GunLord Being Released On Neo Geo And Sega Dreamcast (Video)

Umm....what?

It's a bit of a misnomer to call the Dreamcast "dead;" the system still has a sort of cult following, as well as a surprising number of homebrew applications. The Neo Geo - the towering monolith of "extraordinarily expensive awesome" of its time - a bit less so. Regardless, some intrepid folks have magicked up a new game for the relatively old-timey systems, called GunLord. A trip down memory lane, the game features lots of gunning, running, and still more gunning, all the while providing the colorful, 2-d charm of yesteryear. Based on my thorough analysis, we can thank our British friends our German friends for this, given that the game's prices are listed in Euros and, as was recently pointed out, the linked twitter page gives a location of Dusseldorf. Also, the video reveals a character that shows no reverence for our god-fearing, American "z," favoring instead what those shifty-eyed foreigners (sorry, British readers, but one must keep up appearances) call "zed."

According to the GunLord site, a Dreamcast copy will run around $45 (32,00 Euros), whereas its Neo Geo counterpart will cost almost $600 (419,00 Euros). Now before you say "But that's absolutely insane, and probably a typo," there are a couple things to consider: Neo Geo cartridges were criminally expensive in their day. While we moan about paying $60 for a ten-hour FPS, Neo Geo cartridges could cost $200-$300. Granted, part of this was because they were positively behemothic back in the day, but while the Neo Geo's proprietary media isn't exactly impressive by today's standards, I doubt they're exactly cheap to manufacture, given that there is almost zero demand. Honestly, I haven't even the foggiest idea how or where one would go about accomplishing such a task. The Dreamcast's disc based media, which everyone and their mother is still using, cuts costs considerably. Curiously, and against all expectations, the GunLord site show no indication of a Neo Geo CD release which, aside from alienating those who have the system (and don't fancy the thought of forking over an inordinate amount of money for games), seems as though it wouldn't be an immensely difficult task - certainly not as difficult as manufacturing Neo Geo cartridges.

In any event, for those who have a Dreamcast, or those with a Neo Geo and entirely too much money, GunLord will be available early 2012, and is currently available for pre-order at the following link. Now all they need to do is make a port for my Atari Lynx.