Konami Shoot ‘Em Ups: The Definitive Review – 76 Full Reviews for Konami’s Arcade, Console, and Portable Shmups from 1980 to 2007

Konami Shoot ‘Em Ups: The Definitive Review is how I want to celebrate my site’s birthday AND my actual 36th birthday, which is on July 11. There’s seventy-six brand new reviews in this feature. Even the games I’ve already previously covered, I replayed and wrote new reviews of them just for this. Completing this feature took nearly three months and required hundreds of hours of gameplay, writing, replays, and editing. This isn’t my job, but it is work. I don’t want to ever try to make money off this stuff, so if you want to show your support, kick some cash to your closest food bank. If you’re an American, you can locate YOUR local food bank by using the resource at Feeding America. Everyone has to eat, right? I’m a big fan of the Epilepsy Foundation and Direct Relief as well. I’m also partnered with the good folks at AbleToPlay, who are creating a database for game accessibility needs. That’s all! I hope everyone enjoys my Definitive Review of Konami’s shoot ’em up library!

During the final Nintendo Direct that was dedicated to the original Switch, there was a surprise announcement from Konami: a new Gradius collection is coming this August. Gradius Origins will feature the first three Gradius games, Salamander 1 & 2, and a brand new game: Salamander 3. Not only that, but it’ll have every version of those games. Eighteen total ROMS, including some rarities. This sounds great, right? I thought so too, until I realized it’s only the coin-ops that are packed in the set. Gradius Origins is missing all the home ports, and plenty of other Konami arcade shmups closely related to Gradius are also not included. This is NOT the definitive Konami arcade collection, and frankly, it’s not even the definitive Gradius collection. Hell, even going by the ORIGINS name, it still leaves a lot to be desired. See, those home ports are often more playable than the coin-op originals due to them, you know, being designed for fun and not to swallow quarters.

Until Konami is willing to put out a more all-encompassing set (which is what M2 seemed to want), I’ll have to make one up. In order to future proof Konami Shoot ‘Em Ups: The Definitive Review, I’m going to do it like my McDonald’s Classic Video Games feature. For this feature, I want you to pretend that I’m reviewing a real compilation called Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection that’s being published to modern platforms. If such a set were real, with a lineup of seventy-six games, I think it would retail for $59.99 to $69.99, which means the goal is to create $60 to $70 in value. I’m setting the max value of any game at $15. At the end of this feature, I’ll mess around with various lineups to show how many different ways Konami could create better sets. Do I think this set, or any of the other configurations I’m going to come up with, will actually happen? Of course not. Sadly, the model Digital Eclipse and Atari have proven is highly effective isn’t contagious. Well, here’s the lineup for Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection.

• The End (Arcade)
• Scramble (Arcade)
• Super Cobra (Arcade)
• Pooyan (Arcade)
• Time Pilot (Arcade)
• Gyruss (Arcade)
• Mega Zone (Arcade)
• Juno First (Arcade)
• Time Pilot ’84 (Arcade)
• Scooter Shooter (Arcade)
• TwinBee (Arcade)
• Gradius (Arcade)
• Finalizer (Arcade)
• Jail Break (Arcade)
• TwinBee (Famicom)
• Knightmare (MSX)
• TwinBee (MSX)
• Gradius (NES)
• Salamander/Life Force (Arcade)
• Gradius (MSX)
• Stinger (NES)
• Battlantis (Arcade)
• Flak Attack (Arcade)
• Gradius 2 (MSX)
• Life Force (NES)
• Falsion (FDS)
• A-Jax/Typhoon (Arcade)
• Salamander (MSX)
• Thunder Cross (Arcade)
• Gradius II (Arcade)
• Parodius (MSX)
• Devastators (Arcade)
• Gyruss (NES)
• Gradius II (Famicom)
• Nemesis 3 (MSX)
• TwinBee 3 (Famicom)
• Gradius III (Arcade)
• Space Manbow (MSX2)
• Aliens (Arcade)
• Trigon/Lightning Fighters (Arcade)
• Nemesis (Game Boy)
• Parodius (Arcade)
• TwinBee Da! (Game Boy)
• Parodius (NES)
• Gradius III (SNES)
• Thunder Cross II (Arcade)
• Bells & Whistles (Arcade)
• Parodius Da! (PC Engine)
• Parodius (Game Boy)
• Gradius: The Interstellar Assault (Game Boy)
• Crisis Force (Famicom)
• Xexex aka Orius (Arcade)
• Gradius (PC Engine)
• Salamander (PC Engine)
• Detana!! TwinBee (PC Engine)
• G.I. Joe (Arcade)
• Parodius (SNES)
• Axelay (SNES)
• Gradius II (PC Engine Super CD-ROM²)
• Pop’n TwinBee (SNES)
• Gokujou Parodius! (Arcade)
• Gokujou Parodius (Super Famicom)
• Parodius Da! (PlayStation/Saturn)
• Gokujō Parodius (PlayStation/Saturn)
• TwinBee Yahho! (Arcade)
• Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius (Super Famicom)
• Salamander 2 (Arcade)
• Sexy Parodius (Arcade, PSX)
• Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius: Forever with Me (PSX)
• Solar Assault (Arcade)
• Gradius Gaiden (PSX)
• Gradius IV (Arcade)
• Gradius Galaxies (GBA)
• Parodius (PSP)
• TwinBee Da! (PSP)
• Gradius 2 (PSP)

GAME REVIEWS

For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account, at least for the games themselves. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

SPECIAL NO! DISCLAIMER: If you’re a fan of bullet hells, a lot of the NO! verdicts are ones you can disregard (especially for coin-ops!). This feature is not written for fans of bullet hells, who don’t need my advice or anyone else’s on what to play. They know what they’re looking for. For everyone else, I hope you enjoy the games of Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection. The retro set we want but shall never get!

VALUE DISCLAIMER: The value I award any game in any collection, real or imaginary, should NOT be compared to the values I award games in other features. All values are only based on the games in the feature I’m working on. M.C. Kids NES being awarded $10 in comparison to the eight games in McDonalds Video Games: The Definitive Review is not the same as Gradius II NES being awarded $6 in comparison to the seventy-six other games in this feature. I’m not saying Gradius II is worse. I’m saying if there were a set of 76 games, it would be worth less in that collection than M.C. Kids would be in a set of 8 McDonalds games. If there were fifty McDonalds games I was comparing M.C. Kids to and it landed somewhere in the middle, I’d probably be inclined to give it less value. I also made multiple adjustments to values in my final edit of Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection. Around 40% of all YES! games had their value slightly changed from my initial placement. So please don’t compare the values in Konami Shoot ‘Em Up to any other feature where I assign “value” because the value is relative to the games it’s being compared to. Thank you!

IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

The End
Platform: Arcade
Released November, 1980
Developed by Konami
Reworked by Stern
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Listing at Konami Wiki

Unfortunately for me, in this feature there’s going to be a lot of games that have regional differences great and small. But, I’ll mostly only talk about that when playing a different ROM changes the outcome of my verdict. Out of seventy-six games, it only happened three times, the first time being right off the bat. The End’s playability changes depending on the ROM you use. It turns out Konami had a thing or two to learn from Stern.

SPLIT DECISION – KONAMI ROM

Following the success of Galaxian, EVERYONE wanted their own version. I think even Texaco looked into it. This is one of the coattail riders Konami came up with, and hoo boy, does it ever suck. An absolutely uninspired twist that seems to want to visually link Space Invaders to Galaxian, as if Konami created the ultimate hybrid. They didn’t. The Galaxian side of the equation sees colorful aliens shooting at you while constantly swooping down to grab the Space Invaders half of the game: the shields. Instead of trying to directly kill you, the aliens hold you at bay with their bullets while trying to use the bricks to spell out END at the top of the screen, which is an automatic game over. Since you can’t shoot through the shields, I found The End to be too cramped and lacking in flexibility. Aliens carrying bricks score more points, but they attack too out of sync, and besides, there’s not enough room to safely get shots off when you consider their own return fire. You basically have to shoot when you can and hope for the best. Even if you could shoot through the shields, this would be a boring, derivative game. That’s probably why Stern completely reworked it for American release.
Verdict: NO! but this review is not over.

SPLIT DECISION – STERN ROM

All credit to Stern for turning one of the worst Galaxian knock-offs into a damn decent one. In their version, you’re above the bricks, eliminating the biggest annoyance of the Konami version and opening-up the playfield entirely. The enemies can now kill you directly by crashing into you, but that’s fine. That’s sort of the genre, right? It’s not exactly a bold choice. The bold choice was how Konami did it, and it just didn’t work because the game had no tension at all. Putting the player above the shields doesn’t just add tension, but desirable risk/reward factors that further enhance the excitement. You can absolutely let the aliens take the blocks, since they’re worth a lot more points if you shoot them down before they can bank them. There’s also strategy considerations. My best run saw my stockpile of bricks be reduced to two on the right side of the screen. This forced the aliens to go for those bricks, making it much easier for me to predict their behavior.

Stern also added a large buffer between stages and gave the levels something resembling personality. Okay, so Stern’s The End is still little more than a run-of-the-mill Galaxian knock-off, but it’s fine. You’re almost certainly NEVER going to lose from having END spelled out. While it’s a real risk in the Konami build, that version’s gameplay forces you to watch helplessly while the word forms. In Stern’s build, trust me, you’ll game over long before that happens, especially thanks to the erratic enemy attack patterns. The best version is probably somewhere between the two builds, maybe with the ability to move up and down added. I suppose we’ll never know, but Stern’s build is clearly superior. So, why review The End in a Konami feature if some other company had to make it fun? Because Konami modified The End’s hardware and likely a good portion of the game code to give us Scramble. So, in a sense, The End was the beginning of the shmup genre as it exists today. In a roundabout kind of way.
Verdict: YES! – $1 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Scramble
Platform: Arcade
Released March 17, 1981
Developed by Konami
Included in Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection ($19.99)
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Previously, when I played Scramble back when Anniversary Collection launched in 2019, I didn’t like it at first. Oh, I certainly admired its contributions to gaming history. You know, like inventing a whole genre. Specifically, Scramble is credited as the first shooter with forced scrolling, first scrolling game with distinct levels, and also the first shooter named after a way of cooking eggs, many of which would make for good names for shooting games when you think about it. Poached. Fried. Hard Boiled. Sunny Side Up. Okay, maybe not that last one. Were these inventions inevitable? Of course they were, but Scramble is one of those rare trailblazing games that is still capable of being fun. I just needed it to grow on me. Is it fascinating that such a pioneering game still manages to rise to the level of tolerable? I think so. Is Scramble just tolerable? Again, I think so. What makes it easier is how clearly Scramble serves as the blueprints for Konami’s Gradius formula with two types of guns and targets optimized to accommodate them.

Scramble’s six unique levels aren’t really levels in the STAGE sense. Instead, they’re zones that seamlessly bleed into each-other. The only real consistent theme is “don’t crash your ship.” Seriously, even after six years of playing this on again/off again (I wanted to review Anniversary Collection but never got around to it), I still lost most of my lives, by a significant margin, to crashing. It’s actually kind of refreshing for this genre, especially since nothing is firing bullets at you. That’s what blows my mind the most about this title. Scramble, legendary founder of the modern shmup genre, has no bullets to dodge. Instead, you have to avoid surface-to-air missiles and, during the third zone, fireballs. All the while, you have to shoot enough fuel tanks to avoid running out of gas. This mechanic didn’t work for me at first, but eventually I realized that, although I never ran my tank empty, it did increase the pressure to actually hit my shots, especially with those damn missiles that I never got the hang of. You have to fire them well before you hit the target, and I never got very accurate at it.

In the first zone, you have to dodge the ground and rockets that launch upward at you. In the second zone, tiny, pesky flying saucers move up and down that should probably be worth more points but that’s neither here nor there. In the third zone, you have to dodge fireballs. The fourth zone is like the first zone, only very claustrophobic. The fifth zone is the one that I’m guessing gives most players the problems. It’s a flight through a series of tight squeezes where the scrolling is every bit as dangerous as the walls. The final zone requires you to only destroy one main target with a single shot. You can even die after shooting it as long as there’s enough of a pause between shooting the target and crashing that the victory message appears. Scramble only has one map that you replay over and over, and it gets old pretty fast. Unlike a lot of golden age games like Defender, I don’t think it holds up to all-day play in large part because of a truly dull scoring system. 

The scoresheet awards 10 points per second you stay alive. Survival-based scoring doesn’t work for a shooter. Only for avoider-type games. Otherwise, isn’t survival already incentivized enough? If you’re not alive, you’re not playing or scoring. And that’s hardly the only problem with the rule sheet. The hard-to-shoot UFOs payoff only 100 points, which is potentially 200 points less than the randomly-scoring mystery targets that do not move and do not fire back. The value of the final target doesn’t increase every new wave either. It’s a flat 800 point finale, which isn’t very much even after you factor-in the survival scoring. It’s frustrating because the designers missed a golden opportunity for really dynamic scoring by incentivizing combos. The playfield certainly lends itself to it, and if it would make everything better because it would discourage mashing the attack buttons. Don’t get me wrong: I’m happy that, after six years of trying, I finally completed this review, but with that comes my realization I likely will never play Scramble again. Well, at least the coin-op. Sure, it’s still playable without the need for an asterisk, but it lacks that “one more round” quality that games of this era NEED in the 2020s.
Verdict: YES! – $2 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Super Cobra
Platform: Arcade
Released March, 1981
Developed by Konami
Alternative Version by Stern
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Listing at Konami Wiki

If Super Cobra looks almost identical to Scramble, it’s because IT IS Scramble, only with things shooting back at you. For 99% of the game, the actual gameplay mechanics are identical to Scramble. You have a gun and the ability to drop two missiles at a time that you must fire well ahead of the target. The majority of targets are on the ground in most levels, and not all the structures on the ground, enemy or otherwise, will actually activate and become a threat. Besides the look of what you’re piloting, the two games even look identical. Super Cobra is often called a “spiritual sequel” to Scramble, but the window between the release of Scramble and Super Cobra is so short that it could be measured in days, at least from what I found. According to Wikipedia and GameFAQs, both games came out in March of 1981, though neither my friend Dave nor myself think that can possibly be accurate. It feels like releasing these two games so back-to-back would cause market confusion. Super Cobra is much longer and much, MUCH tougher, to the point that it makes Scramble genuinely, no joke, feel like a tutorial stage for Super Cobra.

To start, the bases that you bombed just for points in Scramble are now anti-air guns in Super Cobra. And it’s not as if their bullets are just flying around randomly for you to weave through. They take aim at you, leading to most misses being of the “near” variety. The surface-to-air missiles from Scramble no longer travel straight up and down, either. At least some of them feel like they’re heat-seeking right at you. The enemies alone make this one of the more intense games of this era, but Super Cobra is just getting started. The fuel mechanic of Scramble was copy-and-pasted here, but because there’s so much more going on, hitting them is much harder, especially with the gun. I often relied on that in Scramble, but Super Cobra forces you to rely much heavier on the missiles, and I still never got good at aiming those damn things.

It’s not just the ground forces shooting, either. Flying enemies do as well, while others are content to try and force a collision with you. Even the fireball sequence from Scramble returns here in beefy form, as “super fireballs” for lack of a better term have to be shot down as they attempt to end your run. Finally, the terrain poses a much bigger threat in Super Cobra. The shape of the copter is awkward, and the game takes full advantage of that with some ridiculously tight squeezes. Often, those squeezes are seasoned with enemies as well. Super Cobra is a maddeningly intense, brutal game. But, in a good way. I wasn’t in love with the reliance on narrow passages, but, as a score-chasing game, this works really well. Getting points just for survival in THIS game makes a lot more sense than in Scramble.

It’s almost unbelievable Scramble even exists when Super Cobra released soon after it and it’s so much more exciting than the original. Given the fact that both these games exist and were released so close together, I can’t help but wonder if there was a civil war within Konami over Scramble’s style of gameplay. As groundbreaking as Scramble is, it’s also not a very exciting game, and maybe that rubbed some people at Konami the wrong way, who took the guts of it and rebuilt it. Regardless, the two games are so similar that it’s kind of absurd they’re not packaged together more often. Konami Anniversary Collection left Super Cobra out of its lineup completely. It doesn’t feel like a different game, a sequel, or a spin-off. This feels like Scramble’s hard mode. In 2025, this would be DLC. Either way, I’m fine with Scramble, but I like Super Cobra a lot more.
Verdict: YES! – $4 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Pooyan
Platform: Arcade
Released September, 1982
Designed by Tokuro Fujiwara
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Wikis: Konami – Strategy

One of the neatest things I’ve noticed in my retro journey is that most companies that are juggernauts today started as trend-followers, until they had some kind of epiphany and began making original ideas or innovations. Hell, even the legendary Nintendo made a series of generic Space Invaders wannabes before Donkey Kong (one of these days I have to get around to doing a Nintendo before DK feature). In truth, Pooyan isn’t a “shoot ’em up” in the same way Gradius, Salamander, or Parodius are and probably doesn’t belong in this feature. But, it’s a turning point game in Konami’s existence. Along with 1981’s Frogger, it kind of feels like the “ta da” moment. Before Pooyan, they’d made plenty of games with shooting mechanics, but as much as I enjoyed Scramble and especially Super Cobra, they certainly lacked personality and charm. Pooyan is all personality and all charm, and it’s also a damn good coin-op.

It’s such a simple idea, too: shoot the balloons. At the top of the ladder, a piece of meat appears that works like an anvil that you can lob and knock an entire string of wolves for a ton of points. That’s really it. Missing a wolf isn’t an automatic loss of life, either. Instead, what it does is mix a traditional gallery shooter with a cross-the-road element, at least in odd-numbered rounds where the wolves are jumping off the cliff and trying to reach the floor. In those rounds, any wolf you miss climbs the ladders next to your platform, filling them up one at a time. Once it has its place on a ladder, a wolf will randomly poke its head out to chomp the air, and if your pig happens to be occupying the space where that chomp happens, the wolf can’t be held responsible for its actions. It’s a brilliant twist that creates a shockingly busy playfield. The rare fixed channel shooter where you have threats in all directions. But, the game isn’t perfect.

In the second round and all even numbered stages that follow, the cross the road mechanic is gone, and instead the wolves float from the bottom to the top. While they do this, riderless balloons will run interference. You can survive missing five of the wolves, but if you miss six, you die from them having enough muscle to push a boulder onto you. As you make progress and the balloons take more shots, each shot causes the balloon to ascend slower. I think by time you reach the sixth round, the balloons take too many shots, and that’s before you even consider the extra-extra spongy boss AND all the balloons that will fly up in front of him. The amount of perfection required is absurd. Like this situation:

After I ate the game over, I did rewind to see what I could have done to survive, and it practically requires clairvoyance. Or, just memorizing the patterns of each wave, I suppose, but it’s a LOT to memorize. I originally had a higher value on Pooyan, but then I hit a wall around the sixth round that tested my patience. Since building up to that level is genuinely fun, I can’t give it a NO! But, I think the odd-numbered levels are much, much more interesting than the second levels, which feel like just a run of the mill gallery shooter done from another angle. Consequently, Pooyan does become exhausting to the point that I can’t imagine this ever making its way into my regular rotation of arcade classics I fire up to kill a few minutes while waiting in a line or a car ride or a doctor’s office. It’s so close, but it doesn’t quite cross that threshold. As far as golden age games go, Pooyan is solid, but it’s a B-lister through-and-through.
Verdict: YES! – $2 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Time Pilot
Platform: Arcade
Released November, 1982
Designed by Yoshiki Okamoto
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Wikis: Konami – Strategy

Time Pilot is maybe the most basic game in this entire feature. Far more simplistic than even The End. There’s no power-ups. The levels all play out the same, more or less. It’s just a dog fight with a ship in the center of the screen and graphics that create the illusion that the ship is flying through the sky. The object is to shoot down various swarming enemies themed around five different time periods: 1910, 1940, 1970, 1982, and the far distant future of, ahem, 2001. Wait, did Time Pilot do 9-11? Not that the time travel theme matters at all. Enemies only take one shot to shoot down, except the bosses, which spawn after shooting down enough enemies to empty the meter at the bottom. In the last three levels, enemies begin firing missiles that get progressively tougher to avoid. And that’s really the whole game. For what it’s worth, there is a hint of elegance to Time Pilot, as you score bonus points for quickly taking an entire group of ships that are attacking in formation. That’s probably the highlight of the game, actually, and it was always satisfying when I saw the bonus points appear on screen. 

Otherwise, there’s not a ton of depth to this. The time travel stuff is a complete airball because it just never feels like time traveling. It feels like the sprites are changing from one type of flying machine to another. The idea has legs and would certainly be much more viable in a modern 3D game, but a 2D canvas with no reference points or a cityscape cannot possibly make this work. Only the final level tries to look different, but you’re not fighting space shuttles. You’re fighting UFOs, and since it’s outer space and your ship looks the same, hell, it could be any year, right? Thankfully, the controls are solid and collision grace given to players for especially close calls makes Time Pilot fun, at least in bite-sized chunks. I wouldn’t recommend this as an $7.99 Arcade Archives title, and I wouldn’t even recommend it at 50% or 75% off that. Time Pilot feels like an Atari 2600 game with better graphics, and while I had a fun enough time with a game that’s simply about scoring as much as I could, it’s not even close to entering my regular rotation. Time Pilot is a little overrated, (well, depending on your definition of overrated, as I’ve honestly never heard anyone glow all that much about it) but it’s fine.
Verdict: YES! – $1 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gyruss
Platform: Arcade
Released March, 1983
Designed by Yoshiki Okamoto
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Strategy

Gyruss will probably go down in Indie Gamer Chick history as being the NO! game that committed the fewest gameplay errors. I’m not even convinced any aspect that’s actually present in the game is done wrong at all. Gyruss, one of the most legendary games in Konami’s archives, is a gallery shooter done from a different camera angle. It’s sort of like Tempest in that the twist is enemies come out at you in a 360° cylinder, only without the cylinder being defined graphically. Players twist around the cylinder and shoot enemies that progressively increase in numbers. The actual shooting works just fine, with my only real knock is the lack of a nice crunch for made shots. Really, the action is solid.

So, why the hell did Gyruss bore me to death? Because it totally did. I didn’t even have a little bit of fun. I think that’s because it’s just a boring looking game. All the levels are nothing but stark, black backgrounds with only dots to represent stars, and in them, you shoot at fairly generic enemy designs. Granted, a lot of games from this era look like Gyruss, but they can make up for it with memorable enemy design (Galaga) or novel gameplay mechanics (like Time Pilot’s combos). I think the biggest factor was that there’s no risk/reward elements. While there is a fairly complicated phase/wave system, and clearing out all four waves will cause another wave to randomly attack for extra points, Gyruss is still a raw test of accuracy and movement. There’s nothing really to tempt you beyond that. No point capsules to chase. No combos. Gyruss feels like a gameplay proof of concept for a more ambitious title, and then someone in charge said “great! Ship it as-is!”

Playing Gyruss reminded me of the story of Tempest’s development. Tempest originally started as a first-person Space Invaders knock-off. Atari’s designers had a habit of play-testing each other’s games, and after sampling the prototype, the consensus at Atari among his peers was that Dave Theurer’s first version of Tempest was really boring because it was just Space Invaders from a different angle. Gyruss feels like Galaga from a different angle, only without the memorable sprites, sound effects, or the risk/reward factor of the double ship. I can understand how some people could still hold Gyruss up as one of the best games of the early 80s. It controls great and has perfect collision detection. I don’t remember ever playing a game that is so well developed and all for naught because it’s just not fun. Thankfully, Gyruss’ legacy is saved by the superior NES port, which adds power-ups, bombs, and bosses. It proved my hunch that the coin-op is a glorified proof of concept.
Verdict: NO!

Mega Zone
Platform: Arcade
Released March, 1983
Developed by Konami & Kosuka
Distributed by Interlogic
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED*
Listing at Wikipedia

*I’m not counting Xbox 360’s Game Room

Mega Zone is so under the radar that it doesn’t even have a listing on the Konami Wiki. It’s never been in a collection. It’s not part of the Arcade Archives lineup. It never even got home ports, to consoles or 80s personal computers. The closest it’s come to any modern recognition is being part of the Xbox 360 Game Room service that I think roughly five people used, and I wasn’t among them. In a way, I get it. Mega Zone is a fairly pedestrian vertical-scrolling shooter, only with a tank instead of a spaceship. Some sites compare it to Xevious, but I think it’s more of an attempt to ride the coattails of SNK’s Vanguard, only without changing between vertical to horizontal levels. Which isn’t to say it’s completely straight forward. I didn’t even realize until after I’d completed a full run up to the gigantic face that’s basically a boss that there’s branching paths. If my buddy Dave hadn’t mentioned it offhandedly while ranting about how boring he thought Mega Zone was, I wouldn’t have even known this is a thing you can do. It turns out, the game clues you in where the spots where the forks in the road are. This look like this:

The other big twist is a Super Mario-like power-up that lets you grow bigger and increases your firepower. There’s these little dots on the ground and getting a dozen turns the next one into the power-up. That’s actually not the twist, though. The twist is activating this costs you a life, Galaga-style. Yes, really. I feel like you can cue the “that’s a bold move, Cotton” meme at this point. But, this does successfully give a legitimate sense of risk-reward. The collision is so accurate that I’d even call it sensitive, because there’s no blinking. You can go from powered-up to dead instantly, which means you’ve actually lost two lives for the price of one.

