Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer Switch Review

Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer

Developed By: Masaya

Published By: Ratalaika Games

Date of Release: October 15, 2021

Price: $6.99 

 

When it comes to the venerable Shoot-em-up (SHMUP) genre, one system always comes to mind for me, and that is the SEGA MegaDrive/Genesis. The little 16-BIT powerhouse of the 90s was home to a massive library of SHMUPS, and so many of them still hold up today. And MASAYA's Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer is one of them for sure. Featuring some impressive graphics for the time with some absolutely amazing parallax scrolling that pushed the system to the limits and really gave a glorious sense of 3D space. The number of sprites visible on the screen is massive, and the details on the enemy ships really can't be matched.

Gleylancer also features a rocking score by none other than Noriyuki Iwadare, who composed for a lot of amazing JRPGs and SHMUPS of the 16-bit and 32-bit era. Add to that an arseload of digitized speech and meaty sound effects, and the soundscape absolutely blows away the vast majority of competing titles. Gleylancer would have easily looked at home on the early days of 32-bit consoles such as the PlayStation or Saturn.

 

As for this new port, the emulation is absolutely flawless on the Switch, and the controls are tight an responsive with zero discernible input lag. Add to that a well done translation, various tweaks and enhancements to make the game accessible to newcomers, and some amazing CRT shaders, and it's clear that a lot of love has been put into this offering. At $6.99 it's pretty much a steal for what you get. Every switch SHMUP fan should add Gleylancer to their collection immediately. And if you're just starting out with the genre, it's an amazing title with which to start out on your journey into the world of SHMUPS.