If you cast your mind back to 2021, you may remember that Pixelheart and JoshProd announced that Andro Dunos and Andro Dunos II would be releasing for the Dreamcast on an undisclosed date in 2022. With that year coming and going, it would be easy to forget these two games missing their initial projected releases but earlier this year, JoshProd gave confirmation that the games would be shipping this year with a concrete March 2023 date.
Fast forward the time it takes for these games to reach from France to their final locations and here they are! So what do we have here?
Well, Andro Dunos is a port of the 1992 Neo Geo game by Visco, it’s your usual space shooting fare with a basic levelling system and choices of weapons. Whilst Andro Dunos II is a wholly new adventure which has been developed by Picorinne Soft and released on the Nintendo Switch, 3DS and PlayStation 4 in 2022 with the Dreamcast version suffering slight delays. Although it looks fairly basic on the face of things, Andro Dunos II actually has some neat little touches to the presentation which in a prolonged play session become more and more apparent as the levels progress. You’ll find cool effects when warping into light speed and enemies who’ll appear in background before making their presence known in the foreground to dish you some damage. Some enemies will skid into the frame and others will have noticeable battle damage when you start gaining the upper hand.
The graphical presentation is something which is actually a highlight of Andro Dunos II and the atmospheric soundtrack matches the action all the way along. I was very impressed with my play though, initially sticking the game on it’s easy setting to be able to see as much of the game as possible whilst learning the enemy patterns works well with a progressive difficulty curve. The Dreamcast port of course has concessions, it isn’t able to display the high definition output of the other versions and the initial load time when booting up is rather excessive but once in the game, the levels load in quickly so can be forgiven.
All in all, if you’re in any way interested in new games for your Dreamcast and Shumps tickle your pickle, there’s a lot to like here. Both Andro Dunos and Andro Dunos II are available now at http://www.pixelheart.eu
I made a video back in 2022 when I got my hands on the incomplete build of the game which is linked here
Also I’ve taken the time to have a look at the packaging design and what you get in the case which if you’re interested, you can catch here :
Dreamcast Today 