Now, here’s the good news: Mega Zone features some shockingly elegant attack formations by enemies. There always seems to be enough room to dodge both baddies and their projectiles. The dirtiest pool the game plays is with instakill walls that pop up right in front of you, and even then, there’s enough time to dodge. Mega Zone is a challenging game, but one that’s pretty thoughtful for this era. Okay, not giving any grace period when you take damage as the super tank is a load of crap, especially when you consider that some of the squeezes are going to be really tight. But, the controls are really well done and the collision boxes are accurate, so those tight squeezes are on YOU. As it should be. As for the gun play, rudimentary as it is, this is a totally solid shooter. I completely understand why someone would find Mega Zone dull. Besides the gigantic face, there’s not a lot of memorable aspects. But, I thought Mega Zone was fine. Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t a lost treasure that you’ve been missing out on for forty-two years now. But, Mega Zone doesn’t deserve its banishment to gaming’s cornfield and, if Konami ever does do a larger scale compilation, it would make an excellent +1 bonus game to complement the titles people actually remember and want.
Verdict: YES! – $2 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Juno First
Platform: Arcade
Released July, 1983
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Listing at Konami Wiki

Juno First is, without hyperbole, Defender from a third-person perspective. Sometimes descriptions like that are an exaggeration. This one is so close it comes across as desperate. Juno First is also compared to Nintendo’s Radar Scope, the shmup that had to die so Donkey Kong could live, but it only looks like it. Radar Scope is Galaxian from a third person perspective and a hollow “defend the base” facade. Juno allows you to scroll up and down, which leads to the most exciting moments in the game: flying backwards to avoid enemy fire that’s hot on your trail. You also have to rescue humans, just like Defender. This has a scoring boost to it, as every enemy you kill for about six or seven seconds after getting a human increases in value by 200 points.

I didn’t really like Juno First at all. It’s a really ugly game with forgettable enemy design. Juno First controls like a game set on a giant air hockey table and just doesn’t do enough of the scoring frenzies to make it engaging. Probably the biggest problem is the game is really frugal about the human drops, even though that’s really the only time the shooting aspect is fun. Imagine Pac-Man if you only got one energizer per maze. Even worse is they disappear too quickly. It just doesn’t feel like a game that’s equal parts challenging and fun. It’s one of the least inspired Konami titles I’ve played. Now, I love Defender. It’s one of my favorite golden age games, but this just isn’t anywhere on that level. Of all the games in this feature, Juno First is the one I spent the least time with. I didn’t like it, and didn’t want to play it. There’s no substitute for personality, and Juno First proves that.
Verdict: NO!

Time Pilot ’84
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1984
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Listing at Konami Wiki

Despite its name and even the fact that it uses an upgraded version of Time Pilot’s engine, Time Pilot ’84 doesn’t feel all that much like Time Pilot. The time travel gimmick is completely removed, as is the variety of enemies. There’s one setting that gets color-swapped, which makes for a very dull visual experience. But, the upgraded gameplay I certainly like better than the original. You’re still trying to kill X amount of enemies to spawn a boss, but this time around, you have homing missiles that only work on silver targets. The missiles don’t hit anything if they don’t lock-on with on-screen indicators, which you have to be very close to the target to activate. Thankfully it only takes a single missile to take down the bosses, but because of the limited range, I found the only strategy that worked was to set a collision course with them and just hope I won the fast draw. Time Pilot ’84 has a higher emphasis on combo-shooting and also hides some high-yielding bonuses. Like if you see a group of eight silver targets, it’s a safe bet that taking out all eight of them will score a ton of points. I have no idea why they invoked Time Pilot when this doesn’t feel like a sequel at all, but baffled as I might be, I did have a bit of fun with this one.
Verdict: YES! – $1 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Scooter Shooter
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1985
Developed by Konami
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED*
Listing at Wikipedia

*I’m not counting Xbox 360’s Game Room

Of all the games in this feature, it’s either The End, Mega Zone or Scooter Shooter that has fallen the deepest into the pit of obscurity. I think the edge for the title of “most forgotten game” has to be Scooter Shooter. It’s not on Arcade Archives (at least as of this writing) and has never been included in a compilation. It has never gotten a home port in any form except, like Mega Zone, it was on the Xbox 360 Game Room service. The End wasn’t, but The End was ported to the Arcadia 2001, whatever the hell that is. Some games are lost to history for a reason. But of the three ultra-obscure coin-ops in this feature, two got a YES! This is the lone game that walks away empty handed. Scooter Shooter is a very bizarre competitive shoot ’em up where two players race across a straight playfield shooting bland, basic shmup targets. When you reach the base, a fifteen second timer starts where you have to wait to enter. When each player has reached their base, you then have a showdown.

You know, I played this several times and I’m still not entirely clear on the rules, nor did I figure out a point to not dumping players straight into the showdown. Because a showdown happens no matter what, and winning the race to the base gives you no advantage in the showdown portion of the game besides the game spitting out a ton of points (I think that’s what the “P” is). Where it gets REALLY lame is you have to wait for the other player to sit through their fifteen second countdown for their base, even if you finished and have been waiting for a while.

The levels before the showdowns are straight corridors with often cheap enemies. Cheap in placement, design, or both. This is really rudimentary stuff. But the showdowns actually did provide SOME fun for my family and I. They’re kind of smart in how they’re done. Despite being called “SCOOTER Shooter” the things you’re riding look more like flying jet skis, but shooting the vehicle does nothing. You have to shoot the person sticking out of it. Very smart design, because it prevents the game from degenerating into a mindless button masher won by whoever can press the button the fastest. Too bad they ruined it completely with stupid design.

See that L circled in the picture above? It stands for LIFE and it restores the health of whoever gets to it. What an incredible coincidence that every single game we played of this was won by whoever got the L, or as my father put it “get the L for the W.” I think if we had played 100 matches there still would have never been a single exception to this. Darn shame about that, because janky and weird as Scooter Shooter is, it was heading for one of the most stunning YES! verdicts I’ve given. You would not believe how deflating that item was when my family realized how valuable it was, rendering everything that happens before it spawns entirely pointless. Even the bland shmup stuff before the showdown is elevated by the competitive side. One race was so close that my family was cheering. It was Three Stooges-like, but Three Stooges never had an element that sucked the air out of the room. We tried to implement “do not get the L” house rules but it just wasn’t viable because it drifts around the stage. Damnit, this sucks. This was a development choice so destructive it should be taught at game design schools, but for all the wrong reasons.
Verdict: NO!

TwinBee
Platform: Arcade
Released March 5, 1985
Developed by Konami
Included in Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection ($19.99)
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Wikis: Konami – TwinBee – Strategy

Konami’s take on the Xevious formula that mixes vertical shooting and bombing ground targets was certainly good enough to launch a franchise. Playing this original version, it’s easy to see why Twinbee had such staying power. But, the first Twinbee was never fated to age well. Frankly, I’ve always been really bored by Xevious. While Twinbee is far more advanced, I’ve never liked the original Twinbee, either. Going more in-depth with it didn’t change my mind, though some parts of it I like now more than I ever have before. I have to admit that they clearly fine-tuned the bombing mechanic. It doesn’t require the precision aim Xevious or similar games, as Twinbee has a very ahead-of-its-time auto-targeting mechanic. The bombs scatter out and usually give you a lot of wiggle room, and that’s in addition to fairly generous collision boxes on the ground enemies. I don’t know what it says about me that my favorite part of the game is not having to aim. Probably nothing good.

But, and this will be considered sacrilege, I’ve never liked the iconic bells of the Twinbee franchise. Sorry, I just don’t think they’re fun, and just as often get in the way of my shots. That’s especially true in this first game in the franchise. You can tell in later games they put a lot more thought into matching the bell locations with enemy attack patterns in a way that enhances the risk/reward factors instead of interrupting the player. In this original Twinbee, I think the level design is built too much around having enemies placed where the bells will be when you’re turning them into the items. I don’t hate the bells, but I prefer normal item drops and their lack of several qualifying “buts.”

I don’t hate Twinbee (well, not exactly), but of all the early scrolling shooters by Konami, it’s easily the one that bores me the most. The enemies aren’t very memorable. The settings REALLY aren’t. I split my play session for the coin-op between two days and eventually did get good enough to reach the final boss, and yet, I don’t think I could pick half the bosses out of a lineup. They’re just not eye-catching, and neither are the basic enemies. Not that shmups need all the basic enemies to be that way, but after playing through stuff like Gradius or Salamander, I can eventually recognize enemies and know their attack patterns. Conversely, the more playful enemies of Twinbee come across as kind of samey.

There’s just not enough power-ups to keep things interesting, and how the power-ups work isn’t very fun or balanced. If you get the green bell, which is what gives you the shadows that work like options, you cannot ever get the red bell that gives you a shield and vice-versa. In fact, the opposite item won’t spawn at all, so your decision to go for the shield or the shadow has to be made ahead of time, which is ridiculous on its face value. That’s before you even get to the realization that having the green bell is all but essential in the later levels, where you simply cannot make progress at all without the additional firepower. Eventually, I did reach the point where I could almost ace the game (my best run saw me not even lose an arm until the sixth level), but had I died even once, I don’t think I would have recovered. Look, the game even spawns you on top of strings of enemies!

Now granted, you get a small window of invincibility to move out of the way, but you’re also down to your basic gun and the lowest movement speed, while the enemies and their firepower are absolutely SPAMMING the screen. Even with the invincibility, I wasn’t long for this world. It wasn’t rare for me to go from having a no-hit run through three to five levels to dead and eating a game-over in a matter of moments. There’s no continues, either, not that it would help given the circumstances. In addition to all this, Twinbee as a franchise is always a bit of a pain in the ass with bullet visibility, and one where ground enemies you miss can shoot you in the ass even after they’ve been scrolled off the screen.

Now, I’m sure TwinBee was brilliant when it first launched, but in 2025, it doesn’t hold-up. The closest I came to having fun was trying to chase a high score, but even that lost its luster when I realized how heavily the bells tilt the scoring. Once in a while, it was exciting trying to catch them to keep a combo going, but the consequence of this is that it takes the fun out of shooting the enemies. You know, the reason to play this genre in the first place. Sigh. I promise Twinbee as a franchise is going to score a few YES! verdicts in this feature. It’s in the same boat as the coin-op Gradius, up next: a really good proof of concept, but nothing more than that, at least in 2025.
Verdict: NO!

Gradius
aka Nemesis
Platform: Arcade
Released May, 1985
Directed by Hiroyasu Machiguchi
Developed by Konami
Included in Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection ($19.99)
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
To Be Included in Gradius Origins
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

This is the one. Yep. The one that ends with a safe dropped on my head. Because Gradius is one of the most influential and beloved video games ever. But if I’m being honest, I’ve never been the biggest fan of this specific game of Gradius. As in the original game. I know, I know. Look, I’m a HUGE fan of the franchise, but for whatever reason, the first game never “did it” for me. Maybe because they were so focused on the gameplay that the spectacular settings and unforgettable boss fights that make the franchise so delightful weren’t in place yet. Gradius has hints of that with the amazing design on the original Big Core boss fights or the volcano pictured above. But this is also Gradius at its most generic.

Gradius’ item system is obviously its greatest contribution to the shmup formula, as there’s something satisfying about manually turning on your loadout with a currency system instead of just getting an item with a letter in the middle. It makes the whole Gradius franchise one of the ultimate “create your own strategy” arcade experiences. Future installments would allow for players to opt out of this and have power-ups handled automatically. For me, I think the speed-ups reach a point where I can’t control the ship anymore and prefer only a single activation. Two at most, depending on the game, but in the case of the original arcade Gradius, one is enough (Update: Actually, by time I finished this feature, I usually hung out in the two-to-three speed-up range). At times, the game resembles a Toaplan-like bullet hell, well before that was a thing. There’s moments where you’re reminded that you’re playing a coin-op and Konami really, really wants you off the machine, so the next person can pay for their turn.

And, in the case of the arcade Gradius, I think it over does the brutality. For what it’s worth, the first Gradius will be earning some YES! verdicts in this feature. Just, not for the coin-op. The difficulty, even on the lowest dip switch setting, is overwhelming. It’s not like Gradius is never fun. I wouldn’t be here if that was the case. But, Gradius coin-op is more like a proof of concept. A promise of better times to come. And a lot of the stuff that’s here did age gracefully, especially the icon of the franchise: the Big Core. It’s not the first “boss” in a spaceship game. Xevious had its iconic big ships, but it’s the first to be structured like a modern boss fight. Okay, so it’s disappointing that Gradius only has one model that gets reused five times after its first appearance. Even the coolest boss fight gets exhausting when it happens six times in one game. But, as the original “this is a big deal” space shooting boss fight, dude, the Big Core is just so f*cking cool. How can you not love it?

Hell, it’s so iconic that they could probably do a Gradius movie if the Big Core was on the poster. It’s one of the most underrated contributors towards making boss battles a staple of gaming. But, and this might be controversial, I really do think that and the Moai are all Gradius has going for it as far as memorable design goes. I played through the coin-op two or three previous times before working on this feature, and I was startled by how many aspects of the first Gradius I didn’t even remember. The little brains? Nope. The blue wall called The Nucleus? Actually, no I didn’t. I remembered the volcanoes, the Moai, the Big Core MK I, and the gigantic brain at the end. I didn’t even remember set pieces satirized directly in Parodius, a game I had just played. The Electronic Cage for example, which shows up in several games.

The set-pieces just weren’t spectacular yet. They would be, but like I said, it’s best to think of Gradius as a stepping stone in the evolution of gaming. I can and have enjoyed those. I can tolerate Scramble. I enjoyed Super Mario 64. But, Gradius is held back by extreme difficulty and no instant respawns. I think those would be transformative. If this had been like Salamander, the YES! would have been all but assured. But, I couldn’t make progress once I lost my first life and my max-loadout was gone. Going into some of the set pieces without both lasers and missiles is too brutal. I never thought I’d ever reach the point where I could cruise through Castlevania or Contra without a game over. But, if I saw someone do that on the coin-op of Gradius, I would still be very impressed. If I practiced enough, maybe I could do that too, but I wouldn’t want to. It might be sacrilege to say, but Gradius is kind of boring at times. It’s why I think Gradius II is one of the greatest sequels ever. It’s never boring, and one of my favorite video games. I owe the original Gradius my gratitude for that, but I don’t owe it a YES!
Verdict: NO! BAM, safe dropped on my head. Don’t worry. My ghost will complete the remaining feature.

Finalizer – Super Transformation
Platform: Arcade
Released December, 1985
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Listing at Konami Wiki

Imagine making a game where, instead of piloting just a normal spaceship, the power-ups allowed you to assemble a dual-wielding robot that could have a different kind of gun in each hand. That sounds bad ass. Like an idea you’d have to be an imbecile to screw-up. The team behind Finalizer – Super Transformation took that as a challenge and declared in one voice “AS GOD AS OUR WITNESS, WE ARE THOSE IMBECILES!” There’s no levels in the traditional sense. The only backdrop is a series of islands, and the only boss is one that some compare to the Big Core MK I but I think looks more like the first boss from Sega’s generic Master System pack-in Astro Warrior.

As you play the game, items spawn that eventually transform you into a giant robot that can carry a shield or a gun. You can end up with two different types of weapons, such as a traditional spread gun, fireballs, or the ability to shoot fists that return to you like boomerangs. That last one is SO satisfying, by the way. The combat is really good even if the setting is dull and enemy design is forgettable. The problem comes from the fact that the game isn’t optimized for combat. The variety of enemies leaves a lot to be desired, and the ones that are here are as generic in appearance as it gets. But, at least you can shoot most of them. As if they were bound and determined to prevent fun by any means necessary, Finalizer regularly cuts to lengthy sequences where you simply have to avoid indestructible meteors or other debris. Yea, in a game where they gave you a giant robot that can shoot two different kinds of gun, they thought it would be an awesome idea to have you be able to shoot NOTHING!

Well, actually there is one way to destroy them. Like Twinbee, the item capsules can be changed by shooting them. In addition to the gun, one of them gives you points, one freezes all the action on screen for five seconds, and one is essentially a star from Super Mario that allows you to “crash” into enemies and rack up big points for five seconds. In theory, if you can string these together, you can cheese the game. But a lot of the time, those asteroid sequences don’t have ANY item drops at the start of them, so it’s moot point. Giving players awesome weaponry and then making sequences with nothing to shoot that feel like they last eons is so nakedly trollish that it just kind of makes me sad, because it ruins a perfectly fine game.

Finalizer really doesn’t want players to be the robot for very long. It plays dirty with projectiles and the meteor showers. It plays dirty with the items, which it’ll spawn in a cluster of enemies or meteors that all but encircle them. After a while, if you survive these sequences, the game will just spawn a pair of homing enemies on both sides of the screen to insure you get damaged down to the starting ship anyway. If the game had just focused on the combat and created even the most basic Twinbee or Gradius-like experience, Finalizer would have cruised to a YES! Instead, this became one of the easiest NO!s I’ve ever assigned. It’s the rare title that manages to be mechanically good, but still manages to feel like the development team resented getting the assignment and actively sabotaged it. It should be a cinch to make a decent game with this combat system. Hell, a GREAT game, because the gunplay is seriously very fun. But Finalizer isn’t a decent game. Not even close.
Verdict: NO!

Jail Break
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1986
Directed by Oolong Sugimo
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives* ($7.99)
Listing at the Konami Wiki

*The Arcade Archives version censors the naked women. Yes, there’s naked women.

Jail Break is one of many games in this feature that are, frankly, are not “shmups.” But, I mean, I’m never going to do “Run ‘n Gun Games: The Definitive Review” so I figure I should just knock all the Konami pew pew games out that I would never do as single game reviews or as part of a different review collection like this. Well, unless Konami put out a better arcade collection, but the Arcade Archives model seems to get in the way of that. Anyway, Jail Break is a 1986 game where you shoot guys escaping from jail and OH MY GOD LOOK AT THE BOOBIES!

And it’s not just a one off thing. When you shoot bad guys out of windows or bathing in the water, sometimes a naked girl, nipples and all, is shown. This isn’t a situation where it’s ambiguous. It’s the female form in all its glory. So, that’s weird and OH MY GOD SHIRTLESS BATMAN!

What the hell is going on? Did I get the wrong ROM? Well, no. This is what the game is actually like. Hell, Batman even appears in the Arcade Archives version. Between the naked women and unauthorized appearance by the Caped Crusader, Jail Break kind of feels like a bootleg, doesn’t it? It’s especially strange, because it’s not like Konami hadn’t already reached the upper-echelon of game developers by 1986. They were established as an elite house of gaming with properties like Frogger, Gradius, and, you know, all the stuff you read above. Yet, this comes across like a game from one of those bootleg 500 in 1 consoles that replaces Mario with Goku or something. But, I think I get it, because if not for those anomalies, Jail Break wouldn’t be that interesting.

It’s not that Jail Break has bad action. Waves of enemies run onto the screen and you shoot them, and when bystanders run onto the playfield, don’t shoot them. All enemies take one shot to kill, and when you save an innocent, you get an extra gun. There’s three that you can swap between. The standard gun works fine enough. The rocket launcher pierces through enemies and can take out vans (and the drums that Batman hides in), and the tear gas seems to auto-aim for windows OR miss completely and feels like a prototype for Goldeneye’s Klobb. It’s all fairly generic, including the enemies who don’t feel distinct unless they’re hiding in manholes or driving in vans. There’s just not enough variety in Jail Break, and the stage themes don’t matter because the enemies and gameplay feel exactly the same level-to-level. Only the very end features a change in pace. Jail Break’s finale pits you against a handful of enemies who wheel out the warden, who is strapped to a time bomb. 

Really, the only difference between the ending and other boss waves is the timer and the pedestrian who you can’t kill. Previously, shooting innocents came with no penalty besides missing out on a new gun. During the finale, if the bomb explodes either by running out of time or shooting it, no matter how many lives you have left, it’s an automatic game over. Jeez, that’s pretty frickin harsh, especially for the way the enemies come out and move in formation around the chair. Now, I don’t love the automatic game over bit, but the way the finale is structured was the one and only time the game became exciting. They should have done more like that in Jail Break, because the rest of the game stops feeling fresh after just one stage, but there’s four to go that offer nothing new until the very end. Jail Break is proof that solid action gameplay isn’t enough if you don’t stage it in a way that keeps it fresh from start to finish. Come to think of it, I said the same thing about Gyruss. Apparently it took a while for Konami to get it.
Verdict: NO!

TwinBee
Platform: Famicom
Released January 4, 1986
Developed by Konami
Included with Switch Online Subscription (Standard)
Wikis: Konami – TwinBee – Strategy

Twinbee on the Famicom is getting a NO! just like the coin-op, but for what it’s worth, it’s not the worst port. Give a little, take a little. In the “take a little” side of the column, the aspect I gave the most props to in the coin-op is nowhere near as good on the Famicom. The bombing mechanic is extremely stripped down. Instead of spraying a cluster of bombs and getting a large amount of grace, you drop one bomb at time and it has to be a hit. There’s little to no wiggle room, and thus it’s nowhere near as satisfying. In the “give a little” column, Famicom TwinBee is a lot more balanced overall. The playfield is wider, but there’s fewer enemies, so you never get a screen spammed with bullets. Speaking of which, the bullet visibility is much higher, making the Famicom port a much more effective defensive game. The bosses are significantly toned back too. Despite all that, I was just so bored playing this. The YES! verdicts are coming for Twinbee, but not yet.
Verdict: NO!

Knightmare
aka Majou Densetsu 
Platform: MSX
Released March 29, 1986
Developed by Konami
Never Released in North America
NO MODERN RELEASE
Listing at Konami Wiki

I’m not taking these reviews in sequential order, so actually, I already had played all the Gradius MSX games before booting up Knightmare. I knew of Knightmare’s reputation as one of Konami’s most beloved MSX titles, and the change of themes from spaceships to a knight in shining armor was a welcome one. But, despite how it might look in screenshots, Knightmare is a boilerplate auto-scrolling shmup, and unfortunately, one that doesn’t hold up to the test of time. I don’t even think it came close, as this is fairly slow-paced and, for the most part, pretty bland. And it’s not like it never does anything right. The basic idea is that you auto-scroll upward, shooting waves of enemies, but your bullets also reveal hidden item blocks. Most of them just score points, but you can also activate screen-clearing bombs or freeze the action. The latter isn’t so great, actually, especially in a game that already has a sluggish pace. On the other hand, I liked that some of the bridges across rivers have to be uncovered before you suffer death by scrolling. It’s probably the only time the game gets exciting.

On the other hand, the item system is a total failure. Similar to Twinbee, items constantly spawn that you can change by shooting. Every gun is available from the item drop, and getting the same weapon back-to-back buffs its strength. This was a terrible idea all around, especially since the guns aren’t remotely balanced. In my first playthrough, I assumed the double swords were the most powerful weapon. I was wrong, because the fire arrow not only kills enemies faster but pierces through them as well. It’s the piercing part that’s especially valuable, because the hidden items and bridges take multiple shots to unlock, so enemies not being able to interfere with your shots makes the game a breeze. The difficulty further plummets from the overabundance of power-ups that are in the caption below.

The only part of the game that I kept dying on was the second boss, where I’m not entirely sure what was killing me. He wasn’t firing projectiles at all, and there was nothing on the screen, but I was just perishing anyway. Since the boss looks like the grim reaper, I assume it’s some kind of death stare thing, but I couldn’t find a single reference to it anywhere online. I admit, I used emulator tomfoolery for this section. It wasn’t playing fair, so why should I? The other seven bosses are fine, I guess. Probably the highlight of the game. They’re basic bosses with little in the way of finesse, and the order of difficulty is all wrong. If you don’t count the boss that was apparently giving me fatal heart attacks via telekinesis, the third boss was far and away the hardest. So hard, in fact, that I was stressing the next couple bosses. For no reason, it turns out, because they were pushovers.

