I just played Gunlord again for the first time in a few weeks. I appreciate the game, the graphics and artwork are cool, and controlling the character is about how you would expect.

But I'm getting really sick of the first 3 levels. Levels 1 and 3 are so long and since you have to play through them every time you play the game, it feels like a slog to get through them now. Even knowing roughly where I should go to get to the exit doesn't make these levels go by quickly enough.

I'm not bad at this game, but my character dies very often due to punitive and inane things in this game - such as jumping to reach a platform or jumping up a passage, and then being instantly injured and killed by an enemy that was off the screen and out of the viewing range.

And gosh darn, this game gets really hard! I got the farthest I ever got today - the factory level after the wasteland level. And while many of the earlier stages are hard in punitive little ways, this stage is just all around hard and unenjoyable to play. I wound up turning off the console even though I had some lives left because it just wasn't fun to play and I wasn't motivated to continue.

I don't know how to have fun with this game. Maybe it's just not the right game for me. I don't get any instant gratification in terms of fun or skill that I get from games like fighters, shmups, puzzle games, or other platformers. I know it's not because I'm bad at 2d platformers, because I was (and am) still capable of going through old platform games like Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Marios Bros, etc, in a flash based on knowing how to play the game and control the character in a skilled manner. But Gunlord deliberately slows you down and makes you nervously go through the level cringing in fear that your next jump will make you jump into a spike on the ceiling or some little flies that will kill you quickly.

Apparently there is a level select code that NG Dev hinted at soon after the MVS version was released. to my knowledge, no one has shared it, including NG Dev. When that becomes known one day, maybe I can explore the game more and have some fun with the later stages. But as it is, playing through the first half of the game is just a slog at this point.