It’s extremely well crafted. I’d argue it has the level of polish you’d expect from a very well made modern release. That is not the case with a lot of Genesis era shmups.
You don't even need to buy the cartridge version if you own an SD card adapter.
I am curious how some of the effects look on a CRT.
Yikes. Seems like i'm not getting a physical copy then. I'm not giving any money to LRG. Which is a shame because it looks like a cool game.
However, "a Mega Drive game!" is a great sales point to the majority of people invested in the nostalgia market, with only a surface-level interest of what these games are. It's why it made it to the font page of hn, and not it's perfect 'traditional' sprite art, or its Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack.
I like shmups because they are pretty much "pure game design"; games are such a complete package of story, interactive experience, etc that it's hard to separate what comes from where. This is what makes design experimentation so interesting and rich.