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Knightmare is beloved by a lot of MSX fans, and I can get how memories of it could be sweet. But today? What sealed the NO! for Knightmare wasn’t the lack of balance, but rather just how repetitive it is. When it comes to shmups, mediocre level design or lackluster settings can still be carried over the finish line by enjoyable combat and gameplay mechanics. Likewise, dull combat and subpar gameplay mechanics can be elevated by memorable settings and well-designed levels. Knightmare is lacking all around. All you have left is the facade of playing with a knight instead of a spaceship, a novelty which is fated to grow old fast. I’m sure this was a decent game in 1986, but all the problems with balance and enemy design assured that the past four decades have been less than kind.
Verdict: NO!

TwinBee
Platform: MSX
Released May 25, 1986
Developed by Konami
Never Released in North America
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – TwinBee – Strategy

Even though I didn’t like the coin-op or NES versions of Twinbee, I go into every review with an open mind. And in the case of Twinbee on the MSX, it has aspects I enjoy. Maybe it was lucky timing on my part, but if I died on the MSX version, I recovered my loadout with minimum fuss. On the other hand, any of the bosses that have shields made out of smaller enemies (such as the first boss) take much longer because the enemies respawn faster than you can shoot. It combines the same issues with the NES version, scaled-back power-ups and only getting to throw one bomb at a time, with the traditional issues almost all MSX games have, IE slice scrolling and sluggish speed. Okay, I probably wasn’t going to have a good time either way, but the MSX version is easily the weakest Twinbee game and a contender for worst game in this feature.
Verdict: NO!

Gradius
Platform: NES
Released April 25, 1986
Directed by Hiroyasu Machiguchi
Developed by Konami
Included with a Nintendo Switch Online Subscription (Standard)
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Yep, Gradius on the NES is a lot more fun than the coin-op. I’m not just saying that because I just pulled off a no-cheating, one-death run on my second play-through during this session. It really isn’t that hard with autofire, especially since there were multiple moments where I legitimately can’t explain how I survived. Specifically in the one section of the game where the NES’ CPU can’t keep up with the on-screen action. The little brains? I for sure should have died multiple times against them and didn’t. For the life of me (heh, literally) I can’t figure out what happened, but I didn’t have any shields and it sure seemed like I got shot directly. Maybe one of my options took the bullet. Maybe it was related to slowdown, which really only happens during this part. Maybe it had to do with my own shots somehow cancelling out the bullets, which tracks with the fact that I pumped an entire screen’s worth of laser blasts into some (but not all) of the brains and they didn’t die. Either way, I know I didn’t dodge every bullet, so a single-death run wasn’t as impressive as I figured it would have been before starting this project.

Gradius had to make three major sacrifices in making the journey to the NES. The first is that a player can only carry two options instead of four. It’s just as well, because the second sacrifice is a smaller enemy count and dramatically toned-down set pieces. This has its positives and negatives. On the plus side, I don’t believe the challenge is ever unfair. Never. But, it completely undermines the excitement of major set-pieces. The iconic volcanoes aren’t so iconic here, having been reduced from holding on for dear life in the coin-op to parking in a safe spot and taking a nap on the NES. The third sacrifice is that vertical scrolling is removed from levels that feature it. I’m fine with this because it allows for a more fine-tuned, streamlined experience.

Gradius NES is probably the game that really blew up the Gradius format. I can’t prove it, except to say that Gradius sold a million copies on the Famicom alone, and while it wasn’t quite as successful as Twinbee, it assured that Konami would be sticking around. Without the burden of relying on cheap shots to keep the coins flowing, Gradius is transformed into a solid shooter. One that still has the same problems with set-pieces and memorable bosses. The Big Core MK I is awesome, but variety is the spice of life, and hell, the home port is even missing a couple segments. There’s no Electric Cage on the NES and you don’t even take out the final brain yourself. The game just sort of congratulates you after you reach it. It’s so awkward. If the coin-op Gradius is the proof of concept, the NES/Famicom Gradius is really just another evolution of it. “Yep, it works as a home game. We’re onto something!” And hey, Gradius NES was good enough to end the losing streak in this feature.
Verdict: YES! – $3 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Collection

Salamander
Remastered as Life Force
Platform: Arcade
Released July 4, 1986
Developed by Konami
Included in Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection ($19.99)
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
To Be Included in Gradius Origins
Wikis: Konami – Gradius (Salamander) – Gradius (Life Force) – Strategy

Regardless of which version you play, I’m not in love with Salamander. The basic idea is “Gradius, only instead of taking place in outer space, the game takes place inside a gigantic creature.” An idea so good that Natsume stole it for Abadox. Actually, they improved it. I found Salamander to be overall a little more bland in terms of setting and theme than I was expecting, but the gameplay is clearly Gradius, especially if you play the revamped version. I ended up playing almost six full play sessions before figuring out my final verdict on both versions. Apparently Konami had second thoughts on their original build, which was released in the US as “Life Force.” So they remastered it, with the updated ROM reaching Japanese arcades in 1987 under the name “Life Force.” My apologies for how confusing this whole thing is. So, to be clear, if you play Salamander or the version of Life Force which has the following title screens:

That’s the original version, which is the most playable version if you just want to see the ending. If you tinker with the dip switch settings and then flood the game with credits, you can start rounds of Salamander with as many as 63 lives. You’re going to need them. After a few practice games where I cheated my bony little ass off and memorized the level layouts and boss patterns, I decided to see if I could finish the game with those 63 lives. Mind you, it took me a TON of rewinding to figure out how to survive the first boss simply coming to life, before the battle even really started. Well, I did figure it out and started the actual no-cheating game session pretty well. Idiot that I am, I thought “hot damn, I’m awesome at this!” when, on my third play session with this ROM, I made it to the second boss without dying. Then I started dropping like flies, including fourteen lives alone to the fourth boss. FOURTEEN! Mind you, this was on the easiest dip switch setting!

And there’s a few other shady sections of the game where I’m convinced that they’re unsurvivable. It’s pretty obvious that, at first, Konami didn’t plan to make Salamander fully part of the Gradius franchise but rather a “faster paced” spin-off. There’s no item bar in this original build. Instead, enemies drop the pick-ups, and they’re not always useful. Missiles and options get dropped the most, and by the way, when you die, your options linger on the screen for a while and you’ll have a small window to pick them up. For this reason, you never want to linger at the edge of the screen if you can avoid it, since you won’t have a chance to regain the options.

But even if you do lose them, it won’t take long to get them back. Options are a much more common item drop than the two gun upgrades. The valuable laser or even the slightly less valuable ripple (making its debut) are too rare in my opinion. The laser, especially, is very valuable to have. If I could hold onto it, I could usually make it pretty far. When I lost it, that’s when my life counter started to look more like a stopwatch. BUT, I did finish the game in 34 total lives. So, if you simply want to see all Salamander has to offer without the use of rewind or save states, this is the version to play. On the other hand, if the title screen looks like this:

Then you’re playing the revamped version of the original coin-op that I’ll refer to as “Japanese Life Force.” The big difference is the item bar from Gradius is back, along with the power capsules, so you can choose your loadout at your own leisure. Well, provided you get enough item drops. Oh, and you can have a max of seven lives and NO continues unless you’re playing co-op. Despite that, in some ways, Japanese Life Force is the easier game. The first boss, for example, launches easier and is much easier to defeat. The original is on the left and the revamped version is on the right.

This is even more noticeable with the second boss. Again, original to the left, Japanese Life Force on the right.

And the boss above that took me fourteen lives I instead beat without dying in my best non-cheating play session. Even considering those changes, in the sessions where I didn’t use rewind or save states, I only made it to the final level of Japanese Life Force once, and I can’t imagine I would ever be able to finish it. It becomes maddening at times, like this sequence here:

These two styles of enemy attack formations happen back-to-back, a sequence that lasts for over over a minute, and you’re very likely to drop multiple lives during it, as there’s really no place to hide for more than a second or two. While the second part of it seems easier with co-op, the first part sure isn’t. It’s like Konami said “arcade operators are going to be so pissed at us if anyone makes it this far. GET THEM OFF THE MACHINE, by any means necessary!” Needless to say, any hope I had of finishing Japanese Life Force without cheating ended in the above segment. One final “GET OFF MY MACHINE” moment happens in the final level with this:

But even if I had gotten to the final boss, I wouldn’t have had enough lives to make it past the escape sequence, which looks like this:

Hell, if the bosses didn’t self-destruct after X amount of time, I wouldn’t have made it as far as I did. For all of Salamander’s problems, I was able to kill every single boss. I think, at least. Come to think of it, I probably only got past that boss that I lost fourteen lives on when it self-destructed. But, if they did die via self-destruction, it happened while I was actively shooting them. That wasn’t the case with Japanese Life Force. This right here wasn’t my proudest moment, but what’s especially annoying was I had pumped as many shots as humanly possibly into this thing with all four options AND I had the laser. It’s not like I spent the entire fight rope-a-doping it. I beat the first boss about a second after it opened its eye. This boss, I wondered if my gun wasn’t getting through. Apparently it wasn’t, because this happened:

Not exactly the most satisfying way to beat a level. And that’s ultimately how I reached a unanimous verdict on both Salamander AND Japanese Life Force. For all of Gradius’ problems, it feels like it came from a place of inspiration. Salamander largely feels like a game that exists because they NEEDED a sequel to Gradius but didn’t know exactly how to go about it. Most of the settings aren’t that exotic or enticing, regardless of which version you play. It never feels like you’re inside a giant alien, except maybe the opening stage. Speaking of which, why would the first boss be a brain and the last boss be a giant eyeball? What is the point of an eyeball without a brain? Either way, the level design never rises above “average” and the vertical levels are pretty boring in general, regardless of whether you’re playing co-op or not, which is what I assume is the reason for the relatively conservative layouts. I get how Gradius can still be popular in 2025, but Salamander/Life Force never rose above being the “other” game in the franchise for a reason.
Verdict: NO!

Gradius
aka Nemesis
Platform: MSX
Released July 25, 1986
Developed by Konami
Never Released in North America
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Believe it or not, this is the only release in four different Gradius/Salamander games that’s a port of the coin-ops. Salamander, Gradius 2, and Nemesis III on the MSX are all original games, and trust me, you’ll want to read about them. As for this first MSX title, like most games on the platform, Gradius scrolls by loading in slices. It’s pretty annoying and takes getting used to, but once you do, it becomes obvious really quickly why the Nemesis series on MSX is so legendary. Given the limitations, this is an excellent port that cuts fewer key elements out of the coin-op than the NES version did. You’re limited to two options and the Electric Cage is absent, but otherwise, it has everything the coin-op has. You even get to, gasp, kill the brain at the end. But, where it really gets bonkers is that MSX version has the most additions of any home port of Gradius, including a very memorable new stage that’s pictured above. It’s not entirely a smoke-and-mirrors rehash of the Moai stage, either. It feels new. There’s also hidden rooms, for example, if you bring your ship right here:

Then you enter a bonus room that’s similar in structure to levels you’ll encounter in Gradius III.

In addition to all that, the lasers and missiles come with second upgrades. Even after experimenting, I didn’t feel a difference in the laser’s second upgrade, but I think it’s supposed to fire faster. The missiles, on the other hand, do become noticeably more efficient. So, there’s a little more to Gradius MSX than you would expect, and it’s actually a genuinely good game. Probably equally as hard as the NES version, or maybe even a touch easier. While it spams the screen with more bullets at times, I was able to take down enemies like the smaller brains and the Moai statues much more quickly than I did in almost any other Gradius. It was the MSX version that made me realize what a grave mistake Gradius Origins is making in not including the home ports. The coin-op’s NO!, which likely will carry over to all the additional ROMs included in that set, means it earns $0 in value. Had they included the home ports, not only would it have put Gradius in the plus column, but they could have included some incredible special features comparing the versions. Alas.
Verdict: YES! – $3 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Moero TwinBee: Cinnamon Hakase o Sukue!
aka Stinger
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released November 21, 1986
Directed by Kazuhiro Aoyama
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – TwinBee – Strategy

The game known as Stinger in America was the US debut of the TwinBee series. What a waste of time it was. If I didn’t know the story on it, I’d swear it was a rip-off of TwinBee. It feels nothing like a Konami game, and it certainly doesn’t look like one. It looks like one of those games by a second-tier AAA developer. I get that they were trying for a much more cartoonish look than they normally do, but there’s a major drawback: keeping track of enemies and bullets. Especially if you’re able to spam the screen with the Gradius-like laser gun. In the original TwinBee, I found myself saying “wait, when did I lose my arms?” a lot but it was nothing compared to how often I said it playing this game. Especially in later stages, it’s just too hard to see everything.

I take back every mean thing I said about the lack of memorable enemies in the original TwinBee. Hoo boy. Like, you’re flying through the Egyptian-themed stage. What do you expect the enemies to be? Sentient pyramids? Sphinxes? Mummies? Nah, clothespins, coat hangers, and clown shoes. What the actual f*ck, development team? Oh, and the boss of the Egypt stage? A goddamned giant saxophone. ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME? Ancient Egypt, one of the most common tropes in video games and certainly one of the easiest to build a roster of enemies around, and the boss is a goddamn Saxophone that you fight AFTER you spent the level shooting down clown shoes and coat hangers? By the way, “Clown Shoes and Coat Hangers” would be a great name for a death metal band. Anyway, later stages do have better enemy design, but by that point, the mood had sort of been ruined.

As you might have noticed, Stinger has side-scrolling levels in addition to traditional TwinBee vertical ones. In the side-scrolling levels, there’s no bomb button. Bombs are dropped on the ground automatically when you shoot your weapon. The other button is used to fire hearts that don’t hurt enemies at all and are only useful for juggling the bells, presumably through the power of love. It’s a curious thing, because your normal shots also keep the bells afloat and are more useful in general than the hearts are. However, when you switch to vertical levels, the heart button becomes the bomb button and the traditional targeting system returns. It’s a confusing decision for a confused game.

Even stranger is that the game doesn’t alternate the two play styles, and the ordering is all wrong. Stages 1, 3, 7 are side-scrolling while 2, 4, 5, and 6 are normal vertical TwinBee stages. The vertical levels are easily the highlights of the game. TwinBee is meant to be a top-down game, and the gameplay of it, simply put, does not translate to a side view. Even with the bells, they don’t feel like TwinBee stages. Hell, they didn’t even draw the arms on the ship, which is just as well because you can’t lose arms in those stages. Wow. The side-scrolling stages are total disasters that have NO VALUE. They never have clever enemies or attack formations. They’re some of the most boring stages in this entire feature. I get that side-scrolling was the biggest thing in gaming at the time, but not every game should have it. And then there’s the bosses. There’s extreme strobing right before the fight starts, so I figure I should mention you should support my friends at AbleToPlay.

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I had to deliberately not shoot for a while to get quality photos of them. That’s because I was able to kill the majority of the bosses before they even fully spawned. No trick to it. No secret. I started unloading my firepower on them as soon as they started to blink into existence and that usually resulted in them blowing up before I even saw what color they were. BUT, if you allow it to spawn, they take more hits. It’s so damn weird. It feels like it was meant to be a secret method of beating them, but I didn’t do anything fancy at all. I was just already firing when they started to appear. Who wouldn’t? Why would anyone design bosses that have this built into them? I swear, there’s positive reviews coming for this franchise, but the second TwinBee game is an absolute bore.
Verdict: NO!

Battlantis
Platform: Arcade
Released July, 1987
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE
Listing at Konami Wiki

“People liked Space Invaders a decade ago, and times never change! What if we took Galaga or Space Invaders and replaced the aliens with barbarians and vikings?” And that’s really what Battlantis is. It’s also a game clearly optimized for co-op. If playing by yourself, unless you shoot absolutely perfectly, you’re going to find yourself in plenty of unsurvivable situations. Battlantis is a gallery shooter where the basic concept is you’re using what looks like a minigun (I think it’s supposed to be a crossbow but it looks like a minigun) to fend off an invading hoard. If enemies reach the castle walls, they’ll begin to pull themselves up. If they get onto the castle, you have to make believe your character is incapable of turning his body 90° or even just holding his arm out, because there’s no way to kill the enemies once they’re on the same plane as you. Well, unless you have an item that shoots to the sides, which I got once in my entire solo session. Too many basic enemies take multiple shots to kill, and this is before you factor in the three shields that start every level that block YOUR shots. 

Naturally some enemy projectiles fly up and over the shields, because “lulz.” Unless you’re playing co-op, there’s little in the way of relief. Battlantis is stingy with power-ups to begin with, all of which run on a relatively short timer, and often the ones it does give you are only useful for taking out three or four normal baddies at most. One of the game’s main tricks is to have enemies arrive on opposite ends of the playfield, assuring one of them will kill you. The point of video games is beating overwhelming odds, but sometimes the odds cross the line from “heroic” to “actual madness.” Battlantis isn’t a total wash, as the game is MUCH more manageable with two players, which also negates the insufferable tempo of the single player experience. It also features boss fights that are enjoyable enough. Actually, the bosses are a lot more balanced than the levels that lead up to them, because the actual combat is a sluggish bore that is never, ever fun. Any lord that would leave one guy with a crossbow to single-handedly defend against these numbers is a lord that deserves to lose his f’n castle.
Verdict: NO!

Flak Attack
aka MX 5000
Platform: Arcade
Released August, 1987
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Listing on Konami Wiki

Clearly trying to rub some of that glow off of Top Gun, Konami created this shooter that has the worst name AND worst alternative name. Then again, they’re generic names for a generic game. Now, don’t mistake that for a BAD game. Flak Attack is fine, or at least four out of five levels are. Oh, and like Ghosts ‘n Goblins, you have to beat the game twice to get the ending. I hate that sh*t, but it is what it is. Despite the fighter pilot motif, it’s probably best to think of Flak Attack as TwinBee if it had a personality lobotomy. You have two forms of attacking: straight ahead and bombing the ground. Unlike TwinBee, you earn power-ups by killing enemies. Quite a few enemies, actually. Both the gun and the bombs have separate meters that slowly fill up as you take out targets. It’s actually an effective incentive to not miss any baddies, but I think it takes too long for the meters to fill up, especially for the bombs. I didn’t get my first upgrade for them until the second level. Mind you, the meters are emptied between levels, too.

The big twist with the traditional scrolling formula is that, when you reach the boss, the scrolling stops, the ship’s sprite shrinks and you enter a Star Fox-like all-range mode. The bosses all require you to bomb them instead of shooting them. Take my word for it: you’ll want to avoid the speed-up icons, which are the only items dropped that aren’t tied to the meter. I never felt like I was moving too loosely in the main game, but when I entered the all-range mode, yeah, I felt the speed ups. Your bombs have a relatively short range and so you have to be a little too close for comfort to attack the bosses. But, they are pretty dang fun battles.

The BS lightning bolts aside, Flak Attack is a perfectly decent vanilla game. At least until you get to the fifth level, where bullet visibility becomes a MAJOR issue. I blew up several times without realizing what was getting me because they decided the background should be a series of silver pipes. I’m fine with visually busy backgrounds as long as the bullets stand out. When they don’t, I have a problem with it.

Between the lightning bolts, other random explosions (that’s what the pink circle is in the above picture), the low visibility, and the slowness of upgrading your weapons, you’d swear this was a game that was sabotaged by the development team. It’s kind of a miracle that Flak Attack rises to the level of decent, but it does so despite itself. Even though it has the personality of a cotton ball, Flak Attack isn’t a bad little game at all. The enemies explode with a nice pop that makes the combat satisfying enough to never bore. Okay, so the game needed a bigger variety of enemies, and it probably needed more upgrades than it gives you or maybe a lower penalty for dying. It’s not worth the $7.99 Arcade Archives price. In fact, I wouldn’t say this is a game anyone should seek out just to own it. But, if something like my fictional Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection existed, Flak Attack is the ideal game to pad the game count by one. Players DO NOT need games like Flak Attack, but prestige retro collections do.
Verdict: YES! – $2 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Collection

Gradius 2
aka Nemesis II
Platform: MSX
Released August 22, 1987
Developed by Konami
Never Released in North America
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Don’t let the name fool you. Besides being a part of the Gradius series, this is NOT the Gradius II most people are familiar with. In fact, not only does Gradius 2 (note the use of a number instead of Roman Numerals) predate the coin-op game that would go on to be known as Vulcan Venture, but the more commonly known Gradius II isn’t based on this, either. Gradius 2 on the MSX is an entirely original member of the Gradius franchise, and it’s excellent. Seriously, it took me a while but I finally get to review an MSX game that solidified that console’s reputation for quality curios. See, Gradius 2 isn’t just a series of new Gradius levels and settings. That’s part of it, and what levels are here are fantastic and worthy of the franchise. Some of them work as sort of prototypes for future Gradius II/III levels, but even those play radically different. Does this look familiar?

Well, it might look like levels from Salamander/Life Force or Gradius II, but it’s totally different. You’re not dodging massive blasts of fire. It’s actually more like a cross between that stage and the volcanoes from the first game, but it absolute works, and it even stands out on its own with these:

There’s also several unique, original twists on the main design of the Big Core MK ship, but the biggest twist of all is what happens when you finish them. In my first playthrough, I was like “why do they take so long to explode after you beat them? Gosh, it really hurts the pacing.” But, it turns out that after you defeat a boss, before it explodes, you can fly into it to acquire new weapons that you can spend your item points on. You do need to defeat the bosses quickly in order to earn one. 30 seconds or less for one upgrade, 15 seconds or less for two.

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There’s also some risk/reward factors to consider. As you acquire more upgrades, the item bar becomes longer. Of course, this means that it can take longer for you to get enough item points to regain a full load-out if you die. Or, you don’t even need to die. The shield is always the last item on the bar, so every new addition to the bar is a +1 for how many item points you need to light it again. The new weapons, including wide-angled lasers, are likely overpowered. I became an unstoppable tank for large sections of the game. But, it’s fun, and that’s all I’ve ever cared about. In addition to all of that, there’s new capsules that act as temporary boosts that do things like make your options spin around you or turn your ship into a drill. This really is a fantastic game.

There’s only one major knock on Gradius 2. The true final level can only be reached after completing two cycles of levels, and how it’s handled is a bummer. After you beat one cycle, you have to replay the stages in reverse order, meaning the start of the back-half forces you to re-beat stages you literally just finished. If that doesn’t sound fun, well, it’s not. The only virtue to this is that the levels are shorter the second time, but it still sucks the way they set it up and I wish they hadn’t done it like that. Otherwise, Gradius 2 is like the ultimate expansion pack of the first MSX Gradius. It uses the same engine and has a similar appearance, but it feels grander than you would think its hardware limitations would allow. And now I’m really annoyed that Gradius Origins doesn’t include these. If they aren’t hidden in the collection somewhere, I’m going to shake my fist so much.
Verdict: YES! – $6 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Life Force
aka Salamander
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released September 25, 1987
Directed by Shigeharu Umezaki
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius – Strategy

Life Force has a very serious pacing problem. While the NES version doesn’t necessarily utilize the dirty tactics of the coin-op, it still has most of the problems of the original. The setting is boring. The enemies are (mostly) uninspired. If this were released in 2025, it’s a safe bet Life Force would be DLC for Gradius, and not even amazing DLC. Also, the US version has the thirty lives code from Contra (apparently the LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT part doesn’t matter) so after familiarizing myself with the Japanese version, I decided to see if I could finish the game in a single pack of 30 lives. The counter started at 29 and finished with 16, but that doesn’t count all the extra lives I found or earned along the way. And, I felt the experience was a little underwhelming.

Easily the highlight of the game is the bosses. They’re a big improvement over the coin-op and the only reason why my verdict wasn’t as simple as it should have been. They’re all pretty fun to fight, and despite the game being only six levels, there’s a whopping three new bosses to battle in the home version. There’s also some set pieces I enjoyed that are exclusive to the NES game. A speed zone in the fourth level. An Egyptian theme that starts halfway through the fifth level. Which obviously means the game abandoned the whole “flying inside a giant creature” theme it’s supposed to have. I mean, seriously, you just suddenly enter a structure that looks like this:

And it’s like……. okie-dokie?! I guess the people previously eaten by the giant space creature you’re blowing-up from the inside decided to make the best of a bad situation and built a temple to thank the gods before they became poop. “Or maybe the giant space creature ate the temple whole!” my father proposed, but I dunno. Seems like a good way to get kidney stones to me. Also, the boss of that stage is King Tut, who shows up constantly in games despite the fact that Tutankhamen was, to put it mildly, physically and developmentally disabled. Okay, fine, that’s actually not Tut himself. You’re right, because it’s really his death mask. You know, the thing he needed because he f*cking died at the age of 18 from, well, everything. This includes goddamned bone necrosis. Do you know what that means? It means his skeleton died before the rest of him did! Holy crap! He certainly lived in constant, inescapable pain and suffering until dying at the age of 18, presumably after speaking his final words, which records show were “oh thank the gods.”

