Gradius 2 Flyer

Gradius 2 Review

The 3rd and final part of this 3 part Gradius Special!

And now we arrive at the final and (in my opinion) best Gradius game for the Famicom. Konami pretty much nailed everything in this game. The difficulty is perfect in the way that it starts out relatively easy and progressively gets harder. The Music is pretty much perfect throughout the game and the inclusion of voices when you select a weapon or item is a nice extra feature. The graphics are some of the best on the console and the bosses are big and have a sense of danger to them which Konami is really great at implementing in their games. It’s a shame that Gradius 2 never got released outside of Japan and i really wonder why that is, It’s not like they had a lot of text to translate, and to my knowledge the entire game is in English, from the start screen to the end screen it’s all English letters. The only thing i can think of is that Gradius 2 might have a built in FM Synthesis chip like Akumajou Densetsu (Castlevania 3) and the American and European NES couldn’t play those games because of pin shortage on the game cartridge.

The game starts of by giving you a choice between 4 types of item layouts. They are all special in their own individual ways but I always prefer the Laser setup with the spread bombs. The Laser cuts through the enemy and the bomb explodes on impact and a blue explosion stops for some time and constantly hits the enemy multiple times. Combining that with some Options just gives you a devastating power and a truly “Force to be reckoned with”. Although just like the other games, one hit means that you die and lose all of those sought after, hard to get weapons and powerups (Unless you of course have the shield).

The game begins with you piloting the Vice Viper again around some really big fire rocks with fire dragons around and gigantic flames that crosses the screen like enormous waves. The later levels include a alien lair straight from contra and the standard grass and volcanic planet from the first Gradius. There’s even a boss rush part when you fight against 4 bosses one after the other, each getting harder and harder to beat. The thing about the Gradius bosses are that they are almost too easy when your ship is full powered and way to hard when you accidently died and try the boss again but with maybe a speed powerup at best.

I always loved the manuals for the various Famicom games because they differ so much from the manuals we have now. For instance they cover in greater detail how the Vice Viper works and where the parts are laid out on the ship. And they include every enemy in the game and show either a direct cutout from the game or the art for that certain enemy and then wright their names to. The Power Up explanation is also drawn for every type of weapon instead of just one screenshot. They had fewer people working on the games during that time and they still made everything as perfect as it could be.

A fun fact is that I bought this game for less than 5$ and wasn’t aware that the game would come with the box and manual, sure that look beat up and old but I still think it’s a real catch. This is also one of the games that I bought the Famicom for, to play those games that we didn’t get and we missed out of. There are a lot of those games coming up on future reviews.

Hope you guys enjoyed this 3 part Gradius review.

Arashes Out!

Salamander Flyer

Salamander Review

The 2nd game in this 3 part Gradius Special!

Salamander differs a lot from Gradius and was released between the 1st game and Gradius 2 in 1987.

For instance, in Gradius you would die and start over the stage entirely or at the last checkpoint, but in Salamander the screen just continued scrolling and a new ship that was invournable spawned. You could play 2 player co-op at the same time and in every other stage the screen would scroll vertically insted of the classical horizontal way. Even the cartridge design was different.

The music were a big update as well as the graphics. The plane now had a more smooth animation like when you went either up or down, making a tilt animation on the ship look more realistic than previously. Salamander also replaced the "shield" with a "force field" that could resist some enemy fire no mather were the bullet hit the ship. (Unlike in the 1st game where you were only protected in the front) The "Lazer" weapon even got longer and slower which in my opinion is way better. Also the weapons could get upgraded 2 times which made them stronger and faster. The interesting part is that they switched the buttons around on the "shoot" and "chose weapon" buttons. Gradius 1 used the "A" Button to shoot and "B" to pick items and from Salamander and forward they used "B" to shoot and "A" to pick items. It's more logical to shoot with "B" since every other game had that formula. Perhaps Konami wanted to be different. Speaking of Konami, during that time Konami started to add some really gorey parts and aliens in their games like the final stage of Contra and the entire 1st stage in Salamander where the walls are made out of flesh.

There really isn't much ells to say about Salamander. Its a interesting Gradius experiment / Spin-off that had some nice ideas.

Well that was Salamander for the Famicom!

Stay tuned for the next Gradius game in the final part.

Arashes Out!

Gradius Flyers & Posters

Gradius Review

The fist game in this 3 part Gradius special!

Gradius was the first game ever to use the "Konami Code". The player could simply pause the game and input: " Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A" and you would get all power-ups except "Speed Up, Double and Laser" As a mater of fact, lets go through them all:

• Speed Up: Speeds up you plane by 1 stage
• Missile: Fires a missile diagonally downwards 
• Double: Shoots two bullets at once, One going forward and second diagonally upwards
• Laser: A short stream of laser that penetrates enemies
• Option: A small sphere that follows you and shoots the same projectile you do
• ?: Also called a shield that's in front of you and 

The power Up system was pretty innovative at the time and still is a way. A red colored enemy would drop a power up sphere which you would collect and it would move the indicator on the Power Up screen to the left by one step. By pressing "B" you would obtain the marked Power Up and the marker would reset to the beginning. This way, you would have to prioritize what were more important at that specific time. Would you use for instance "Speed Up" and easily pass through a hard section or save it and hope to obtain a Option.

Dying on the other hand resulted it losing everything you had saved up, unless you had something marked on the Power Up screen, then at least you would start with the marker on "Speed Up". On the subject of dieing in Gradius, this game killed you in one hit. One small projectile or colliding with a wall or enemies resulted by death.

This game had some interesting levels, all of them started out with you piloting the Vice-Viper through a space like stage where you have the chance to collect some Power Ups to repair you for the coming stage.

The stages in this game are:

1. Volcano
2. Stone Henge
3. Moai
4. Invert Volcano
5. Tentacle
6. Cell
7. Base

Theres some secret 1-Ups and scores you can get like for example, Fly through a volcano or touch the back side of a diamond shaped rock and so on. The bosses on the end of some level are called "Core" and the name says itself, It's a ship that fires at you and has a Red or Blue glowing core. They were used in almost every Gradius game that were to come.

Konami are known for making some of the best Famicom music and this game of course is no exception.

The Space stage song of course is classic and used in almost every Gradius game. And the Mid-boss and End-boss song is just what you want for a good boss fight, its fast paste and makes you nervous and that "one hit death" constantly reminds you that the slightest little mistake you do here will make all that hard worked power-ups disappear. And taking on the boss again with no Power-Ups certainly makes it a lot more harder.

Pros and Cons:

The Good Stuff:

• After beating the game you can replay the whole game with harder difficulty, beating it more times will make each play through harder.
• Stellar soundtrack
• Fun Power-Up system
• Challenging Bosses

The Bad Stuff:

• This game is really hard, even on the first play through
• Cheap Death's on certain locations

Well, that was Gradius 1 for the Famicom.

Stay tuned for the next Gradius game in this Three parter.

Arashes Out!

Arumana No Kiseki Flyer

I just had to upload this awesome Arumana No Kiseki flyer.