was good or not! Luckily it was good!
The game is a fairly standard shooter for the time featuring multiple power up, boss battles and brutal difficulty. The thing I think that stands out is the games art style. There is no story presented within the game, but from the angelic player character, grotesque enemies and abominations of nature for bosses, we can assume it’s the classic angels vs demons, good vs evil affair.
The game has just been rereleased on Nintendo Switch and is completely faithful to the original whilst also offering the quality of life improvements we’ve come to expect and a few very welcome rearer options.
Of course you have the usual display options to be pixel perfect to the original, stretch to fill the screen, various wall papers and CTR filters. Normally I’m not a huge fan of filters but on this re release they look great. The filters are highly customisable, but simply switching them on added scan line and CRT screen warp that presented the game exactly as I remembered it looking without the need for tweaking.
My favourite feature in the Gynoug re release however is the cheats!!! Back in the day games where made intentionally difficult in order to extend the life of the game to justify the value for money. But a lot of times this just involved tedious repetition and memorisation to complete, especially in shooters.
Obviously this game preserves the sanctity for the original game play for the purists, but the reality is a lot of people like myself pick these games up, not to put dozens of hours into them again, but to just get that blast of nostalgia and this re release offers a variety of aids to help you through the game from a real time rewind feature to avoid that pesky bullet that just hit you, to infinite lives, through to complete invincibility for the entire game!!
I honestly think for all the hours I played this as a kid, this is the first time I have seen any further than the start of level 3!! These are very welcome feature I wish featured in every retro re release!!!
As to whether you should pick this up, if you have any nostalgia for Gynoug from back in the day I’d absolutely say yes. If you enjoy shmups but missed this one first time around I’d also say yes. It’s not an expensive game launching at £5.99 on the UK store so if this looks at all interesting to you I think you’ll enjoy it for the price!