But the Tut battle is also indicative of a bigger problem. As you enter the boss chamber, it takes nearly a full minute for the actual battle to start, and all but a single second of that is spent waiting around. The ceiling starts to collapse one brick at a time, but you only have to dodge one brick during that entire sequence, then wait out the rest. It’s boring. There’s several extended sequences with no enemies and no bosses. It’s not like the setting or scenery is interesting, either. It’s just a lull in the action. That’s why I really struggled with this verdict quite a bit, just like I did with the coin-op.

Not even the co-op helped because it just made the game even easier. Originally, I had Life Force NES down as a NO! In a genre defined by white knuckle action, Life Force on the NES just doesn’t offer enough of it. But, NO! didn’t feel right, either. Ultimately, I think there’s just enough highlights to push Life Force over the finish line for what might be my least enthusiastic YES! in a long time. That’s almost entirely based on the bosses, the NES-exclusive parts and the fact that it should take under a half hour to finish. Before writing this feature, I was certain I’d like this more than the NES Gradius. I was wrong. Life Force is a massive step backwards from Gradius and is, at best, barely okay.
Verdict: YES! – $1 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Falsion
Platform: Famicom Disk System
Released October 21, 1987
Developed by Konami
Utilizes the Famicom 3D System
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RELEASED
Wikis: Konami – Strategy

Thank you to my friend David Medina, who has experience with the Famicom 3D System, for helping out with this one.

What you’re seeing above is a paused single moment of Falsion, only the sprites themselves are slightly out of alignment. It’s the shutter effect of the Famicom 3D System, which is such a non-entity in gaming history that I completely forgot it exists. “It is very similar to the Sega Master System 3D glasses except it has a rubber strap that will fit on anyone’s head. Like the Sega glasses it has LCD shutter technology. Each side flashes rapidly so the blurred images on the TV creates the illusion of depth” says David Medina. Only seven games were made for it, and only two of those were converted for the global audience: The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner and a game known as Highway Star in Japan that has a more famous NES name: Rad Racer (which I’ve kind of covered as part of Nintendo World Championships 1990 in Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review). That’s the game that the dweeb plays with the Power Glove in the feature-length Nintendo advertisement The Wizard.

Falsion never made the jump over, and it’s easy to understand why. I didn’t get to play this with the 3D effects, which, if the above screenshot doesn’t make plainly obvious, is literally the only thing the game has going for it. Even if I had the means to do the 3D, I couldn’t. I have epilepsy, and 3D media is a strict no-no. For that reason, I originally had a wishy-washy non-review here. While editing this feature, I felt icky about my Falsion non-review. “Come on, Cathy. You know the difference between a good game and a bad one, even without imaginary depth perception.” So, yeah, Falsion is a terribly boring game, and I’m going to guess that’s true no matter how you play it. It’s just a bland After Burner/Space Harrier wannabe where, if you have an expensive and underutilized accessory, you can see layers. Ooooh, layers. Well, that totally makes up for having graphics that look like this:

Okay, so even though it offers the option of 2D gameplay, reviewing only the 2D version isn’t TOTALLY fair to the game, which heavily relies on the 3D illusion for the gameplay to make logical sense. You can’t trust your senses or your instincts playing Falsion without the glasses. Like, take a look at this screenshot:

I can pass directly through those sprites and not die, because they’re actually closer to the camera than I am. The problem is you can’t really tell where any enemies are in relation to your position if they come from any angle but the horizon, where you can see their approach. So, playing Falsion in 2D mode requires brute-force memorization of the enemies and their patterns. Now, some people like that style of shmup, but I don’t. I like instinctive, reactive gameplay. Granted, it’s not hard to memorize the enemies or anything, because Falsion helpfully repeats attack patterns, usually via mirroring their position on the screen, to the point of exhaustion. When I actually played the game from start to finish, it became really clear really fast that Falsion has very limited appeal as a video game. It’s a novelty, and nothing more. The enemies aren’t memorable in design or clever in their attack patterns. It’s really basic, and that was almost certainly to accommodate the 3D gimmick. Even the boss fights are pretty damn boring (and you can’t pause the game during them for some reason).

While I agree with David that Falsion is “playable” without the glasses, I certainly wouldn’t give it a YES! and I’m fairly confident that would be true even with the 3D effects. I don’t think the game is cynical or anything. The development team’s heart was in the right place, but the technology just wasn’t there for the amount of depth and layers they wanted to achieve. I think with 3D glasses, this would probably have a slight touch of the uncanny valley to it. There would be no shadows, shading, and the limited colors mean the sprites aren’t detailed enough to truly pull off the illusion of depth. It would be like having popsicle stick puppets in a shoot ’em up. None of the backgrounds are particularly interesting, and as noted above, some of them are downright embarrassing. I think most people would get over the 3D effect quickly, because Falsion is just not a fun video game, with or without depth perception.
Verdict: NO! But, if a collection changed it to red-cyan 3D and included glasses, I’d probably award some kind of bonus value for going the extra mile.

A-Jax
aka Typhoon
Platform: Arcade
Released December, 1987
Developed by Konami
Included in Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection ($19.99)
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Listing at Konami Wiki

Everything you need to know about how much A-Jax/Typhoon wants you to enjoy it can be summed up by how weapon drops behave. A red helicopter flies onto the screen that you shoot to create the power-up. You then have to shoot that to change what it is. So far, so commonplace. The problem is the power-up drifts towards the side of the screen, and it doesn’t take long to become out of reach. Just to prove that, yes, the designers were deliberately being pricks, later levels usually spawn enemies firing missiles that occupy the space right in front of the helicopter. It’s basically telling you “no, you’re really not getting one of the later power-ups. At the very most, you can get one of the early ones in the sequence. Maybe!” It’s such trollish design, but that’s the A-Jax experience. A possibly amazing game that comes across as a giant middle finger to players.

I’m not naive. I get that we’re now firmly in the era of “coin-ops don’t make money if a player can last a long time on a single quarter.” Fine. But there’s situations in A-Jax that sure seem unsurvivable unless you preemptively move into the right spots. Unless you want to put time into memorizing the entire layout and how to manipulate things like the enemy spawns or the item drops (which change locations depending on where you’re at on screen), you’re not going to last. Hell, there’s even situations where I think you can only survive if you go against your shmup instinct and not shoot the formation of enemies swooping in to kill you. When you kill them, they launch their missiles immediately, giving you no room to dodge. I guess that’s a novel approach to risk/reward, but there doesn’t seem to be much of the “reward” side of the equation. And by the way, all that criticism is only against the 2D sections. Because three times in the game, this happens:

It looks like a cutscene in that screenshot, but actually these are the “3D” levels, and they’re really good, especially the bosses. I’ve seen plenty of examples of the “gigantic boss is actually the background” trick that classic games had to rely on, so when I say the trio of 3D bosses in A-Jax are some of the best examples of that method done in a way that’s totally convincing, I hope it means something. The 3D stages in general are very short, but memorable and exciting. The difficulty drastically scales back for them, too. It’s almost like they remembered that the whole point of video games is for the players to have fun, not for the sh*thead developers to treat players the same way sadistic kids armed with firecrackers treat bullfrogs.

So why are there only three of the “3D” stages, and more importantly, why are the stages ordered differently depending on which region’s ROM you’re playing? Dave shot down my original theory that it was a budget thing. He thinks this was meant to be a showcase for Konami’s new high performance, low cost 8-bit arcade system without over-saturating the technology or gameplay style for a hypothetical future game. As proof, he cites the fact that the international version starts with a 3D stage, while the original Japanese version opens with a 2D stage. But then a new theory came into being: Sega launched After Burner in July of 1987, five months before A-Jax released. With all due respect to A-Jax, despite the fact that it had a five month head start, After Burner looks a lot more futuristic and cutting edge. Mind you, I really liked the look of A-Jax’s 3D stuff, but it’s much slower and far less intense than After Burner. My gut instinct says the dev team was, at least in part, following the trend and the three stages are what they could whip out in four or five months. Either way, they’re the highlight of the game.

Part of me wishes that Konami had recognized how entertaining those 3D stages were and just sh*tcanned the 2D aspects. I’d rather have five or six sublime levels that last a minute or two each than the mean-spirited 2D levels. The other part of me wishes they just hadn’t gone into this with such a mean-spirited attitude to begin with. The 2D levels could be sick if they toned them back dramatically. What really sucks is A-Jax never got a console home port during the era, which would have certainly toned back the difficulty like every other Konami home port. This is not a NO! verdict that I want to give out. There’s moments of brilliance in A-Jax. There’s also moments where I literally couldn’t see what was killing me due to the screen being so spammed with bullets. There’s no instant respawning when you die. A-Jax is like building an amazing water slide and replacing the water with honey: it takes all the fun out of the experience and just makes a mess of things.
Verdict: NO!

Salamander
Platform: MSX
Released December 26, 1987
Developed by Konami
Never Released in North America
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Darn it. After Gradius 2 on the MSX, I really thought these MSX versions would run the table on YES! verdicts. Especially since this version of Life Force has permanent upgrades, just like Gradius 2. They’re acquired differently here, as you gain upgrades every fifteen “E” items you collect. These are found by destroying key enemies along the walls, and they turn you into a death machine. Seriously, the corkscrew lasers had my jaw literally drop when I first saw them. Look at this:

And there’s whole new bosses and levels, and some unexpected twists. Like, levels will scroll horizontal AND vertical, without your ship changing directions. You fly sideways when it happens, and it’s unexpected and kind of cool. This seems to check all the boxes that Gradius and Gradius 2 did, but those games kept up the pace as best as the MSX could handle. I don’t feel Salamander did at all. You move forward too slowly, but the challenge isn’t adjusted for it. I’m not even sure they used a modified version of the engine built for Gradius, as Salamander feels smaller, slower, and a lot less intense. It’s kind of silly at times, too. Like you can’t get the full experience without plugging a copy of Gradius 2 into the second cart slot. This would no doubt get corrected for a modern release, but there’s also a nonsensical bit where you can play the three middle levels in any order, but you have to play all three anyway. That’s not a positive, because they had to halt scaling to make it work. There’s no sense of increasing stakes.

Unlike a lot of NO! games, Salamander MSX isn’t a total stinker. The bosses are fun, as Gradius/Salamander bosses usually are. But, the game crawls along at such a sluggish pace that I did the unthinkable for this franchise: I was hitting the fast forward button on my emulator. I wasn’t dying from it, either, which is an especially damning indictment on its design. I could push the game forward, which is 3x to 4x the normal speed, for a second or two and not catch a stray bullet in the process. It’s not like I was doing this once or twice in early stages. I found myself still doing it on the last stage. The settings and themes weren’t that interesting and the level and enemy design is very dull, but even if they were better designed, inching forward as slowly as this version does would render them boring anyway. That should not be possible, ever. I’m heartbroken because I really thought I was in for a treat, but the MSX Salamander is simply too poorly paced to be all that fun.
Verdict: NO!

Thunder Cross
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1988
Developed by Konami
Included in Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection ($19.99)
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

This is the most obvious split decision I’ve ever made. No game has regional variations quite as far apart in quality as Thunder Cross. Well, and Xexex too, which I’ll get to later. For Thunder Cross, the Japanese build is one of the most inspired, enjoyable games I’ve played in the last year. A game that fundamentally wants to be an elite, popular game. And then it was sent overseas, where it apparently caught scurvy along the way. So, I have another split decision. Traditionally, I do the NO! version first, then follow it with the YES! variation. For Thunder Cross, I have to flip it around because it’s so unfathomable that a sublime game was DELIBERATELY transformed into a mediocre one. I want to spell out to my readers what a needlessly destructive design decision was made with Thunder Cross.

SPLIT DECISION – JAPANESE VERSION (aka ROM SET 1)

With Thunder Cross, Konami seemed to realize that the little options that players acquire are damn fun to have, so why not base an entire game around them? They’re frequently dropped until players get the max of four. Okay, so what’s the big deal there? Two amazing twists turn Thunder Cross into the best game in this feature yet (which will last until the start of the next review). The first twist is that, when you don’t have an option-specific power-up, the button for the options adjusts how spread-out they are. You can stretch them the length of the screen, or have them fly close by the main ship. It works wonderfully, too! Feels naturally intuitive and takes a minimum amount of gameplay to adjust to. Of course, you won’t get to use it that much because of twist #2: option-specific power-ups. Those flame throwers in the above picture? That’s one of them. There’s two more: some very generous bombs (they’re called napalm but they’re not) and lasers.

Weirdly, the lasers are the least satisfying of the three, by quite a margin too. They cut through everything but not in a way that offers a nice “POW” to it, for lack of a better term. I wasn’t a fan. The napalm and flamethrowers? The smile never vanished from my face. Now, they’re limited usage based on ammo and not a set time limit, and the catch is you lose the ability to space out the options until you run out of ammo. Presumably the game would be too easy if you could still do that. But, the good news keeps coming from Thunder Cross: it’s not stingy with drops at all. Even better is that the basic guns are just as fun as the option’s gun, and picking up the same gun twice in a row gives you an even more effective version of it. The vulcans are gigantic bullets that you can fire at a fairly high rate. There’s a laser, which isn’t to be confused with the gigantic lasers the options can equip. And then there’s my new favorite gun ever: the boomerang gun. It literally shoots boomerangs. That sounds delightful, but it gets better: THEY RICOCHET! OFF EVERYTHING! Enemies! Walls! It’s f*cking awesome!

Now, if there is a problem with Thunder Cross, it’s that the enemies and bosses are nowhere near as inspired or memorable in their design as the Gradius franchise. If they had looked or sounded half as interesting as what Gradius II is about to have (and it’s up next), this would be the new favorite to finish #1 in this feature. While I won’t argue anything looks bad in any way, Thunder Cross’ sprites are very generic. I just beat the game a few times and I still don’t think I could pick a single basic enemy out of a lineup, and the bosses aren’t much better. Here’s the first boss.

I mean, it’s not the worst by any means. But it feels like something that could be cut and pasted into any space shmup, doesn’t it? And other bosses are kind of in the same boat, as are the settings and enemy sprites. If not for the stellar gameplay, Thunder Cross would be so generic that it could practically be called Spaceship Video Games: The Video Game. All the personality is limited to the gameplay, and it speaks to how well done the gameplay is that Thunder Cross is oozing personality. It’s this strange juxtaposition of bland settings and bland character design that pops to a degree it shouldn’t because it’s impossible to be bored playing this version of Thunder Cross.

Some games are all-in on themes. Thunder Cross is all-in on a shoot ’em up experience. It’s such a generous game that it’s almost hard to believe it’s a coin-op. You respawn instantly when you die. Items are plentiful. Hell, the reason I kept dying is because the options are so visually distracting that I lost track of my ship. That’s not a joke, either. There was the occasional moment where the special weapons of the options were so big and covered the screen to such a degree that it caught me off guard when my ship suddenly blew up. There’s a BIG learning curve to anticipating when you’re being fired upon. Otherwise, this is probably one of the best of its breed I’ve played. I didn’t play these games in the order they’re listed here. At this point, it’s been a couple weeks since I played Gradius II, which has been the front-runner for best game in Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection ever since. If Thunder Cross had even a single memorable set-piece, this could have overtaken it. It’s probably one of the most forgettable good games ever made, but I suspect I won’t remember it within a year. Sure is fun while it lasts, though.
Verdict: YES! – $12 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection but this review is not over.

SPLIT DECISION – US VERSION (aka ROM SET 2)

Take the previous review that already hurt badly for personality. Remove all the power-ups but the vulcan bullets. And I do mean ALL the other power-ups, including all three special guns used exclusively by the options. Hell, they even removed the ability to space-out the options. The only kindness offered is starting with two options right off the bat, plus players have the ability to drop three bombs (which are just the napalm bombs from the Japanese version) every stage. You can’t even add to that. The end result is a version of Thunder Cross that has no pulse at all. No personality. No thrilling gunplay. This thing is dead. I poked at it with a stick and everything and it’s not even twitching. Call the coroner because Thunder Cross has been murdered!

Why on Earth would they do this? Apparently Konami had an institutional policy of beefing-up the difficulty for American releases. I guess this wasn’t just done for NES rental proofing like seen with Bayou Billy (which I reviewed in this feature). My father pointed out that arcade games are just a smaller scale form of rental so technically we could still call this a form of rental-proofing. The Japanese game is probably the easiest Konami shmup to grace arcades up to this point thanks to the wrecking ball strength of the guns. I don’t know if the only way to juice the difficulty was to strip out all the fun items, but it was probably the way that required the least amount of effort. They also added some cheap ass enemies, like ones that fire what sure seems to be unavoidable homing bullets that resulted in an automatic death every time, at least for me. Thunder Cross in Japan is one of the best shmups Konami has done. This version is one of the worst, and it feels like it was done with malice. I’ll never understand it. There’s no way to spin this in a logical way. For that reason, I declare this to be Konami’s dumbest move of the 1980s.
Verdict: NO!

Gradius II: Gofer no Yabou
aka Vulcan Venture
Platform: Arcade
Released March, 1988
Directed by Hiroyasu Machiguchi
Developed by Konami
Included in Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection ($19.99)
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
To Be Included in Gradius Origins
Wikis: Konami – Gradius – Strategy

I’m so mad at Gradius II. I mean, I love it, but it’s to blame for this definitive review. I only wanted to get some screenshots of the Crab encounter and a few other comparison shots for use in a review of Parodius Da!, the satire of Konami shoot ’em ups that’s still to come in this review. But, the Crab comes at the end of the game, which means playing through the whole game, which made me want to review every Konami shmup. I don’t know if the first Gradius or Gradius III would have done that to me. It’s not simply “more of the same” because the pacing and scale is historically good. That screenshot above of the first stage? It’s so grand in scale that it feels jarring for an opening level. Flying around suns while shooting fire dragons? That feels like a mid-to-late game trope. Putting it right at the start would come across as desperate in a lesser game. What a ballsy call starting Gradius II with this was. It’s putting your cards on the table and saying “imagine what the rest of the game will be like!”

Gradius II is a sequel that knows it’s a sequel. It’s the same base game, only with more loadouts (thus more player flexibility) and different set pieces. BIGGER set pieces. It also takes it for granted that people playing Gradius #2 probably are fans of Gradius #1 and don’t need to see the same kind of introductory stage or set pieces from the first game. It’s a space shmup. Really, set pieces, settings, and bosses are all you have, so go big or go home. The only aspect of Gradius II that feels like a close approximation of an already existing Gradius stage is the Moai level, which was also the lowest point of the game for me because it felt kind of like a rerun. A little bigger in scale, maybe, but I would think you really have to do more than that to stand out, especially in THIS game. Compare the picture on the left (Gradius I) to the one on the right (Mario is Missing. No wait, it’s Gradius II).

The Moai stages aren’t going to evolve all that much past that initial version in future installments of Gradius, either. Thankfully, the rest of the game is overflowing with memorable levels and some damn good boss fights. You can tell that everyone had ideas for the bosses, because the game ends on a massive boss rush, but not a boring “rematch the ones you already beat” boss rush. You fight not one, not two, but SIX bosses different from the ones you’ve already encountered in a row. Some are original designs while others are callbacks from the original Gradius and Salamander, but you didn’t already fight them in this game so it doesn’t count. I have no objection to bringing back old bosses from previous games in a segment like this, especially since this isn’t the actual finale of the game. Hell, the way they do it, it feels exactly like the final desperate act of a villainous enemy force staring down defeat. This was so successful the boss rush became a beloved staple of the franchise. This is also why I hate boss rushes that just repeat the same bosses you already did. Be like Gradius, developers!

I didn’t even mind the debut of one of the most pesky little bastards in the history of the medium: the Option Hunter. It’s an indestructible nuisance that shows up behind you and, after giving you a couple seconds to take evasive maneuvers, it lunges forward and snatches your options, potentially taking all of them if it hits the one closest to you. While touching it doesn’t kill YOU, once it has your options, they’re gone. You have to get new ones. This is the textbook definition of “keeping you honest” since you have to be hyper-aware of their lingering threat. If I had any one knock on Gradius II, it’s that the timing of when it appears isn’t elegant. If you’re going to create something like this, don’t tie it to when the player activates four options. Base it around the level design. They should have watched play testers, selected three or four segments throughout the game where players are more likely to go into cruise control, and stuck the option hunters there in order to keep players on their toes.

It goes without saying that Gradius II is one of the best shoot ’em ups ever, and in that regard, it’s almost boring to talk about it. It just doesn’t do anything wrong. Unlike some later Konami games, it never even feels like a bullet hell, at least on the default settings. The challenge is spot-on if you have experience and skill, but an average player can probably also get good at the genre just through practicing at Gradius II. It’s the right kind of challenge to be an excellent trainer game, even more than the original. What fascinates me most about Gradius II is that it’s the perfect game to educate game designers on how to do fan-pleasing sequels. Why? Because it’s such an uncomplicated game that it doesn’t require a close examination, yet the lessons you can glean from it are universal to gaming as a whole.

Anyone working in the industry who is developing a video game sequel, regardless of the genre, should play Gradius and Gradius II back-to-back in order to get an idea of how a sequel should scale. Or how to start a sequel. Or how to feel more extravagant without betraying the settings and theme. Or how to feel fresh while actually changing very little that made the first game successful enough to warrant a sequel in the first place. The only question I had was “does Gradius II make my short list of perfect games?” Pac-Man, Portal, the modern Tetris formula, the tiny but flawless NES indie Böbl,  and the pinball table Attack From Mars? It’s certainly close. At first, I thought the Moai stage should be disqualifying. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that, besides repeating the previous game, that stage doesn’t do anything wrong. While I continue to think about it, there’s one question I don’t need to ask: whether or not Gradius II is the perfect sequel. It is.
Verdict: YES! – $15 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Parodius
aka Parodius: The Octopus Saves the Earth
Platform: MSX
Developed by Konami
First Released April 28, 1988
Never Released in North America
NO MODERN RE-RELEASE
Read the Original Indie Gamer Chick Review
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

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Now that I’ve closely examined the Gradius/Salamander franchise, I appreciate the original MSX Parodius more. Oh, I still don’t think it’s a very good game. It could be, even without changing things like some of the level design or basic enemy design. Parodius is a fun, quirky game rendered a total snoozer by how damn spongy bosses are and how long some of the set-pieces are. Take the above segment. You fly into a small corridor and the ceiling caves in on you. That should be exciting, but after a minute the thing is still raining blocks on you, and it’s not exciting anymore. The sh*tty thing is, they should have already known the “stop scrolling and dodge the falling blocks” concept doesn’t really work as a thrilling set-piece because they tried it in Life Force for the NES and murdered the pace right before a wonderful boss fight. Well, this segment is like if you had to repeat THAT prelude to the King Tut fight twenty times in a row. Octopus Saves the Earth needed someone in charge to say “lose the falling blocks” or “cut that boss’ health by 75%.”

Appreciate was the wrong word. I admire that Parodius is a satire that also tries to stand on its own as a fully-realized original shoot ’em up. That’s in contrast to the first “major” Parodius game, Parodius Da!, which largely just reskinned set-pieces from other games. I’m sure there’s an argument as to which way is a parody and which is a satire. I’m pretty sure a true parody is actually more like what Parodius Da! does. Either way, this MSX original really isn’t cynical. There’s heart and soul to Parodius, and it just isn’t as fun because of pacing problems that go beyond normal MSX technical limitations. Sadly, one of the last reviews of this feature is a PSP remake of it, only it just eliminates the slice-scrolling without actually touching the gameplay issues. I’d love to see this remade entirely, with re-balanced bosses and maybe removal of the white bell segments in the final level, which I don’t really think work all that well. I’m happy I replayed Parodius to make sure I got it right the first time, and I did: really close to being a YES!, but not quite good enough.
Verdict: NO!

Devastators
aka Garuka
Platform: Arcade
Released September, 1988
Developed by Konami
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Listing at Konami Wiki

For all the nasty things I’m about to say, keep in mind that Devastators is getting a YES! It’s fine. It’s also got more problems than a math test. Now, I’m writing this review about a week after completing the re-review of Konami’s coin-op G.I. Joe (which I’ve already reviewed at IGC) which I played co-op with the kids for this feature. When I showed them this, sans the title screen, all three said some variation of “you didn’t tell me G.I. Joe had a sequel/was a sequel!” Devastators and G.I. Joe clearly shares a connection, though oddly enough, the original 1988 game offers a far more nuanced offensive game and a much, much stronger defensive game. It’s also a perfect example of how sometimes a game’s audio/visuals can override your senses and make the experience feel different than the actual gameplay suggests it should.

You have to manually scroll forward and the sense of speed or progress is, well, let’s say “less than energetic.” For that reason, Devastators feels like one of the slower run & gun games I’ve played, but is it really? The actual tempo of the action is on par with any other run & gun game, with tons of small enemies to gun down broken-up by more dangerous vehicles or lookout towers. Even though that tempo is constantly upbeat, it still feels like you’re barely crawling forward. Perception is reality, and so a game that’s basically non-stop running, dodging, and shooting still feels like it’s drag racing tectonic plates. It’s also extremely repetitive. The closest it comes to a set-piece is a level where you’re navel-high in water, but it doesn’t change the feel of the game. Plus, the immersion doesn’t quite click when rockets take out most helicopters with one shot, but not the bosses that are often not much bigger or as armored as the choppers are.

