Gunlord

Gunlord is a run and gun game reminiscent of Turrican where players assume the role of Gordian Gaiden across nine non-linear stages set in the planet Kairos II. Its plot takes place after the events of Last Hope, where the evil empire was destroyed by pilot Vanessa Gaiden and although she escaped, her victory was short-lived as she never made it home and was declared missing in action. Meanwhile, a new evil appeared and began to terrorize the galaxy, a planet lord called "The Master" that can create beings of steel and enslave humans by absorbing their souls. Gordian, Vanessa's newlywed husband, is out to search for her when he feels the presence of evil and dons his Gunlord suit.

During gameplay, the player must explore each large and branching stage using abilities such as a morph-ball function like Metroid to find new weapons, of which there are seven weapon types in total, crystals for points and power-up items to upgrade each weapon while fighting against enemies and bosses. In addition to the main platforming segments, there is also a shoot 'em up segment similar to R-Type. The title includes two game modes; arcade and original. The Dreamcast version features VMU support for saving progress.

Gunlord was developed over the course of eighteenth months by NG:Dev.Team, serving as their first run-and-gun title and their third game overall. Its development was helmed by a crew of seven members, four of which were artists, with René and Timm Hellwig acting as designer and programmer respectively. Former WayForward and Thalion Software members Andrew "DarkFalzX" Bado and Henk Nieborg, as well as Konstantin Karpenyuk and Neo XYX designer Perry "Gryzor/Rozyrg" Sessions, were responsible for the pixel art. The music was scored by Last Hope composer Rafael Dyll, who was contracted earlier during development. Its existence was first hinted upon by René during a joint interview with various Dreamcast fan sites in September 2010 and most of the staff recounted the project's development process and history through various interviews.

René stated that development of Gunlord began in 2003 but was paused for several years so the team could work on other projects until production resumed in 2010. Team invested the entire revenue obtained from sales of Fast Striker into the game. Timm stated that the title was written for Neo Geo in C and Assembler languages, using a reverse engineered Neo Geo system and their own development kit. Perry Sessions said that his role was to fill remaining contents of the project, creating cutscenes alongside Timm and completing the horizontal-scrolling shooter segment.

Gunlord and its update, Gunlord X, were met with positive reception from critics since their release. Classic Game Room's Mark Bussler called the game "unbelievably good" and "an obvious 2012 game of the year contender", before achieving the feat on 13 December of the same year. V. Club's Anthony John Agnello ranked the original Neo Geo version as number two on their top ten of games released for discontinued consoles.

According to Hardcore Gamers, 10,000 copies of the Dreamcast release were sold as of May 2019. According to review aggregator site Metacritic, the Nintendo Switch version of Gunlord X received "generally favorable" reviews.