Now, if you can tell yourself that the slowness is an optical illusion (and I cannot stress enough: IT IS an illusion) and Devastators is paced correctly, you’re in for a solid but unspectacular twenty to thirty minutes of action. You have a default gun and most enemies function as little more than cannon fodder. Basic baddies die from a single shot, Contra-style. Ones in yellow uniforms drop either a form of grenades that are used for the normal enemies or a rocket launcher that targets only vehicles (including bosses) or other structures. Item drops are above average in terms of generosity, but special weapons are mapped to a single button. This causes problems.

Which type of weapon you use depends on whether the game locks onto a target or not, but the locking on is too fickle. This is especially noticeable in co-op, where it seems to always take longer for the system to decide which player is targeting which thing. It’s all done automatically. Konami was very wise with basing boss fights largely around them. Some games have bosses so spongy it’s tolerable. Devastators hits the sweet spot. Just right. It’s a damn shame it’s so unmemorable in design, but the gameplay is solid. Okay, so suspension of disbelief is out the window. Like, it’s a boat. Shouldn’t a rocket that obliterates a helicopter with a single shot do the same to a hovercraft?

Maybe the greatest challenge is the timer. You can only really stop a few times to take out the enemies, and if you’re playing single-player, you really do have to keep moving forward. If time runs out, it’s game over regardless of how many lives you have. This probably further contributes to the sensation of slowness. So does the act of firing the rockets since the sprite fully animates pulling out the launcher, aiming, and firing. You can die in the space between pressing the button to fire and the rocket actually launching. Thankfully, the explosions are VERY satisfactory. When the lock-on for the rockets happens, I always smirked just a little.

Okay, so Devastators isn’t going to change your life. You won’t sit around thinking “golly, I wish I had heard of this game sooner.” It’s fine. Nothing special, but also a damn cathartic use of twenty to thirty minutes. I thought it was pretty decent. The kids were nowhere close to me on that and thought it was barely okay because of that perception of slowness. Worth a look? Yep. Should it be in Arcade Archives? Absolutely. Is it a game you should buy on day one when it happens? Nope. Wait for a discount, but then get it. It’s one of those games that’s as basic as an undressed salad, but it has a sense of moxie that elevates it. Now if only it had a sense of pep in its step, it might have been one of the all-time underrated coin-ops.
Verdict: YES! – $4 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gyruss
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
First Released November 18, 1988
Developed by Konami
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Wikis: Konami – Strategy

I approached the NES Gyruss with a sense of cautious optimism, which is a wishy-washy way of saying I thought it might be one of the most boring games in this entire feature. I knew that Konami reworked the coin-op by adding bombs and bosses, which was the source of the wary hope. I also knew it retained the 360° playfield that takes place on stark black background and the same core gameplay, which is why I thought I was in for a world of suck. Thankfully, it became pretty clear pretty quickly that Gyruss on the NES is a vast improvement over the arcade version. The game cuts a much better tempo, with mini-bosses and genuinely challenging big bosses. The enemies have a nicer snap to them when you blow them up, and their designs look so much bigger and more detailed, which makes the whole premise that much more exciting. It’s, dare I say, kind of immersive.

Now remember, the coin-op has basically perfect game mechanics, and it just didn’t add-up to a fun game. Those perfect mechanics made the trip home. Gyruss plays great, with excellent shooting action and accurate controls. The worst part of the coin-op also carries over: the setting is still boring, and there’s no getting around it. A plain black background with dots to simulate forward movement is exhausting after so many stages. There is something resembling a set-piece right before you fight the last boss: you have to avoid a series of fireballs. This sequence is fairly easy and goes on too long, especially since it’s the prelude to the big finale. Maybe the final boss was playing 4D chess and trying to put me to sleep.

That one fireball sequence is the only part where the pace dies. The rest of Gyruss NES has a peppy tempo, though if you play the Famicom Disk System version like I did, you will have to suffer through a few load times in exchange for getting a proper ending that’s exclusive to the Japanese build. The remarkable thing is the pace is kept-up despite adding more levels, bringing the total to forty. Each planet is divided into three waves, with the first wave being third-person cylindrical Galaga, just like the coin-op. But then, the second wave introduces a mini-boss like arrangement of pods that continuously release enemies until they’re defeated. At first, the third and final wave of each planet feels like it’s going to be a slightly more intense rehash of the first wave, but after slaying the last enemy, a boss appears.

The boss battles serve as legitimate highlights and actually do put up a fight. Most of them have a similar structure: blow up all the modules, with each level adding another module to the core structure. They’re almost all fun to fight and certainly good enough that you want to keep playing just to see what the next one will be. There’s one single dull boss: a trio of ordinary looking spaceships that you fight at the same time that just kind of didn’t do anything for me, but thankfully, it’s a one-off whiff. In addition to all the excellent bosses, levels have unique enemies, though they’re not totally successful in making the stages feel unique. The black void setting prevents that, of course. While the potential of the coin-op’s mechanics is finally realized thanks to this NES port, I think we’re still waiting on the best version of Gyruss. Apparently the Xbox 360 had better backgrounds, but that doesn’t help me much today.

I’m really grateful for the NES Gyruss because it proves how valuable unique settings for each-level are. Even if they’re not interactive, it’s still important because those facades create a unique experience. There are so many games that let you take the role of an intergalactic fighter pilot. There has to be thousands of them. Some of them play badly. Gyruss is fortunate enough to play splendidly, especially on the NES, but that alone doesn’t help you stand out in a crowded field. Having awesome gameplay is great and obviously should be the most important thing, but it’s not everything. As good a time as I had playing the NES Gyruss, I’m not entirely sure I’ll remember it a year from now. It’s a game where the setting feels like it’s still using a placeholder. Imagine Gradius if every stage was a stark black void. That’s what Gyruss actually is, and it’s not better for it. With that said, I really enjoyed playing this port because of its excellent space combat punctuated by enjoyable boss battles. It’s just a better game than the coin-op. The only thing that’s frustrating is this could still be an all-timer if someone could craft an inspired backdrop for it.
Verdict: YES! – $5 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gradius II
Platform: Famicom
Released December 16, 1988
Directed by Shigeharu Umezaki and Setsu Muraki 
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius – Strategy

Gradius II is one of the most technologically advanced games on the Famicom. This is likely the reason it never came out in the United States, as it utilized the special VRC4 mapper chip. For the unwashed masses, the Famicom/NES was designed to play a nearly arcade-perfect version of Donkey Kong, and to a lesser extent Donkey Kong Jr and Popeye. That’s it, and hell, by time the original Mario Bros. came out, the Famicom was already incapable of making it look like the coin op, causing a massive downgrade in graphics and animation. But, Nintendo kind of knew that the Famicom would also be future proofed, only it wouldn’t be by the inhouse hardware itself. It would be expanded via the in-development Famicom Disk System and by the ability of Famicom cartridges to house more advanced chips and sub-processors. This is GROSSLY over-simplifying things, but in a nutshell, it’s the guts they put in the carts themselves that beefed-up the native capability of the NES. Thus a platform designed specifically to play games that looked like this, and ONLY this:

Could instead, with additional chips housed within the cartridge, look like this:

Wow!

By the way, the left and right games in that second set of pictures never came out in America. Crisis Force and TwinBee 3 (coming up in the feature) and Gradius II both used the complicated VRC4. So did Konami all-star stink bombs Wai Wai World and Wai Wai World 2. Neither of those came out stateside either. Now, the cost and complexity isn’t the only reason why these games never came out in America. Life Force used the VRC3, and IGC favorite Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse used an even more complex special chip, the VRC6. Why did they come out in America but all those others didn’t? The general consensus seems to be that Konami determined a sequel to Castlevania was worth the time and effort to convert to the NES because it would sell well in America, but the other games would not, and that was that.

Whatever their reasons were, I think they made a BIG mistake passing on Gradius II. Unlike the first game, this one could have been marketed towards cutting edge NES graphics. Let’s say it didn’t release until March of 1990, a month after Super Mario 3 released in the states. I think western audiences would have rewarded Konami by making Gradius II, arguably the best looking 8-bit Konami game on a Nintendo platform, a million-seller. You can’t go off of JUST the sales of the first Gradius. Not when the sequel looks THIS good and would have been so easy to market from a visual standpoint. Especially the bosses, which would have looked great on the back of a box, or even in TV ads. We’ll never know if Konami made the right call, and the devil’s advocate in me is shouting that this would have been a relatively expensive gamble and some key aspects might have needed to be removed entirely. Notably, the voice call-outs when you activate power-ups? Those would have likely been cut. But, one way to look at it: what was a better prospect? Gradius II or an action game based on a short-lived roller derby show?

Gradius II on the Famicom is a fantastic game, but it’s a fantastic game with two major problems.

MAJOR PROBLEM #1: Constant Slowdown. And it’s not a nothingburger. In a game that constantly pushes the limits of NES sprites, along with allowing players to use four options at once (my jaw literally dropped), slowdown is constant throughout the game. Unlike sections of Gradius 1, Life Force, or Contra on the NES, it doesn’t always lend it an unintentional “bullet time” quality. That only works if you’re dealing with tight squeezes, regardless of whether they’re environmental or enemy projectiles, but in Gradius II for Famicom, it happens because of massive sprites that fill the screen. Remember the memorable crystal asteroid segment in the coin-op game? Even though it’s VASTLY scaled-back on the Famicom to the point that the threat is minimal (especially if you have a full load-out), the game chugs along to the point that excitement is sapped out of it.

MAJOR PROBLEM #2: Imperfect Collision Detection. The collision detection isn’t sprite-perfect. While the box isn’t so inaccurate that it completely ruins the game, it’s hard to intuitively know how close you can get to some of the obstacles. “Inconsistent” is the word I’d use to describe the collision. You’ll feel it right from the start. On the left, I’m alive, and on the right, I’m already dead and exploding. Spot the difference, if you can. Did you figure it out?

The game couldn’t draw the solar flare as fat as it was meant to be, so it killed me because the NEXT frame, the one that would be lethal, would be the true representation of the danger element. When you straddle the cutting edge, you’re bound to get nicked once or twice. Take a look at this screenshot, where the tiny solar flare that killed me isn’t drawn at all, until it suddenly is.

I’m really not convinced either of the shields are accurate, especially the forcefield that surrounds you. There were a couple times where I escaped a barrage of bullets and my shield was still depleted despite nothing hitting it. I suppose it was close enough that I’ll concede the possibility there was a grazing shot. And yet, in some sections, it seems to be pretty close to perfect. Enemies bullets? I never remember a single one that felt like it was shady. How about solid walls? Nope. If anything, Gradius II is extremely generous about them. Take a look at these two screens. On the left, I’m barely dodging relatively large bombs, and on the right, most of my sprite is enveloped by the floor, but I’m dying from neither.

This tells me that most of the things that feel like “collision” issues aren’t so much the ship or bullets, but the large-scale objects. The fires in the opening level. Boss sprites. Large energy blasts. It’s not nothing, as there were plenty of times I said “hold on, that shouldn’t have killed me” and games like this sort of need to be perfect. Gradius II, like Gradius I, doesn’t instantly respawn you, and besides that, you lose your loadout. The good news is you don’t have to be a God at Nintendo to finish this. It even uses the exact same thirty lives code that Contra does at the title screen. And Gradius II is certainly a game worth playing on the Famicom. It changes a lot from the coin-op, including new bosses. Well, “new” being relative, as they’re copy-and-pasted from Life Force. But, it feels fresh, even if you played the sublime coin-op. It even has double-upgradable lasers/ripples and, after getting your fourth option, you can activate it a fifth time to get ten or so seconds of the options circling around you.

While its technical hang-ups are frustrating, Famicom Gradius II is also such a dang fun game. Like so many home ports on this list, Konami can’t argue that it’s redundant to include the Famicom game when the coin-op is in Gradius Origins. As someone playing these games often back-to-back with the arcade counterparts, trust me, they don’t clash. They complement each other. It’s impossible to argue that the Famicom version isn’t historically significant. New technology had to be invented to make Gradius II on the Famicom possible. That seems like a big deal to me. Depending on how you feel about the first Mother game (Earthbound Origins or whatever they call it these days) it’s probably the biggest Famicom-exclusive game, and for my money, it’s the best one too.
Verdict: YES! – $6 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gofer no Yabou: Episode II
aka Nemesis 3: The Eve of Destruction
Platform: MSX
Released January 27, 1989
Developed by Konami
Never Released in North America
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

The final game of Gradius trilogy on the MSX not only assures that the franchise gets a clean three-for-three sweep, but I walked away thinking “they really should remake these as if they were arcade games.” Getting the negative out of the way first: there’s occasional moments of slowness, though never to the degree Salamander on MSX featured. I only found myself fast forwarding cut scenes. Don’t get me wrong: Nemesis 3 isn’t as perfectly fine-tuned for MSX as Gradius 2 was (obviously not counting the “now do it again, only backwards” part), but it does a solid job. It also drops the “flying into the boss core to gain a new weapon” feature from Gradius 2 in favor of hiding upgrades in the game. Nemesis 3 is a space easter egg hunt, and this time, it’s not optional. Oh, some of the weapons are, and they’re pretty well hidden. I only found three in my play-session. Unlike Gradius 2, there’s no guides online for this one. So when this happened:

I wasn’t looking for it, didn’t expect it, and never figured out exactly what it did until after the game was finished. It turns out, it unlocked the good ending. Yea me! I did get two new guns, but there were SO MANY I didn’t get, and I wouldn’t have even thought to look except after beating nine levels, I was told I needed to find three maps that were hidden. I’d found none of them and had to replay them. Thankfully it’s not a full restart and you only have to replay the levels with the map pieces. The verdict might have turned out differently, otherwise. BUT, you do have to keep redoing them until you find the maps. By this point, I’d played enough home versions of Gradius that I sort of knew the logic of how they would be hidden, so once I knew I was looking for stuff, it wasn’t that hard to find them. If you don’t have the patience to search, spoilers for their locations, and the location of the Extra Shield System (which unlocks the good ending) are located after the first picture in the slideshow below.

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The other big difference is this is the only game in the Gradius MSX trilogy where you choose your starting load-out. You get four configurations to choose from, and after picking them, you even get to choose how you want your options to behave. I don’t recommend doing what I did in my first run and having them circle around you. What was fun and novel as a temporary power-up in previous games became an annoyance when it came to lining up shots. Thankfully, all this added content isn’t going to waste like it would have with Salamander. This is going to be a game you want to replay, with so much hidden stuff that isn’t THAT hard to find once you get a feel for the logic of it, along with excellent level design and memorable boss encounters. Maybe it’s just the placebo effect, but I think this even controlled the best, with the speed boosts scaling better than ANY version of the Gradius item bar I’ve seen. This is a really outstanding game.

Nemesis 3 finished as my favorite MSX game in this feature. Hell, I think it has to be a serious contender for the best MSX game of all-time, and maybe the best game in the genre to never get an official American release. It’s easily one of the best shoot ’em ups of the 1980s. Seriously, we’ve reached the point where not including the MSX games in Gradius Origins is an actual gaming tragedy. This game is a little over six months older than I am, but in thirty-six years, it’s never gotten a US release in any form. None of the MSX Gradius games have, and it’s long overdue. It’s tragic that Konami is throwing its hat in the ring for a big prestige collection like Gradius Origins but leaving the home games out, especially the MSX games that most people have never even seen, let alone played.

Maybe they’ve got plans for another collection that includes all the home games, or maybe they’ll do them as DLC. I’m not fine with that anymore. These MSX games are good enough to be more than just bonus features. They deserve better. I didn’t know about them before this feature, but they’re downright legendary among MSX fans and hardcore Gradius fans. It didn’t take long for me to understand why. That might be the most profound thing I can say about the MSX Gradius trilogy. None of these are optimized for MSX2 or MSX2+, mind you. Well, there’s an MSX2 reworking of Gradius 2 that was bundled with a Salamander collection. In fact, it’s the final review of this feature. Not that it matters, because none of these games are celebrated by Konami today. That’s a horrible miscarriage of justice. These three titles should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of the games in the franchise, and if they did, they would still manage to stand very, very tall.
Verdict: YES! – $10 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

TwinBee 3: Poko Poko Daimaō
Platform: Famicom
Released September 29, 1989
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – TwinBee – Strategy

After the first couple stages of TwinBee 3, I really thought this would waltz to a NO! and I would be glad to be done with the Famicom run of this franchise. For all its strengths, the Famicom hardware just couldn’t do TwinBee as a series justice. The first level exemplified that. That opening stage in TwinBee 3 is an epic disaster. Somehow it’s both too conservative in terms of appearance, enemy attack patterns and level pacing while also trying way too hard to be quirky and aloof with its enemy design. It’s one of the most awkward failures I’ve seen on the NES. I want to especially single-out the use of colors, because the greens and sky blues make for such a boring shooter. Truly boring, to the point that it’s kind of exhausting right from the start.

And it’s not like TwinBee 3 had done nothing right. From the very start, I recognized that the bombing mechanic was as generous with the aiming and collision boxes as the original coin-op had been. This is also the first of the Famicom games that does damage to each arm instead of one shot costing you the ability to drop bombs. So it’s an upgrade in the sense that you’re getting a more arcade-like experience. But it didn’t help because the opening stage is a slog, and the second stage is only barely better. Good sprite work. No excitement. I was so grateful the game only has five levels. At this point, with the exception of the boss fights, TwinBee 3 felt like a game saturated in flop sweat.

But then, something weird happened. Well, actually, let me go back just a little bit, because the first and second bosses were very memorable. These could have been Parodius bosses for how wacky they are. BUT, unlike the levels themselves, it doesn’t feel like a lampshade-wearing class clown trying too hard. Okay, maybe the first boss a little bit. I mean, look at it:

Ohhhhhkay. But regardless, the bosses were legitimate highlights. In fact, I’d go as far as calling them elite-level Konami shmup bosses. Well, at least for home consoles of this era. Now, here’s the weird part. After the second boss, the level design started to work for me. Enemies and attack patterns found their teeth, while the personality also started to feel less forced and more inspired. Strangely, the third level feels more like an opening stage to a TwinBee game, right down to the setting.

The fourth level was good too before the game cratered with yet another bore of a final level and the weakest of the five bosses. Okay, so maybe the verdict wasn’t that close because TwinBee 3 bores more often than not. But, its highest highs are far more impactful than its lowest lows. I can’t stress enough: the first four bosses are very fun to fight, and they’re cleverly staged, too. The second one is themed like a concert. The third one is a dragon, but instead of fighting it, you’re fighting the plaque on its teeth. No kidding, but it totally works and should make any “top 100 bosses of all-time” list. TwinBee 3, when it hits its stride, is just so oozing with originality and personality that you can’t help but be charmed.

The fourth boss isn’t quite as unique as the second and third bosses, but it’s also a delight to fight. These muddied the waters of my verdict somewhat. So, I focused on the core gameplay to make the decision. TwinBee 3 doesn’t offer a radical upgrade over previous games. It’s so short at only five levels that it feels like an all-vertical expansion pack for Stinger. The boss graphics look fantastic, and some of the enemies sprites are pretty good, but the backgrounds are mostly uninspired. The combat hasn’t advanced at all, either. Besides the generous bomb blast radius, the best thing I can say about TwinBee 3 is it seems to have put more thought into making the three-way valuable instead of a gun to avoid. But it’s just not enough. I also disagree with Dave that the sacrifices made for TwinBee 3’s co-op mode are what wrecked the core gameplay. No, I think this game is so clearly a victim of the limited Famicom technology, even with the legendary VRC4 (the same memory mapper that made Gradius II Famicom possible) that it kind of hurts my heart. TwinBee 3 is far and away the best of the Famicom TwinBees, but I’m very happy to be done with this phase of the series.
Verdict: NO!

Gradius III
Platform: Arcade
Released December, 1989
Directed by Hiroyasu Machiguchi
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
To Be Included in Gradius Origins
Wikis: Konami – Gradius – StrategyWiki

Well, we’ll always have the arcade Gradius II. The coin-op version of Gradius III gets off to a scorching hot start, but when it wants your game to be over, it really wants it. The arcade game has a variety of ROMs from different regions, but across all ROMs, even on the lowest setting, Gradius III is just punishing to the point that it’s boring. It’s also a game that’s so uniformly affected by slowdown that it’s kind of jaw dropping. In rare instances where I had to not shoot anything and reposition myself on the screen, I would also be startled by the movement speed of all the stuff on screen suddenly moving like any normal game. Now granted, there’s so much slowdown in the seventy-six games in this feature that it’s like I was reviewing games inside the event horizon of a black hole. But Gradius III is certainly among the worst.

In theory, the slowdown should make the game easier, but Gradius III’s problems aren’t JUST the amount of bullets or enemy attack patterns. I felt that the collision detection wasn’t always predictable or intuitive. When you have sections of the game that look like this:

Your collision better be absolutely perfect, and Gradius III’s isn’t. The box is certainly not pixel-perfect, and at this point in the existence of the franchise, with large-scale danger elements like the malicious soap bubbles above, you want to be able to intuitively know what’s safe and what isn’t. Some segments are worse than others. During the boss battle of the Moai level, the heads spit out inflatable Moai bullets. In addition, even getting near the statues seemed to cause my ship to explode even when my sprite wasn’t touching them.

I’m not going to go too in-depth with Gradius III’s coin-op because it’s universally agreed that the Super NES version is superior. Here’s the thing though: I’m having fun and hopefully you are too with this imaginary 76 game collection of Konami pew-pew-a-thons. But in reality, a Gradius collection that’s literally being marketed as “the definitive” Gradius collection will NOT include that famous and acclaimed SNES port. I have a problem with that. So far in this feature, coin-ops have taken a beating compared to their home console little siblings. I don’t dare to presume that I should speak for every gamer, but I think fans of this genre should be outraged by the illusion of value Konami is presenting. You’re getting “all” the arcade ROMs, but those ROMs are less fun versions of the games.

Eighteen ROMs for seven games. That’s Gradius Origins. But the ROMs that have the highest appeal? Those are missing. Gradius III has a lot of fans, but most of those fans are fans of the Super NES game, even though it cuts a lot of content. But even the deleted content is mostly a plus. The biggest loss, in opinion, is the memorable battle with the dragon on the fire level. Awesome fight, but only the second half of that battle, where it becomes the typical dragon MADE of fire is present in the SNES game. On the other hand, the Moai boss, which was as cheap as cheap gets in the coin-op, is rendered into a typical enjoyable Gradius boss on the SNES. Easily the biggest win in the deleted scenes department is a tedious sequence where you avoid blocks that dart at you unpredictably that might genuinely be the most boring moment of any Gradius game.

When the best part of a port is that it deletes sequences from the original, maybe that’s a sign the original is in dire shape. Gradius III has fans, but very few are fans of the coin-op. When I reviewed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time for the SNES, I wasn’t as experienced then as I am now with retro games and was certain it had to be one of the first home ports that was superior to the coin-op, and I got several “what about Gradius III?” replies. And they were all correct!

It’s baffling to me that anyone would make a game like coin-op Gradius III even for arcades. If you think of the arcade game as an advertisement for the home game, at first it seems to make a little sense. Players can’t sit and plug quarter after quarter into a machine and expect to beat a game this difficult, but the promise of a home version played on your couch, with unlimited credits and more generous gameplay can be quite enticing. Does it really make, though? In the case of Gradius III, if I had played the coin-op before the SNES game existed, I would’ve had no interest in the home game. I think Gradius III’s packaging in Gradius Origins might be the most damning indictment that Konami doesn’t understand their own catalog anymore.
Verdict: NO!

Space Manbow
Platform: MSX2
Released December 21, 1989
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Space Manbow is often considered to be either a spin-off or the second game in the Thunder Cross series because it was actually intended to be a port of that coin-op before Konami got cold feet and made an original game. It’s actually got a mechanical fish theme to it, as both your ship and the bosses all resemble various aquatic life. Thankfully, as an MSX2 game, it’s far more advanced, as you can see from the very impressive sprite work. Mechanically, while the scrolling still feels a bit on the jerky side, it’s much improved over all the previous MSX games in this feature in the sense that it feels like you’re moving forward and not loading an entire new screen every split second. It even has a convincing parallax scrolling effect. But, gameplay is king, and Space Manbow is a solid space shooter with mammoth bosses and some damn inspired level design.

The gameplay is more of a traditional shmup without the Gradius item bar. Besides speed-ups, missiles, and options, the game only gives you two types of guns via item pick-up. The twist is that you can power-up those guns by collecting energy points. Energy gradually fades out if you don’t keep collecting it, but if you can keep it above eight points, whatever weapon you’re using becomes stronger. I was pretty annoyed by the fact that the energy doesn’t stop draining in the pause in action between the end of a level and the start of a boss fight. The bosses are well staged as they emerge and they’re certainly worthy of an over-the-top introduction, but from a gameplay perspective, it’s dead air that’s actively costing you. Manbow also goes through extended stretches where it doesn’t provide any enemies with the potential to drop the power points. In fairness, once I maxed out, I never dipped under it.

Okay, so I wish there were more guns, but I’m always going to want that with this genre. Besides, Manbow has a few more twists, my favorite of which is related to the options. In Manbow, you can change which way they’re aiming with the press of a button. What’s really impressive is despite the fact that these are items that you have to pick up, they weren’t afraid to lean heavily into level design optimized for this. Manbow isn’t limited just to left-to-right scrolling, but with the options being able to shoot in four directions, there’s no time to catch your breath during the actual stages. Manbow is easily the most up-tempo of the Konami MSX shmups. There’s also a handful of scrolling-based traps, some of which penalize you for moving too soon, while others penalize you for waiting too long. Like with these spinning blades:

If you enter them too soon, you will die because you can’t see that it’s actually a pair of them, synced in a way where there’s no room to dodge until the screen has scrolled enough. Again, that’s fine, because the important thing is this type of design isn’t overdone. I really can’t say enough good things about Space Manbow. Yea, I wish it gave players more guns, or maybe just more tiers of upgrades for your weapons. But, there’s more than enough great game here to make up for the limited arsenal. The setting and graphics are original enough. The bosses aren’t too spongy. Most important of all is that, for the most part, it has pitch-perfect timing of when to introduce a set-piece.

Space Manbow is apparently one of the most sought-after games among MSX fans, with copies regularly fetching hundreds of dollars. I was skeptical, but the more I played it, the more I kept redoing my initial value estimate and eventually coming to the conclusion that Konami could slap on a $9.99 price tag as a solo release, $2 more than any of the Arcade Archives releases in this feature cost, and it’d be worth it. I still favor including Space Manbow in a collection, but Konami, you’re sitting on a goldmine with this one. Believe the hype, folks. This is outstanding!
Verdict: YES! – $10 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection
And if you care about these things, I still give the slight-slight-slight edge to Gradius 3 for “Best MSX game.”

Aliens
Platform: Arcade
Released January, 1990
Directed by Satoru Okamoto
Developed by Konami
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Read the Original Indie Gamer Chick Review
Listing at Konami Wiki

How to make this Aliens review different from the one I just posted? Well, that was strictly based on a single co-op session with my nephew. This time, I played solo, though I did decide to stick to the same ROM from the previous session since the other ones require you to press a button every time you fire. In this game? That’s asking for your hand to grow sentience and strangle you. Now, what’s especially strange is that I called the co-op experience “empty calories gaming.” I stand by that, but I can’t help but wonder if my nephew and I went into this with the wrong mindset. Neither of us could stay alive during our session and had to constantly press the start button to load another credit. In the review, I estimated it would take $5 in quarters per player on the default setting. Playing solo, I just legitimately beat the game without cheating in under $1. Okay, I bumped the life count up and set it to “EASY” but I still did it.

Playing this solo didn’t exactly feel like a totally different experience. If the co-op was mindless fun, the solo game is a more deliberate, slower, less chaotic fun. I was wrong about the enemies having no attack patterns. I think that happened in co-op because enemies got confused targeting us, as if they were so excited to have double the meal that they didn’t know what to do with themselves. And who among us hasn’t been there? Well, when playing single-player, there’s very basic attack formations and patterns that are pretty easy to clock. The same goes for the bosses, only two of which I found to be “problematic.” In addition to the spongy and cheap last boss, there was this thing:

And my problems with it were situational. It turns out the homing missiles are a lousy gun to bring into the fight, because they’re so slow and its vulnerability window so small that I couldn’t get more than a single hit at a time on it. As soon as I lost a life and was left with the default machine gun, the fight ended about thirty seconds later. Honestly, I ended up admiring the level and enemy design a whole lot more this time around. It helps that I was actually able to play around with the weapon drops. I let TJ have the majority of them when we played, and I never really got to use the robot suit. This time, I did, and the game did revert back to “mindless fun” for a couple minutes.

Aliens is one strange cat. This might be the first time that a 90s Konami arcade game is better in solo than in co-op. Which isn’t to say Aliens is bad in co-op. My YES! verdict remains intact. But, it’s just pure mayhem. As a solo game, where it’s you and you alone against the hordes of aliens, this is actually a pretty dang decent white knuckle action game. It’s still not the deepest game by any stretch. But putting forth a good faith effort to beat the game on a single credit was actually quite exhilarating. When I made it past the first level without taking a single hit, I literally paused the game to tell my friends that this feels like the ideal way to play this game. So if you’re playing this in an arcade and someone tries to join you, tell them “get away from here you bitch!” I did a thing there. It’s from Aliens. You get it.
Verdict: YES! – $6 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Trigon
aka Lightning Fighters
Platform: Arcade
Released February, 1990
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Listing at Konami Wiki

There’s a lot of games in this feature that benefit from co-op. Mostly because you can respawn instantly, which turns a lot of games from likely unbeatable to, you know, beatable. Trigon though, is tailored specifically for co-op, and not because there’s a really cool mechanic that requires a second player to work. It’s because a lot of enemies and bosses take so many bullets that I’m not even sure a single person can shoot them enough to authentically defeat them. Trigon is one of those games where, if you take too long fighting a boss, the fight just ends. In this game, they don’t self-destruct like in Gradius, but rather they just sort of drift to the bottom of the screen and you eventually scroll past them. It’s as if you put up such a pitiful fight that it made the act of trying to kill you just too awkward. For my one and only full single player run, I’m pretty sure I only beat four out of the nine big bosses. I’m not counting rematches, either. During the boss rush in stage eight where you replay several previous bosses, I didn’t knock out a single one until the end of the level, when it gave me a new boss to fight.

But it’s not just bosses. There’s big enemies you encounter during the levels that have similar sponginess. For the mid-level big bads, I had to rewind so that I was shooting them the moment they spawned onto the screen. Any deviation from shooting them as soon as they appeared likely meant they wouldn’t die, and this is with full power-ups and a drone that only appears in single player. Against the big bosses? Even with heavy use of rewind and save states, I couldn’t pump enough bullets into them to OUTRIGHT win. Maybe the game knew I had epilepsy and was sparing me since the screen flashes red when you win? Considerate of it, I guess. But really, does anyone want to play a game where you can sit and shoot a thing that much and still not win? The bosses would be exciting if the fights didn’t last as long as they do. Even the bosses I did manage to defeat were boring because the fights keep going long after the excitement wears off. But, this is even true of co-op. Look at this boss:

IT’S SO COOL! A bunch of smaller ships form a bigger robot. It’s an evil Megazord! Neat! But like so many other bosses, there’s no elegant attack pattern to it. Trigon, even on the easy toggles, is sort of a bullet hell, especially in stages that follow this one. The big hook with co-op, the titular “Trigon” itself, is a drone that stays between the players, who have to cooperate to aim it. You can see it in the pictures above, shooting the big blue bullets. It’s actually really fun to use, depending on which of the four guns you get. Well, except one problem: if one player dies, the Trigon is lost. What would have been interesting is to make it a permanent perk of co-op. Instead, it’s an item you pick-up, and they were pretty stingy with distributing it. I’ve been playing tons of shoot ’em ups, but nobody around me has. They couldn’t stay alive unless I cheated.

That’s the catch-22 with teamwork-based co-ops: if both players aren’t equally as good, you probably won’t be able to have all that much fun with the co-op mechanics. I didn’t even get to finish Trigon co-op because neither my father nor TJ wanted to sit and play a game where they had to continuously mash the fire button. There’s only two basic gun upgrades. Only one of them has autofire and neither of them are fun, novel, or imaginative. I offered to turn autofire on by the emulator, but they declined, and I know why: because they wanted to be done with Trigon. That’s because Trigon is very, very boring without that drone, which again, they don’t give you nearly enough AND IT’S LITERALLY THE NAME OF THE GAME! I didn’t even get to try all the Trigon weapons. There’s four. They were like “peace out” before I even found out what the third was. That meant I had to gut it out in single player.

Of all the games in this feature, Trigon is the game I had to cheat the most to see what the ending looked like. No other game is close, in fact. For most other games, I’ve reached the point where, if I jack-up the life count, I can actually do pretty good when I try to win legitimately. I could never do that in Trigon. In single player, when you die, you’re reset back to a checkpoint. YEESH! It’s not even worth the effort, either. Trigon is so difficult and enemies are so spongy that it’s just exhausting more than it’s actually entertaining. Sure, it’s awesome that one of the bombs is a dragon that curls around the enemies, but the game is kind of stingy with bombs, too. Plus, the settings, basic enemies, and guns are uninspired and dull. I think the reason the evil Megazord stood out was because it felt like the first imaginative thing that happened. Well, besides the Trigon itself, which should have just been automatic when two players were on. I think I would have given this a YES! had that been the case. It’s not like it was so powerful that we just shredded everything, either. It wasn’t THAT powerful. When you have it, the co-op is genuinely original enough to be fun. But Trigon: The Game really doesn’t want you to have Trigon: The Item. Or fun, it would seem.
Verdict: NO!

Nemesis
aka Gradius
Platform: Game Boy*, Game Boy Color†
Released February 23, 1990
Designed by Naoki Matsui
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

*Super Game Boy version included in Konami GB Collection Vol. 1 (Exclusive to Japan)
†Game Boy Color version included in Konami GB Collection Vol. 1 (Exclusive to Europe)

Don’t mistake Nemesis as a Game Boy port of Gradius. Only the first level feels like a close adaptation of previous games. Even then, it’s a fairly tame version that only replicates the Volcano set piece and the typically expected Moai stage. The other levels are completely fresh, in feel if not in intent. Nemesis offers everything you would expect from Gradius in terms of items, basic enemy designs, and level design. But right from the start, Nemesis offers big changes. You can turn on auto-fire before beginning the game and you can skip to any level you want. I’m not sure why anyone would bother skipping levels, since the whole game takes maybe twenty minutes to beat. Maybe. You certainly won’t need to skip for the challenge. Nemesis may be the easiest Konami shmup ever.

All credit where it’s due to Konami, because Nemesis looks fantastic and I smiled joyously whenever I saw the new boss designs. They’re HUGE, but the graphics are so rich and detailed, especially on the Game Boy. There’s Super Game Boy and Game Boy Color variants. For God’s sake, don’t play them. The graphics were clearly made for the black & white screen and, much like Operation C, the choice of colors for the Konami GB Collection re-release distract from the experience instead of adding to it. It’s always gaudy looking, especially the eye sore backgrounds. Take a look below. One of them looks like a genuinely intimidating boss encounter that’s actually pretty frightening to behold. One looks kind of close to it but not as cool. The other looks like a lesser NES game. (The Japanese versions of Konami GB Collection Vol. 1 – 4 are not GBC, but rather Super Game Boy-enhanced.)

But do yourself a BIG favor and play the standard version. In black & white, it earns the title “Nemesis” with its graphics. That specific version, ultimately a tiny little slice of portable Gradius, is actually pretty dang good. Even with spotty collision detection, which is probably the biggest knock on the game. I died a couple times and had to rewind to see what got me, but it’s never a deal breaker because you should have plenty of dodging room. Plus, once I had the shields, I cruised through the game like I have with no other Gradius game before it. The only part that came close to being “hard” was a few timing-based traps in the final level that involve gigantic moving barriers.

Actually, I liked Nemesis even more than Operation C, making this the best Game Boy title I’ve played so far. I suspected it would lose that title before this feature was done, and I was wrong, though the sequel does tie it. To be clear, Nemesis is NOT going to provide thrills at all to those who seek a challenge. Even with the difficulty buffed up, which you have the option to do, this game is a cinch. The shields, especially, are some of the most effective in the franchise. I don’t actually seek a challenge from these games. I want epic sci-fi settings, the occasional set piece, and enjoyable boss fights. For twenty minutes, Nemesis mostly delivers the goods, and also provides one of the best looking Game Boy titles. Seriously, the graphics are so good, in a way you don’t expect from this platform. Konami was better at this than Nintendo, at least when the Game Boy first came out. I still wish it was longer, but if a game leaves you wanting more, that’s usually a very good sign.
Verdict: YES! – $5 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Parodius Da! Shinwa kara Owarai e
aka Parodius: From Myth to Laughter 
Platform: Arcade
Released April 25, 1990
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Let’s get this part out of the way first: the whole “parody of Gradius” thing isn’t that difficult to pull off. The spaceships and bosses in Gradius or Life Force could be drawn as literally anything and the game would be the same, and they just so happened to draw them as spaceships. If Konami had wanted it to be a biplane or a submarine, they could have done that. Taking that premise a step further, a different developer might have very well just made this as a boilerplate Gradius-style space shooter AND THEN put a code in the game that unlocks “silly mode” that is, more or less, the game being reviewed here.

Is it that hard to imagine? Parodius, in many ways, feels like it’s just an excuse to squeeze more out of the Konami formula without flooding the market with games called “Gradius” or “Salamander.” All I really care about is that there’s extra games with that engine. I love the engine of Gradius and Life Force. I love how the items work. I love the load-out options. I like that they do exciting, tense set-pieces. With so much to love, it’s a safe bet I’ll still love them even if they replace the typical walking robot with a showgirl. Even the music is basically the same. Look at the Crab from Gradius II and Chichibinta Rika, aka the showgirl from Parodius. The only difference really is when it happens. The showgirl shows up very early, while the Crab is the final set piece before the last boss.

And if that’s setting alarm bells that some of the humor won’t land if you’re not a Gradius megafan, well, you’re right. In fact, a lot of Parodius relies heavily on a player knowing not just Gradius but the Konami brand as a whole. But, don’t let the parody aspect cloud your expectations. Parodius is a really fun shmup. It’s certainly not perfect, as the fun of the solo experience doesn’t last the full length of the game. Parodius shows its arcade nature with BRUTAL difficulty, at least on the NORMAL tab. It’s safe to say that Parodius eventually becomes a bit of a bullet hell in the late stages, and that’s fine. I tried swapping to the EASY dip switch to see if I could feel the difference, and I think it was marginally noticeable in the early stages with the amount of bullets and the bosses. But, if I’m not mistaken, that still vanishes by the last third of the game, which was the part that I needed toggled relief from anyway.

Although the level themes are delightful and having every major Konami load-out (Gradius/Salamander/Gradius II/TwinBee) adds a lot of replay value, I still don’t recommend playing the arcade version solo. If you’re by yourself, stick to the home ports, which tone back the bullet count significantly. I did attempt a few solo games of Parodius for this feature, and as far as the arcade game goes, the fun as both a shmup and a novelty game doesn’t last. The problem is that, when playing by yourself, you don’t respawn immediately when you die. You’re taken backward to whatever was the last checkpoint you reached. In later stages, especially one specific segment, this is a brutal punishment.

As a co-op experience, Parodius really is just another Gradius/Salamander game, which is fine. Those are awesome, and Parodius is more of the same. However, I think it’s a little too close at times, with several bosses and set-pieces being direct reskins of Konami shmup staples with no surprises. Even the last boss is just the brain from Gradius reskinned as an octopus that plays identically, more or less, to the Gradius original. As fun as Parodius is, it doesn’t quite stand on its own. Parodius Da! is an all-star game. A highlight reel. A clip show. The best thing I can say about it is that they really did seem to take the best parts from previous games for reskinning. I’m guessing that’s why a port of Da! will score the highest value of any Parodius game later on in this feature, even after the technology gets better. If you’ve never played Parodius, expect a lot of awesome action and fun sprites. Don’t expect much in the way of new gameplay. And if it seems like I’ve left anything out, hey, I have five more versions of this to play, some of which are better than the coin-op, and I need to have stuff to discuss for them, too.
Verdict: YES! – $5 in Value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

TwinBee Da!
aka Pop’n TwinBee
Platform: Game Boy*, Game Boy Color†
Released October 12, 1990
Developed by Konami
Never Released in North America
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – TwinBee

*Super Game Boy version included in Konami GB Collection Vol. 2 (Exclusive to Japan)
†Game Boy Color version included in Konami GB Collection Vol. 3 (Exclusive to Europe)
That’s not a typo. Konami GB Collection Vol. 2 – 4 are ordered differently in Europe.

Well, congratulations are in order because TwinBee’s losing streak in this feature is over. TwinBee Da! isn’t amazing or anything. It’s a perfectly fine bland shmup that’s elevated by incredible graphics and smooth shooting. It’s certainly a lot harder than the Game Boy version of Gradius was. There’s a lot more bullets flying at you, and because of the smaller playfield, the bells are a lot harder to juggle and transform into power-ups. But, “harder than Nemesis” leaves a lot of room for interpretation, because like most other Konami Game Boy games, TwinBee is still pretty easy compared to other versions. The odds are never overwhelming thanks to the limitations of the Game Boy. Hell, you wouldn’t know there are limitations just going off these graphics. I really think this is the best looking TwinBee game yet. Black & White looks great on it, doesn’t it?

Not only do most of the bosses feel mundane and predictable, but the game ends on an extended boss rush that didn’t do anything for me at all, which is unusual for Konami shoot ’em ups. In Gradius, the boss rush sequence is usually the highlight of the game, but TwinBee Da’s designs are too limited to effectively pull it off. Hell, even the last boss doesn’t feel THAT different, only bigger. Thus, this becomes the rarest of Konami shoot ’em ups: a shoot ’em up where the levels outshine the bosses. This can be owed largely to the effective balance of gun and bomb targets. The bomb auto-targeting system is really well done, giving you a lot of wiggle room that you absolutely need with the compact screen. Again, is it amazing? No, but it’s not boring for most of the twenty-five minutes it lasts. I just wish it had stuck the landing a little better. If only this were remade. For, say, the PSP. One can only dream.
Verdict: YES! – $2 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Parodius Da!
aka Parodius: From Myth to Laughter 
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released November 30, 1990
Developed by Konami
Never Released in North America
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Parodius is a bit glitchy. There were a few “WTF” moments during my initial playthrough, but I didn’t think much of them until I did one last check during my final edit of this feature. I replayed most of the games during one final “sweep” and for Parodius NES, I did something that caused enemies who entered a certain part of the screen to spontaneously combust, and it even kept bouncing a bell. It lasted pretty deep into the start of the stage before going away. It also vanished if I died. (Shrug) It’s certainly not commonplace, as I only know for certain it happened twice when I did five or six full play-throughs, with a couple other parts I wish I had rewound to examine further. Still, nothing like this happened in any other game, so these moments stood out. While making my final check of Parodius, I also realized that it’s still damn good looking for an NES game. That’s even considering how much they had to scale back for the Famicom.

But, those amazing graphics come with a hefty cost. In addition to constant flicker, Parodius suffers from slowdown on a scale I’ve not previously experienced in this feature. I thought Gradius II on the Famicom was hard-up, but it was nothing compared to this. When you get a full fleet of options, Parodius genuinely feels like the game could crash at any moment. It’s absolutely not to the game’s benefit, either. The famous showgirl sequence? On the Famicom/NES, it lasts a whopping THREE-AND-A-HALF MINUTES! If that was three-and-a-half minutes of non-stop action, that would be one thing. But it only makes three roundtrip passes the entire time, meaning six total times you have to time your movement to dodge the limbs. Even if you trimmed a pass, this would have lasted over two minutes. That’s insane for a shoot ’em up set-piece! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!

The good news is, I overall liked the NES build of Parodius, which dumps the worst level of the coin-op (the graveyard, sorry fans) and adds a carnival-themed stage. It’s certainly not a perfect build. In addition to the self-inflicted visual problems that I must do for my photosensitivity (I have to play in a well-lit room, which causes some visibility issues), the game is just generally very flickery, especially if you’re playing well. I had to remind myself constantly as I played this that this is one of the most remarkable technical achievements on the entire Nintendo Entertainment System. It uses the legendary Konami VRC4, the same memory mapper used in the Famicom port of Gradius II, though it seems somehow less obvious in this game. If there isn’t some graphical anomaly happening on screen, you must be having a bad game.

For all the problems with flicker and speed, Parodius on the NES is pretty dang decent. It’s certainly not as difficult as the coin-op, even on HARD. I think there’s a small chance if I really focused enough, I could ace the game, or at the very least, finish it without a game over. If you lose a life, you’re reset to a checkpoint, BUT, you’ll quickly get your loadout back because the game drops a ton of roulette power-ups. If your timing is true, you should be able to quickly get back to the level of speed, firepower, and options you had when you died in under a minute. It helps a ton that there’s a lot less bullets flying around than in the coin-op. Sometimes hardware limitations work for the player, and Parodius NES is the proof.

The game is shorter than the coin-op, but the stages that are omitted really are no major loss. To make up for the smaller experience, they’ve added a whole new level, the amusement park, which is a very strong level with many memorable segments. Oh, and it also include a hidden path that takes you into a very, very short version of the deleted graveyard scene.

Sadly, the hidden graveyard is the only one of the four hidden stages that contains its own unique boss fight, which is a small twist on the original female ghost. It’s barely even a real twist, since it starts as a smoke cloud and then plays kind of the same, only the model is different. Still, it’s a nice little bonus. So are the other three hidden stages, for that matter. Even cooler is, completing them allows you to switch to one of the other three characters, something I wish other games in the series would have utilized in order to beef-up the strategy. 

The rest of the game is every bit as solid as the NES ports of Gradius and Life Force, except for the sheer amount of slowdown. Remarkably, if you play on one of the higher difficulties, Parodius still manages to be a fairly up-tempo game. Well, besides that one low-stakes segment with showgirl and the ever present problem with the gigantic Moai ship, which really only has one good version of it to speak of (it’s the PlayStation version). I wouldn’t mind seeing the reworked Famicom levels and exclusive bosses included in a modern remake. With no slowdown, they’d probably turn out pretty amazing.

The bosses are, of course, the highlights of the game. Despite being smaller, they’re almost as fun to do battle with as their arcade counterparts. So, while this is nowhere near as good as Gradius II on the NES, Parodius is a solid 8-bit shoot ’em up. I guess I sort of get why they didn’t bring this out in America (which doesn’t explain why it got an EU release) but it’s a damn shame it didn’t get a full global release. While I don’t think it’s amazing or anything thanks to the inevitable ravages of age and that heartbreaking slowdown, I think it’s a safe bet that Parodius would still be fondly remembered as one of the all-time greats on the NES.
Verdict: YES! – $4 in value added to Ultimate Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gradius III
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December 21, 1990
Directed by Hiroyasu Machiguchi
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius – Strategy

Jeez, I thought the coin-op Gradius III had a lot of slowdown, but Gradius III on the SNES takes the cake. I mean, it takes it very slowly. If you have all four options and a full loadout, I’d conservatively guesstimate 90% of the game suffers from slowdown. It led to multiple frustrating deaths, too. I’d be fighting a boss and blow them up while dodging an active bullet only to have the CPU wake from its coma. This caused me to steer straight into the bullet because my movement, which I was basing around the practically omnipresent slowdown, suddenly wasn’t affected by slowdown. This kept happening, too. I figured I should get that out of the way first because, other than those moments of hair-pulling bullsh*t, I had a lot of fun with Gradius III on the SNES.

Despite the leap to 16-bit platforms, the same type of changes made to the 8-bit home versions of Gradius coin-ops still apply to Gradius III on the SNES. The enemy count and bullet count have been dramatically shrunk, which in turn dramatically shrinks the difficulty. Segments and boss battles that couldn’t be done within the limits of launch-window Super Famicom have also been removed or altered. So a fight that looked like this in arcades:

Now looks like this on the Super Nintendo:

For all intents and purposes, it’s a totally different boss, with a different strategy and cadence. It’s addition by subtraction, for sure, including the stages that were cut. Oddly enough, the third person sequence from the coin-op that you would swear was made for the SNES’ Mode 7 effect is missing entirely. Missing, but not missed, along with every other sluggish part of the arcade game. However, the new content is not entirely welcome either. The cube dodging sequence is gone. Awesome. There’s a terrible speed zone sequence. Not awesome. The Shadow Gear boss (left in the below screens) that I hated in the coin-op is gone. Awesome. The replacement (on the right) is a poor substitute AND you have to fight two of them back-to-back. Not awesome.

Every step forward Gradius III’s home port makes over the coin-op is also typically accompanied by a smaller step backwards. Thankfully, that means Gradius III on the SNES still ends up well ahead of the coin-op. It even has plenty of replay value. While the bonus rooms do nothing for me, mostly because my favorite part of these games is fighting bosses, people who want replay value will have those to look for. The collision seems better. Gradius III on the SNES is a typical solid home version of a Gradius game. I don’t think I loved it quite as much as others did. I certainly don’t think this is a “legendary” game. It’s fine. There’s a sense of “been there, done that” that I assume is there because Konami’s goal was simply to buff the audio-visual experience, and mission accomplished. A better looking version of one of the NES Gradius games is hardly a bad thing, but this wasn’t the creative leap I was hoping for. Either way, the exclusion of this version of Gradius III from Gradius Origins is a crime against gaming.
Verdict: YES! – $6 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Thunder Cross II
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1991
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

The sequel to Thunder Cross is little more than a seven stage expansion pack to the good version of the original game. One that was made mostly of ideas deleted on the drawing board because they weren’t good enough for the original game. No split decision needed this time. There’s no American ROM that removes all the best parts in favor of flavorless space warfare. The gameplay centered around the four options returns. You still have the ability to spread the options out or close them in, exactly as before. The badass guns, including the boomerang, return, along with the special guns used by the options. Also returning are the ultra-generic settings and bosses, only this time, the bosses are way more spongy AND they’re seemingly designed around trying to keep the fight going until the time runs out and you win by default.

Even the mini-bosses are a complete f*cking slog. A lot of Thunder Cross II’s problems are tied to co-op, but the sponginess of the bosses isn’t really all that affected by it since only X amount of shots can actually land thanks to the bosses blinking. I tested this theory and determined that co-op maybe shaved a second or two at most off the bosses, though granted, my partners kept dying during them because, you know, they haven’t spent the last two months playing shoot ’em ups as much as me. But like, look at this boss:

This thing just sits there and sucks up your bullets like they’re nothing. Well, it’s a two-piece boss, since each individual half is its own sprite that needs to be destroyed, but come on. It’s a MID-STAGE BOSS, and without hyperbole it can absorb more bullets from a full load-out than the overwhelming majority of final bosses from other games in this feature. Consequently, I wouldn’t really describe most of the bosses or even mid-bosses as being truly “fun” to battle against. Many of them become reduced to repetitive, mindless grinds.

There is one thing that didn’t make the journey to the sequel. Go figure it would be my favorite super weapon, the flamethrower. Oh, there’s still an “F” weapon, only now, instead of streams of fire being shot by each option like in the original Thunder Cross, you just shoot big fireball-like bullets that aren’t anywhere near as satisfying as the cutting flames of the first game. In fact, they don’t really feel that different from the gigantic laser beams now. They kind of behave the same way, and with that, the sense of uniqueness is gone. Goddamnit, Konami. I swear your developers could f*ck up an order for a glass of room temperature water.

So that sucks, and then Thunder Cross II further goes out of its way to make the special guns less desirable to pick up. I died more than once from barriers because the special guns simply couldn’t shoot fast enough to punch through them before I crashed. These are the “co-op or die” parts that Thunder Cross II leans heavily into. If you’re playing co-op, you should get through them easily. If you’re flying solo though? There’s no way of knowing if you’re coming up on a barrier that you can only make it through if you’re able to spam the normal weapons. Like this part:

A lot of this seems to be another byproduct of Thunder Force II being optimized for co-op. Now, to the game’s credit, there’s a few boss designs that are SLIGHTLY more memorable this time around. This even includes fighting a giant robot gecko at one point. And by the way, for all my whining, we’re still talking about a sequel to one of the best arcade shmups I’ve played. Thunder Cross II is still capable of being a lot of fun between the boss battles. Most everything that had me dazzled about the first game returns, even if it feels like they nerfed the weapons. I still don’t think Thunder Cross II is anywhere near as good as the original. Again, today this would be a low-rated DLC pack, which is why I’m awarding it less than half the value of the first game. But, you don’t have to be a shmup superfan to have fun. That’s all I really care about. Bad DLC to a great game is usually still okay, right?
Verdict: YES! – $5 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Detana!! TwinBee
Bells & Whistles
Platform: Arcade
Released February, 1991
Directed by Masato Ohsawa
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately on Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Read the Original Indie Gamer Chick Review
Wikis: Konami – TwinBee

Before I get to the review, I have to pass along the most heartbreaking trivia of this entire feature. The director of Detana!! TwinBee, Masato Ohsawa, passed away on January 2, 1991, just a month before the release of his game. According to MobyGames, this was his only directing credit. The only other game he’s verified to have worked on is the coin-op version of Jackal/Top Gunner. Detana!! TwinBee is an excellent game and should have been a breakthrough for him that led to a legendary career. What a tragic loss for gaming. So, everyone please take a moment and lift your most handy beverage in a toast! 🍺 To Masato Ohsawa: a gifted creator of games taken far too soon. Thank you for a truly fun video game that I’ve enjoyed thoroughly for five years now! You have not been forgotten! Cheers to you, Masato!  🍻

Hey, I promised you that TwinBee reviews would become glowing, didn’t I? The above shots are an example of Detana!! Twinbee at its most clever. A boss that you have to shoot the paddles to rotate its base around to expose its vulnerable spot. Okay, so that boss is probably the high point of the game, but I was so charmed that my socks landed two counties over. I don’t know if my opinion has changed all that much from my original 2020 review of Bells & Whistles. My #1 issue five years ago was bullet visibility. Now that I’m much, much more familiar with the genre thanks to working on a feature devoted almost entirely to shmups for the last couple months, yeah, the problem is actually worse than I realized before. It’s not even just enemy bullets, either. The enemies themselves, especially ground targets, get lost in the fog of war.

By the way, the left screen is Detana!! TwinBee and the right from Bells & Whistles. It matters, because Bells & Whistles is a one-button game that maps bullets and bombs to a single button. At first, I thought I preferred that, until I realized that constantly dropping bombs whether there are bomb targets actively on the screen or not made the visibility problem even worse. I even tried playing with a CRT filter over the screen, which does help for some games but it did nothing for this one.

The visual loudness is not a nothingburger issue and it significantly muffles the potential of Detana!! TwinBee. This could have been a Gradius II-like contender and instead I had to play it multiple times just to figure out what the value would be. How do I quantify the value of a game where the biggest problem, by far, is that it’s often hard to tell what’s going on? Oh, and if you think THIS is bad, try playing in co-op, especially in Bells & Whistles. Holy smokes. The targeting system of the bombs isn’t perfect, either. Despite scattering several of them, sometimes they felt like they hit everything BUT the one thing I needed to kill.

Detana!! TwinBee is still a YES! without question. The enemy attack patterns and boss fights are, simply put, awesome. The settings, despite the massive drawback that comes with them, are among the best facades created for a shmup of this era. The quirky personality never feels forced, either, something the NES games struggled to pull off. But the niggling little annoyances keep its potential constantly in check. Like the uncanny timing of the clouds that contain the bells, almost always synced with enemy attack waves that the bells will inevitably interfere with. The giant ship boss is a little on the tedious side, and I couldn’t see what was going on at all with the final boss pictured above.

Don’t mistake my whining about visibility as a deal breaker. I just played three full games of Detana!! TwinBee, a game I’ve already reviewed once at IGC. I never got bored, and I’ll be playing a couple more rounds when I begin reviewing the PC Engine port, which was the only console port this entry in the TwinBee series ever got before the compilation era. I’m not dreading it at all, either! I’m looking forward to it! That’s because the base arcade game is fantastic. I don’t know what the solution to the loud visuals could be. Visibility problems seem like the price you have to pay for having backgrounds that feel both cartoonish but also vibrant and alive. My TwinBee running gag of “wait, when did I lose an arm?” has never been more in effect as it was playing this, the second arcade TwinBee. But, I still had a ton of fun, and that’s all I’ve ever cared about.
Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Parodius Da! Shinwa kara Owarai e
Platform: PC Engine
Released February 21, 1991
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Oh dear. I played Parodius on the PC Engine after playing Gradius, Salamander, and Gradius II. When I say that PC Engine fans will be very happy with the final results of Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection, trust me, I mean it. But Parodius is a terrible start for one big reason: the game skips when new music gets loaded. Now, if they had timed that right, no problem. Gradius II does the same thing when you switch stages. But Parodius does it while the bullets are flying. This caused me to die a few times, especially late in the game when the pre-stage enemies really become prevalent. It just throws your timing completely off. Who wants to play a shmup that does that, especially when there’s better options for the same game?

And it’s not like the occasional lock-up in the middle of the action is the only problem. This is the only PC Engine-based game in this entire feature that had levels deleted from the coin-op. Two whole levels, in fact, including the famous Moai Battleship. Sometimes removing stages is a positive, if you make up for it. I’m not even a fan of the stage or the gigantic ship trope in general, but I’m also deeply in the minority on that. Besides, even the NES and Game Boy versions had it! As if to rub it in, miniature versions of the Moai ship appear in the “bonus game” that was added. A high score challenge that apparently has three hidden bosses if you can score high enough. Even cheating I couldn’t get a single one of these hidden bosses to appear. I even tried again once I finished this feature and the best I could do was the graveyard’s boss. I hate that this is the first PC Engine game in this feature, because Parodius on it just isn’t a good effort, especially compared to the other four games that are coming up.
Verdict: NO!
And by the way, this is the only version of Parodius Da! to get a NO! Ouch.

Parodius
aka Parodius Da!
Platform: Game Boy*, Game Boy Color†
Released April 5, 1991
Developed by Konami
Never Released in North America
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

*Super Game Boy version included in Konami GB Collection Vol. 4 (Exclusive to Japan)
†Game Boy Color version included in Konami GB Collection Vol. 2 (Exclusive to Europe)

Unlike the TwinBee Da! and the two Gradius/Nemesis games on Game Boy, Parodius is a direct port of the coin-op. I’m not sure what to think about that decision, either. On one hand, holy smokes, what a remarkable achievement that the final product is indeed a close approximation of the arcade game. At eight levels long, Parodius is the longest of the four Game Boy titles in this feature, and by quite a bit. If you go by the average total play time, it’s double the length of the others. The two deleted levels are not missed, and the third stage is heavily altered in the Game Boy version, functionally making it a new stage that can make a case for being the best in the entire game. They also censored this version less than the NES game. The sumo wrestlers’ butts show. The showgirl isn’t dressed more conservatively. This is a PORT in all caps, and if I had to venture a guess, I’d guess this is probably the most true-to-the-arcades port in the entire library of the black & white Game Boy. It’s absolutely mind-blowing what they accomplished here.

On the other hand, this is the rare high quality game that was still destined to age poorly. Well, actually hold on, because that isn’t putting it right. Game Boy Parodius plays splendidly and I’m giving it a YES! without even needing to think twice about it. If you go off the raw gameplay, this should comfortably be the #1-ranked Game Boy title in this feature. It’s certainly more fair than the coin-op as well. Like the other four Game Boy titles, it’s borderline too easy on the default settings. But I also concede that, if Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection were to really happen, there’s not a lot of reasons to play this over the other games. “Aged poorly” is a bad way of saying it. What I meant is “rendered almost entirely obsolete.” If not for the new version of level three, literally everything in Parodius would be a downgrade over other versions of Parodius offered in Konami Shoot ‘Em Up.

Despite amazing graphics, remarkably true-to-arcades level design, bosses, and gameplay, much of the charm is unquestionably lost in Parodius. Parodius should be a colorful game, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen. Unlike the two Nemesis games, Parodius doesn’t benefit from the black & white graphics because it’s not trying to feel foreboding. It’s trying to be funny, so while it still has a lot of personality, everything comes back to “there’s better options.” If they had used the formula to make a Young Frankenstein-like black & white satire, it might have aged better.

At the time this came out, Parodius certainly had to be a contender for best overall Game Boy title. It’s that well made, but it’s not 1991 anymore and you’re likely not stuck with only a Game Boy. Now, had this been 1991, I’d give victory to the Game Boy version of Parodius over its NES counterpart. It loses less, has a better tempo, and a LOT less slowdown. But in 2025? As fun as Parodius on the Game Boy is, its only real value is as a companion piece for better ports. It’s a shame that such a well-made game is now reduced to only a historic curio, but sometimes, that’s just how these things work out.
Verdict: YES! – $4 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gradius: The Interstellar Assault
Nemesis II: The Return of the Hero
Platform: Game Boy*, Game Boy Color†
Released August 9, 1991
Developed by Konami
Included with Switch Online Subscription (Basic)
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

*Super Game Boy version included in Konami GB Collection Vol. 3 (Exclusive to Japan)
†Game Boy Color version included in Konami GB Collection Vol. 4 (Exclusive to Europe)
I didn’t play the Game Boy Color version. It was so ugly it hurt my eyes.

Huh. I just realized this will be the final 8-bit Gradius game I do for this feature. Oh, not the last you’ll read, but I didn’t play games in order. I’m having an emotional moment over here. What a fantastic experience this whole thing has been for me. And the second Game Boy Gradius is actually a worthy follow-up to the first game. Okay, so the level design isn’t quite as uniformly solid and there’s a few slow going moments. But the best levels in Interstellar Assault easily surpass the best levels in the original. The above screenshots are all taken from the coolest opening segment in the entire series up to this point: a high speed chase with a Big Core on your tail. That’s not a boss. THAT’S THE ACTUAL START OF THE GAME! There’s a lot of boldness squeezed into these five levels.

The gameplay is, more or less, the same as the previous GB Gradius. There’s loadout options at the start this time around to choose how you want your missiles to work, and sometimes the stages are bigger than the screen itself. It also doesn’t try to copy as much from previous games. There’s not even a Moai stage, which is pretty unusual by itself. The most important thing is the bosses are genuine highlights and some of the best in the entire franchise. Thank goodness for it too, because a couple of the levels gave me the vibe that they had run out of ideas. The last level especially, before an excellent final boss sequence, is kind of lame for the grand finale.

With the final stage, I’m going to assume the designers put all their chips on the table into the final boss. That’s because there’s a memorable chase sequence that takes place after that battle that sort of serves as the real final boss. So, the game begins with you being chased and ends with you being the chaser. Love it. Smart. It certainly makes this game stand out more than it would given its small stature. Interstellar Assault feels like the first game that leans deeply into immersion via telling a story. A story NOT limited to just text or the opening and closing credits. But it does it so well I kind of wish they’d done more that type of thing up to this point. So, Gradius II GB isn’t as consistent as the previous game, but it’s still fantastic for what it is. I can’t really pick one of the two Game Boy Gradius games over the other. They’re short, at about twenty minutes a pop, and they’re much tamer than most Gradius games. Interstellar Assault has adjustable difficulty, and veterans might want to beef it up, but all fans ought to check them both out.
Verdict: YES! $5 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Collection

Crisis Force
Platform: Famicom
Released August 27, 1991
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan
NO MODERN RELEASE
Listing on Konami Wiki

One of the more legendary Famicom exclusives, though it wasn’t supposed to have that status. Konami planned a global release of Crisis Force, but by time it finished production, the SNES had been globally released and “high tech” for the NES wasn’t “high tech” anymore. The shame is, this would have made a fantastic swan song for the Nintendo Entertainment System. A sprite-pushing, intense, and often clever shoot ’em up with a ship that can transform into three (really four) different forms. Okay, so the basic enemies and a few of the bosses are slightly generic, but the action never lets up.

Unique to Konami shmups, you don’t have one-hit deaths in Crisis Force. Well, as long as you’ve upgraded your gun. Gun gems alternate between blue and red. The blue gems are more traditional shmup guns that fire bullets and I’m not sure why it’s even an option. In my first play-through, I honestly thought the blue gems were a challenge element to be avoided, because the gun capsules with a red gem in the center give you these huge lasers. From there, you can change the shape of your ship on the fly to shoot three different ways, and you’ll need it. They tailored many enemies and bosses to linger near the bottom of the screen, requiring you to swap over to a gun that shoots sideways or behind you.

The other big twist is that if you collect five red items, you transform into a mega ship that is essentially invincible and has massive firepower. This ship works on a fast-moving 99 second countdown and taking damage while using it subtracts the time you have. I actually reached the point where I didn’t like using this. It was exciting the first time I got it, but it became less fun as the game went along, especially since it’s harder to dodge things and you can’t change shape or use bombs while in the form. They could have removed this entirely and lost nothing.

Crisis Force isn’t perfect. There’s a LOT of flicker and slowdown and some of the stages feel samey. Some of the bosses don’t feel like epic encounters, which I wouldn’t complain about if not for the fact that there’s some jaw-dropping boss fights with imaginative sprite work, like seen here:

So when the boss is simply three volcanoes to cap off a stage where you’ve already flown over several identical volcanoes followed by a relatively small Aztec-like rock, it kind of takes the joy out of it, you know? Or even having the final level feature a whopping six mini-bosses before you fight the final boss (seen on the right in the above pair of pics)? That’s the seventh level in the game. Wouldn’t it have been wiser to distribute those mini-bosses across the entire game? I’m guessing they were going for a Gradius-like boss rush, only one that has small buffers between each mini-boss. Except the designs for those mini-bosses are largely weak, as is the theme for the level. It makes Crisis Force’s finale come close to being a bit of a slog. 

Oh, it’s not a deal breaker by any means. Up to this point, Crisis Force had near-perfect pacing and enjoyable level design. I really think Konami made an error in judgment by choosing to release something like Contra Force or Monster in my Pocket over this. The excuse of “well, the SNES was out” holds no water unless they felt Crisis Force only had value as a technological showpiece. What a terrible decision, because Crisis Force is a very good video game. I get that it would have been riskier due to requiring specialized chips, but Konami was still supporting the NES and it feels like they left a lot on the table by not rolling the dice on this or Gradius II. I don’t get the choices they made at all. Do you think NES owners in 1994 would really have more fun with Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighter than they would with Crisis Force? It doesn’t even make sense from a business standpoint. US gamers get hosed yet again.
Verdict: YES! – $6 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Xexex
aka Orius
Platform: Arcade
Released October, 1991
Directed by Toshiaki Takatori
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Listing at Konami Wiki

Another split decision coming your way, because there’s massive regional differences. Like with Thunder Cross, the international versions strip out so much content that I feel I have to do the Japanese version first. Both games have identical level themes and some of the most imaginative enemy designs and bosses in shmups. Xexex/Orius is clearly meant to be Konami’s answer to R-Type. Both versions give players “The Flint” which is like a shield that you can separate from your ship, similar to R-Type. It’s ALWAYS there in some form. If you scroll off the screen, it’ll return to you even if it has to pass through walls to do it. It can absorb every single form of an enemy bullet and even be used as a battering ram. It’s a lot of fun. But how it behaves when you launch it, along with Xexex/Orius’ variety of guns and boss attack patterns changes depending on which ROM you’re using, and the difference is a lot more complicated than Thunder Cross to say the least.

SPLIT DECISION – JAPANESE VERSION

Before I drool all over the Japanese version of Xexex, let me get the one maddening negative out of the way first: a relatively small segment in the final stage that made me have to think a lot harder about whether or not this was among the top games in this feature. It’s the typical compactor section, only taken to an extreme I’ve not seen before. A VERY tight squeeze and small safe zones, the final one of which even resorts to using a bit of trickery to fool you because the screen is scrolling one way while the contraption is moving another. Unlike the international builds of Xexex/Orius, you do not instantly respawn in the Japanese build. If you have a lot of speed-ups, this is practically impossible because you can’t hope to move accurately enough, even feathering the D-pad/control stick. I died twice without any boosts at all. This is literally the last thing you do before the final boss, and it’s just dirty pool. If the final boss hadn’t been relatively easy, I might have penalized it a lot more.

Now, with that said, holy mother of God, why does nobody talk about this as one of the greatest shmups of all time? It’s WONDERFUL! Actually, I get why. Like Thunder Cross, the best version of Xexex took a long, long time to get an ideal American release. The Japanese version includes a massive variety of guns, including one of the coolest weapons I’ve ever seen in a game like this. It’s called the Shadow Gun, and if you sit still while you shoot it, it kind of seems like an ordinary Gradius-style laser. Whoopee doo. BUT, if you move around while you shoot it? Well, you might want to watch this because I don’t think I can do it justice. Oh, and the video shows what a fully-powered charge shot looks like no matter what gun you use.

The first time I saw that gun, I started giggling because it was so awesome. It’s VERY satisfying to use and easily my favorite gun in the game. But, unlike a lot of shmups, some bosses are clearly tailored to work better with some guns than others. Against a boss that also features a giant hologram that blocks your shots, I struggled when I used the Shadow Laser but later did much better when I used a weapon called the Search Laser. In fact, I found so many situational uses for the guns that I wish you had an inventory instead of only getting to have one gun at a time. There’s too many good weapons to be limited to whatever your latest pick-up is.

No matter which gun you use, the Flint (the shield attached to your ship) can be detached for major damage depending on how many tentacles it has. It can have three at a time. Now, in the Japanese version, the Flint can be detached two ways. Just pressing the detach button will release it right in front of you. Or, you can hold the attack button down to charge up your power blast, then press the detach button to launch it across the screen. It’s an effective option for some bosses, and for others, I honestly can’t imagine any other way to beat them except via the Flint. Like these things:

You can actually see the one on the left has the Flint stuck in its vulnerable part (aim for the brains!). I could not possibly shoot these things enough to kill them any other way. They’re clearly designed specifically to be defeated by the flint. Thankfully, it’s so satisfying. Every element about Xexex is, frankly. There’s never a dull moment. Every boss is an event. There’s a section that feels like baby’s first bullet hell that I enjoyed a lot even if the enemies are shaped.. ahem.. suggestively. It’s also not as difficult as you would think for a game that has NO dip switch settings. I couldn’t stay alive at all in the US version thanks to the lack of guns and lack of flexibility with the flint. In the Japanese version, I didn’t even need to cheat to warm-up to it and eventually beat the game without cheating at all.

When I started this feature, this was NOT one of the games on my radar. Hell, it wasn’t even on the initial list of 40 to 50 games that I started with even after I added the first wave of non-Gradius/Parodius/Salamander games. Needless to say, I’m very happy that I decided to just go for broke and do every Konami shmup from before the Xbox/Game/PS2 era I could find, because Xexex stands very tall. I strongly doubt I’ve played any game that was screwed historically to the degree this one was. I really struggled to figure out what’s missing. I guess set-pieces, but that can so quickly devolve into gimmickiness that I’m happy they “played it safe” with straightforward level design seasoned with large and detailed enemy sprites and some genuinely imaginative facades. I don’t know if Xexex is the best shmup ever. I really liked Gradius Gaiden, coming up later. But this is the best arcade shmup I’ve reviewed so far and maybe the most underrated game ever made.
Verdict:  YES! – $15 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection but this review is not over.

And then there’s the US version. Oof.

SPLIT DECISION – US/EU/WORLD VERSIONS

In the international versions, you don’t have lives. You have a lifebar that drains very, very quickly. On the plus side, checkpoints are replaced by instant respawns and no limit to how many times you can continue. I’d say “you’re hosed when you lose your gun” but gun drops are generous. The problem is there’s only one gun, a spreader, that is gradually upgraded to include more bullets and a wider range. There’s also Gradius-like missiles that mostly did nothing. In Japan, even the crappiest gun pick-ups do more damage than any non-Japanese version’s fully-upgraded standard gun, forcing you to hold the fire button down and rely solely on the charge shot. Why not use the Flint, you ask? You can, especially against bosses. I took down over half of them by detaching the Flint in a way that caused it to ping the boss to death. But, in the middle of a level, with bullets and enemies all around you? It’s not that simple.

You can’t do a charge shot without having the Flint attached to your ship. This matters a great deal. In the international versions, the standard gun is so useless that I was caught by surprise when it actually caused a killing shot. I stopped using it after a certain point. In Japan, I could take down basically everything from basic enemies to bosses with the guns. Since the Flint has to be shot across the screen in the international versions, you can’t use it as a shield while you attack enemies with your gun. A gun that, as a reminder, is next to worthless even when fully-juiced. That means the risk/reward factors associated with how you use the Flint in Japan are gone ENTIRELY from the US version. On top of all this, they beefed up the sponge and heavily altered attack patterns. I couldn’t even cheat to survive several situations.

So here we are, with yet another Japanese masterpiece ruined for no good reason. Like with Thunder Cross, all these changes were likely implemented to appease arcade operators by making a much more difficult game. In a sense, I get that. I can legitimately beat the Japanese game without emulator-based shenanigans. I can’t say that about a lot of coin-ops. But, if someone of MY skill level can do that, without all that much practice at this specific game? That means a player without a lot of money can spend a lot of time on it. It might make for an amazing game in 2025, but it doesn’t make a ton of business sense in 1991 for a machine trying to earn a quarter per play. But surely there’s a better way than stripping most of the fun out of it. What hurts the most is, unlike Thunder Cross, this completely wrecked Xexex, now known as Orius, is still pretty close to being okay. It’s not boring, that’s for sure. It’s just too brutal to be fun. A reminder that Konami’s business motto for the world outside of Japan seems to have been “fun, but never before profit.”
Verdict: NO!

Gradius
Platform: PC Engine
Released November 15, 1991
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE*
Wikis: Konami – Gradius – Strategy

*Included in TurboGrafx-16 Mini. In the TG16/PCE Minis, hold SELECT while GRADIUS is highlighted on the main menu to unlock the “arcade” version. This review covers only the standard retail build.

Gradius for the PC Engine is the final version of the original game in this feature. It’s late to the party, but at least it has some added value to make it worth it. Ignore what the Gradius Wiki says about this being the skeleton level from the MSX game. The theme might be similar, but it looks and plays completely different and is yet another welcome addition. Another thing the Gradius Wiki got wrong is saying this is an otherwise identical game to the coin-op. I disagree. I feel the difficulty is slightly toned down, leaving it within the acceptable parameters.

For example, I had a much easier time surviving the volcanoes in the TG-16 build than the coin-op. They’re noticeably easier, but not as completely nerfed as the NES versions. Also, because of issues related to scaling of the coin-op graphics and sprites, the stages are wider. Like, you literally need to vertically scroll. Is that what’s happening here? I just double checked the coin-op directly against the PC Engine version. Here’s what it looks like. The screen in the middle is from the coin-op, while the screens on the left and right are taken in the same position on the first level, only higher and lower on the playfield.

Oh! I see it! It’s the score! It’s actually down under the item bar instead of being laid over the top of the playfield. Except, the scrolling temporarily stops during the volcano/Big Core fight. So, let’s compare those!

What a strange development decision. Well, the good news is, it actually makes this version feel different, and perception is reality. It’s not as good as it could be. The biggest problem in the game, by far, is that there’s NO option menu. By this point in gaming, not having options to increase or decrease the difficulty is obviously not a good thing. I thought this was a well-balanced game, but I’m not good at these games. I imagine someone who is might be annoyed that they have to do a full game cycle to bump the difficulty up. This is probably too easy for seasoned veterans.

Otherwise, *I* think this is a better version of the coin-op with a really fun new level that makes for an excellent way to say goodbye to the original Gradius. The home ports in general made me feel better about that NO! I assigned to the coin-op. Konami, if you’re reading this, you have to right this wrong with Gradius Origins, before it’s too late. The people are going to want these ports. They’re good ports worthy of both playtime and study. The most tragic thing of all is what an unfathomable longshot including the PC Engine ports in a modern console collection is. It shouldn’t be. This was the console that went toe-to-toe with Sega in their prime and won, and even held industry leadership over Nintendo, albeit very briefly. The TurboGrafx-16 is a historic footnote, but its Japanese counterpart is not. From my experience, PC Engine fans are right up there with any of the best gaming fanbases. Non-toxic, loyal, and dedicated. Let’s do the right thing here, Konami.
Verdict: YES! – $5 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Salamander
Platform: PC Engine
Released December 6, 1991
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE*
Wikis: Konami – Gradius – Strategy

*Included in TurboGrafx-16 Mini. In the TG16/PCE Minis, hold SELECT while SALAMANDER is highlighted on the main menu to unlock the “arcade” version. This review covers only the standard retail build.

Warning to people with photosensitivity: you might want to avoid the PC Engine build of Salamander.

Keep in mind that this is a port of SALAMANDER and not Life Force, and boy, does it scoot along fast. The speed of movement for enemies and the background was increased, possibly to make up for having fewer enemies and targets flying around. It’s not smoke and mirrors, either. You feel it. I have to admit, after playing the coin-op and finding out the PC Engine build used the same item system and included no new stages, I didn’t think I’d be giving this a YES! There were changes, though. The guns and missiles can now be upgraded twice for a higher fire rate. A couple of the bosses play differently, including the final boss gaining the ability to huff, puff, and blow your options away or even disintegrate them completely. Finally, you no longer instantly respawn upon dying in single player. If you need a reminder why that’s a big deal:

I have no clue what possessed this change. What makes it especially frustrating is there’s adjustable difficulty. Why not have the instant respawn taken away for the hard mode but leave it as it’s supposed to be for easy difficulty? I don’t get it. By the way, in the coin-op, if you die, there’s a window where you can catch your options before they scroll off screen. In the PC Engine port, they kept the animation for the options beginning to drift away, but not the “respawn with a chance to catch them” part. You dicks. I’m pretty mad about it because Salamander was cruising to an easy YES!, but these changes muddied the waters pretty badly and turned my final verdict into a closer call than it needed to be.

When in doubt, I always ask myself “did I have more fun than not?” In those terms, recommending Salamander for the PC Engine is a no-brainer. It’s a big improvement over the less fair coin-op, and with none of the technical problems that plagued the NES game to boot. I will never love the item system of Salamander. Even after multiple sessions, I can’t really tell the items apart. I don’t think the theme was a rousing success at all. I also think they must have buffed the boss hit points because it took me forever to kill the dragon during the fire level. I’m also not sure why it took them so long to bring these games to the PC Engine. The PC Engine came out in October, 1987, and by time it did, Gradius and Life Force had already been released for the Famicom in Japan. What took over four years? In the case of Salamander, it doesn’t even add any new content. It’s fine, but worth the wait? Probably not, especially for a game that was always overrated to begin with.
Verdict: YES! – $2 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Detana!! TwinBee
Platform: PC Engine
Released February 28, 1992
Directed by Masato Osawa
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – TwinBee

Getting the negative out of the way first, the PC Engine port of Detana!! TwinBee is missing the entire sixth level. That’s a big downer and there’s no getting around it, especially since the sixth level was pretty strong in the coin-op. Maybe I’m spoiled because both Gradius and Gradius II on the PC Engine, which I played before I played this, added levels. Really good levels, at that. The pace is certainly slower, as well. Maybe it’s an illusion because the screen is stretched out, but levels feel longer than in the coin-op. The visuals also take a slight hit, though that might not be a bad thing. Now for the good news: in many ways, the PC Engine version of Detana!! TwinBee is superior to the coin op. 

The most obvious difference is visibility problems that plagued the coin-op are mostly improved. I only struggled to see enemies and bullets in the fifth level and the battle against the final boss. That’s a big upgrade. As expected, the enemy counter is lowered, along with the projectiles. For what it’s worth, I think when you pump up the difficulty (or play the second cycle after beating the game), Datana!! TwinBee on PC Engine is harder than its Gradius or Parodius counterparts, and right from the start, too. I’m also happy to report they didn’t simplify the more ambitious bosses. The giant ship that you have to fly around twice in the coin op plays the same here, as does the boss that you have to rotate the paddles on its head to open up.

While you still have one PC Engine review to go (the best one, in fact), Datana!! TwinBee was the fifth and final PC Engine game I played for this feature. I think that Konami’s shmup presence on the platform was nothing short of phenomenal. It’s a punch in the gut that it’s unlikely for Konami to ever do the right thing and put these games in collections. Especially a collection like the one I’ve imagined in this feature. In the 80s and early 90s, home versions of coin-ops, even with all the sacrifices they had to make to the audio/visual experience, were often better. I ultimately can’t go THAT far with Datana!! TwinBee because it’s missing a pretty good level. Had that been there, I might have given the slight edge to the PCE build over the coin-op. I penalized Parodius Da! for missing a stage and fair is fair. But this is obviously a much stronger game than Parodius, even with the lost content. It’s not QUITE as good as the arcade version, but it’s pretty close and worthy of inclusion in a set that celebrates what Konami accomplished in this genre.
Verdict: YES! – $5 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
Platform: Arcade
Released April, 1992
Developed by Konami
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Read the Original Indie Gamer Chick Review
Listing at Konami Wiki

I’ve already reviewed G.I. Joe, but I wanted to briefly revisit it. Partially because I was curious if this started development as a sequel to Devastators, but that game has a lot more going for it than G.I. Joe and I abandoned those thoughts quickly. I still stand by everything I said in my February, 2023 review, so this time, I want to talk about the co-op AND what kids of the 2020s would say about it. Playing G.I. Joe with two players can be a frustrating experience. Items often land too close together, and since there’s only three (health, rapid fire, and missiles), having one player scoop up both rapid fires is annoying. This is compounded by the fact that one single shot from any enemy causes you to lose the rapid fire. G.I. Joe is an unrepentant button masher that has one gun, and one only. The need to constantly mash the fire button was so physically painful, even for the kids, that I had to activate autofire, even if it negated the point of rapid fire. Once I did that, yea, the game is better co-op than solo. Like, no duh, right?

While the kids, ages 9 to 14, all kinda enjoyed it (none of them loved it), they were baffled that a game that looks as good as this does has NO variety to it. None at all. No mini-guns. No laser guns. Nothing but the basic weapon and the ability to stop mashing buttons for maybe as short as a single second. No jumping. No diving out of the way of big enemy attacks. There really isn’t even much in the way of a defensive game because the bullets are so poorly drawn that you can’t really see what’s killing you. G.I. Joe’s claim to fame is the gameplay degrades into unbridled chaos with no finesse and no variety, and it’s actually a miracle that what’s here is still an okay game. It is fun, but even the kids understood why this was never ported to the SNES or Genesis. It’s too shallow. I don’t even think the normal $7.99 Arcade Archives price would be worth it. G.I. Joe is video game junk food, and like junk food, you’ll regret it afterwards, especially when your hands cramp like they’ve never cramped before.
Verdict: YES! – $4 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection.

Parodius Da! Shinwa kara Owarai he
aka Parodius: Non-Sense Fantasy
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released July 3, 1992
Developed by Konami
Never Released in North America
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED*
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

*Technically re-released in 1997 in Japan via the Nintendo Power flash cartridge system.

Had Parodius for the SNES gotten a US release, I have no doubt it would be remembered today as one of the greatest games ever made. But it wasn’t. Imagine that it’s 1994 and someone at Konami says “we need one more game for our release schedule and we still haven’t released that ultra fun, ultra quirky Parodius game in North American. But.. nah, let’s license Biker Mice From Mars instead!” Yeah, yeah, there would have been some controversy over the showgirl. I wonder if Nintendo told Konami “not in the United States, because Sega might cite it against us in congressional hearings.” Of course, they repainted her for the Famicom version, so why couldn’t they for the US version? Change it from a showgirl to a gorilla. I mean, why not?

Parodius on the SNES has a whopping seven adjustable difficulty settings. I played full sessions of three of them, and I’ll say that you can feel the difference, at least between “2” “4” and “7” levels. Mind you, “7” isn’t an automatic trip to the second loop. It’s hard, but not so hard I couldn’t beat it without cheating. Curiosity got the better of me, so I decided to really put the difficulty settings through the wringer by playing the bonus “Omake/Lollipop” stage. By the way, while it has the same scoring-rush rules, it’s a very different stage from the PC Engine version and I ultimately think the SNES Omake is better. I played it seven times with 9 lives, each round with the penguin, upping the difficulty each time. It was a fun exercise because the incremental difficulty was very noticeable from higher enemy counts or enemies firing more bullets. I’d say they nailed the balance perfectly. Of course, for the bonus stage you’ll want to play on level 7 because it gives you more scoring opportunities.

Because of the flexible difficulty, the SNES port is clearly superior to the otherwise nearly identical coin-op version. Whether or not it’s the best version depends on how you feel about the PlayStation build. On the SNES, no levels are deleted, and actually, one stage unique to the SNES was added. Sadly, unlike a lot of previous examples of new stages, the “public bath” level is a major disappointment. I think part of that is the placement in the level order. Despite feeling like a very early stage in terms of layout and challenges, the public bath is placed as the second-to-last level in the game. I think if it had been the second or third overall level, it would have felt a lot better. But putting such a low-frills stage as the penultimate stage was a structural misfire. Plus, it ends on a spongy, boring boss fight that feels too similar to the “Pig Tide” boss (the sumo guy) from the fourth level.

And I wasn’t totally sold on the collision detection being perfect, especially for the large scale bosses. Never a deal breaker or even close, but there were multiple moments that made me go “hmmm.” The showgirl and the giant puffer fish especially. For the PlayStation build, only the quills of the puffer fish I felt were a bit sketchy on the collision. The SNES also doesn’t quite nail the pacing that the PlayStation does. The speed doesn’t pick-up in the Pachinko level, for example, and it’s missing some minor and ultimately insignificant animation sprites and theme special effects.

So, while Parodius on the SNES is excellent and it’s a crying shame it didn’t come out in America, there is one slightly better version of it. If you could only choose between the PSX and SNES versions, it would really come down to how much do you want that score rush mode. PSX doesn’t have it. For me, it’s a fun extra, but the main course is why I’m here. Make no mistake, however: you’ll have a great time playing Parodius on the SNES.
Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Axelay
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released September 11, 1992
Designed by Noritoshi Kodama
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Strategy

Like most games in this feature, I’d never played Axelay before. I’m not sure why that’s the case with Axelay, either. I’ve had it recommended to me a bunch of times from gamers of all stripes, who always note that the team who made it all left shortly after finishing it to found legendary development house Treasure. Despite all those requests, it never was really on my radar until I did this feature. I think that’s probably because I only recently realized that shmups are one of the genres I most consistently enjoy. That’s why I’m doing this feature, where I was told that a YES! verdict for Axelay was guaranteed. Oh really? Guaranteed, huh? Fourteen years of doing this and nobody has ever guaranteed me I would like a game. And guess what? They were totally wrong.

Nah, I’m just kidding. This game is pretty good. Mostly.

From a technical point of view, three levels of Axelay are jaw-dropping visually. It’s astonishing to me that anyone thinks a game like Star Fox on the SNES was some kind of masterpiece visually. I wasn’t around for the debut of Star Fox, but by the time I was playing retro games, I thought it was ugly. Most games that feel like they’re based around cutting edge graphics don’t seem to age well. Of course there’s exceptions to that, but I would never bet on such a game. Well, if I had bet against Axelay, I would have lost. It uses Mode 7 for levels 1, 3, and 5 to hypnotic effect. I literally can’t imagine ever wanting to play a game that looks like this:

When I can instead play a game that looks like this:

The Mode 7 stuff is certainly not perfect. The distorted perspective makes tight turns especially tough to judge safe distance. As a result, I died as much from crashing into walls as I did from enemies. Especially at the end of level one right before you fight the first boss. This is the point when the game felt less like a shmup and more like Super Mario Kart, only with much tighter turns. It wasn’t until my second playthrough that I understood what they were going for. In that one, I wasn’t braining myself to death on the walls, but I was gnashing my teeth the entire time because it felt close. As exciting as it was as it was happening, I’m also not entirely sure how I survived it when it looked and felt like I was as close to the walls as I was the first time I played.

That’s not to say the enemies aren’t affected by the strange Mode 7 stuff, either, because the curvature and way they enter the playfield makes judging the most immediate threat unintuitive. But, going against a player’s intuition is sort of Axelay’s thing even in side-scrolling levels. There’s a lot of instances where it’s not instinctively clear that you can safely pass through something. This became REALLY apparent during the first boss fight of the first “2D” level. It’s an ED-209 clone that likes to pin you up against the wall, to the point there’s no wiggle room.

Except, even though it’s not colored differently and there’s no real indication this is even possible, there’s parts of the robot’s leg that you can safely fly past.

What parts? I dunno. Sometimes when I tried it, it worked, and sometimes I blew up. Safe:

Not safe:

Also not safe:

Safe:

It seems to have to do with both whether the foot is moving or not, but also whether the other foot gets you, even though the other foot is darkly shaded, which implies it’s in the background. But I’m flying IN FRONT of the left foot, so why is that other foot even able to get me? Shouldn’t it be well away from me? Also, the circular joint seems to not be safe. You know what? I’m sure there’s a logic to this that made complete sense to the developers. But, they didn’t really prepare the players to know this stuff intuitively, and I don’t think the graphics do a good job of letting players know that depth is part of this fight. There’s no real point where you pass through a similarly-colored thing or a structure in the level. I know this game has fans, and actually I did overall enjoy it. But, this part here was REALLY badly done. “Or you could fly above it.” I suppose.

The weird thing is, nothing like that happens again, and overall that ED-209 fight was awesome. I don’t know what happened. Given that nearly everyone who made Axelay bolted Konami shortly after this, maybe they were distracted? Or maybe Konami didn’t have a lot of faith in Axelay? It’s a short game at only six levels. Besides the trio of Mode 7 stages, the big hook is there’s no item pick-ups at all. Instead, you swap between three different “arms” that each have a different style of gun or missile. You swap between them with the shoulder buttons and acquire one new potential weapon after each stage. That sounds great, except after a few playthroughs, I came to the conclusion that the most enjoyable three weapons were the ones you start the game with.

The gun that I really liked was actually a pair of guns that, when you first activate them, shoot behind you. But as you hold the button down, the guns pan to your sides before ultimately shooting in front of you. When you let go of the button, the guns travel back behind you before ceasing fire. They specifically tailored several attack formations for this gun, and it’s awesome. The upgraded guns have nothing that satisfying. I was consistently disappointed whenever I tried a new gun. Every single one of them lacks a nice BANG, which is so damn baffling because the starting three have that punchiness to them in spades. There are few games I’ve played that I like as much as Axelay where it’s also obvious that something clearly went horribly wrong along the way. It’s a game that pretty much consistently is very fun, and also one that never feels like it reaches its fullest potential.

I might be in the minority of this, but I wish the whole game had been the “3D” vertical scrolling stages. I’d rather have had five of those and no 2D levels than the three of one type and three of the other that we got. Even with the double-sprinkler-head gun, I’ve played a lot of stuff like the 2D levels. The 3D levels felt fresh, original, and never failed to be exciting. There’s just not enough of them. I have faith that the team that came up with those three levels, then immediately created one of the greatest studios in gaming, could have done at least two more stages like that. Axelay just never quite feels like a finished product. It feels like a very highly polished proof of concept for a more ambitious game that never happened. If you beat the game twice on hard, it teases a sequel that never came. But really, the whole game is a tease.
Verdict: YES! – $6 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gradius II: Gofer no Yabou
Platform: PC Engine Super CD-ROM²
Released December 18, 1992
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE*
Wikis: Konami – Gradius – Strategy

*Included in the TurboGrafx-16 Mini.

Man, I’m happy we got the Super CD-ROM² emulation working right. Gradius II on the PC Engine Super CD-ROM² was probably the #1 game on the absolutely stacked TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine Mini. Yes, even ahead of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. One of these days, I’ll go through my collection of Minis and rank the games in them, and when I do, I’m starting with the TG-16 Mini, even though I’m pretty sure the winner is a lock. This build of Gradius II is the best home version of the best arcade Gradius and one of the greatest video games ever made. Yep, I’ll go that far. It plays faster than the coin-op but comes with none of the technical issues of the NES game, at least on the default settings. If you boot up right away, the difficulty is far more balanced. If the default setting doesn’t offer enough bite, there’s also adjustable difficulty that I’ll get to shortly. Oh, and it throws in an extra level, and like most extra levels in these home ports, it’s one of the best levels.

The new level is like a cross between the NES Life Force’s temple stage and the opening level of Gradius III. But it has whole new enemies, environmental challenges, and a one-off version of the Big Core that never appears in any other version of any other Gradius or Salamander game. It’s not a long level, but it might be the best in the entire game, and that’s saying something. It doesn’t go as far as it could have. There’s no double-upgrades to the guns or missiles, and I think the Option Hunters are spawned a little too often. The damn thing was spawned after I’d already beaten the final boss! No kidding!

But overall, I think Gradius II on the PCE-CD is one of the best games I’ve played in this feature so far. I really had to stretch to come up with anything it does that could truly be considered “wrong” and I’m still struggling. I think it even looks better at times than the coin-op, despite sacraficing backgrounds. I guess offering Gradius III-like flexibility in choosing your loadout would have been nicer, but the way it is now is directly lifted from the coin-op. Nah, Gradius II on PCE is probably as perfect as shoot ’em up gets. I’d probably even place it on my short list of genuinely perfect video games, alongside Pac-Man, Portal, the modern base concept of Tetris, the tiny NES indie adventure Böbl, and the pinball table Attack From Mars.

I played through this build once with every loadout and never got bored and even tried the hidden arcade mode (hold UP + both face buttons when you boot it up) but all it seems to do is remove the extra stage. Why would anyone want to do this? The only change a person might want to make is to buff-up the difficulty. There’s four settings: EASY, NORMAL, HARD, and PROFESSIONAL. If you want much more aggressive enemies that spit out a lot more bullets, Gradius II on Super CD-ROM² can do that, but at a steep cost. PROFESSIONAL offers a meaty challenge, but warned: performance takes a big hit on this mode, slowing down as much as the coin-op does. Even with only two options, the slow motion kicked-in fairly quickly on this. I barely noticed it on NORMAL, though it did happen. But, it’s certainly not worse than the coin-op’s slowdown either. And thus, I can comfortably say that NEC fans in Japan had the best option for Gradius II. The fact that this version isn’t in Gradius Origins should be the nail in the coffin for anyone’s enthusiasm for that set.
Verdict: YES! – $15 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Pop’n TwinBee
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released March 26, 1993
Developed by Konami
Included with a Nintendo Switch Online Subscription (Standard)
Wikis: Konami – TwinBee

I’ve gotten pretty good at these shmups over the course of writing this feature. I’m not a pro or anything, but I can eventually either beat a game or come close to it without cheating. I mention that because, on the standard 4 out of 7 difficulty, Pop’n TwinBee ate my ass for lunch. Badly. What makes that weird is this is one of the few games in this feature that doesn’t contain one-hit deaths. Instead, you have a life bar this time and a limited number of credits to beat the game, and every X amount of ground-based enemies you kill will drop life refills. Also, you can’t have your arms blown-off this time. I was really happy about that. No more “hey, wait, when did I lose an arm?” Instead I was looking up at my life bar and saying “when did I take that much damage?” Or “when did I lose all my drones?”

Once I toned back the difficulty to a “2” out of 7 and then a “3” out of 7, ehhh, Pop’n TwinBee is fine, I guess. It’s just such a letdown after Detana!! TwinBee. It doesn’t feel like it takes the franchise forward. That’s probably because it seems optimized for co-op. Hell, there’s even an option for someone playing with a shmup novice that will cause the enemies to target Player One while leaving Player Two alone for the most part. So that’s neat, and co-op has a, well, let’s call it “slightly overpowered” feature that I’ll get to later. But, as a single player experience, there’s also no adjustment in the amount of enemies. This is a big deal, especially with the ground-based threats. In previous TwinBee games, at least in the coin-op versions, you throw a whole cluster of bombs and the auto-aiming is very generous. In Pop’n TwinBee, you throw one bomb at a time, and you throw them very, very slowly. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, unless, say, the whole screen is full of them.

You’ll also notice that the enemies are shooting pink bullets, and a large part of the playfield there is pink. So, Pop’n TwinBee has tons of visibility issues and it’s slow and frustrating to fight ground-based targets. Plus, the bosses are a big step backwards from Detana!! TwinBee. Normally, I’d hate the game that screws up that much. But, Pop’n does have genuinely good basic combat mechanics. In this version of TwinBee, you have to collect up to four drones individually. Taking damage costs you a drone, though you can stockpile more than the four by catching green bells even after you have all four drones flanking you. and what you can do with them takes a page out of Thunder Cross if you pick one of the three possible formations. Specifically, this one:

The first one is just the traditional “drones follow slightly behind you” TwinBee options. The second one is where they spin around you. But with the third one, you can spread out the options by holding the attack button. What makes it interesting is that, in this formation, when a drone reaches the side of the screen, it climbs up the screen and starts shooting to the side. So, when I played my first round of Pop’n TwinBee, I got annihilated by this screen.

Oh no! The whole screen is full! What can I do to stop all these fish? Well, I can just hold the fire button down and look what happens:

That’s pretty nifty. And it begs the question: why isn’t this just the way the game is? The designers of TwinBee came up with so many enemies and attack formations that are seemingly built specifically around the ability of your drones to ride the walls and shoot to the sides that it’s really weird that they gave you two other formations to choose from that don’t have this ability. A LOT of enemies will linger towards the bottom of the screen, hug a wall themselves, or even have their only vulnerable spot be something that you need that wall riding ability to kill. Like these things:

These centipedes must be shot in the head, but there is no possible basic attack that can actually hit them in the head. You just don’t have the ability to shoot at that angle. If you choose any other formation for the drones but the Thunder Cross-like spreadable formation, your only option with these is to either avoid them or use a valuable screen-clearing “super bomb” on them. Now refills for the super bombs are plentiful, but you’ll still want to save them for ground-based stuff because when the game floods the screen with them, I can’t stress enough, you can’t take them out as fast as you need to. There’s no power-ups for the normal bombs you throw at the ground, and even the incredibly overpowered co-op double team move doesn’t do anything about them. So, Pop’n TwinBee is just sort of okay. It feels like it never gets out of first gear.

Oh, and about that co-op move.

With a single press of the right shoulder button, you can grab your partner, swing them around, and throw them. They will ricochet around the screen, destroying almost every non-ground-based enemy they come in contact with. It lasts several seconds and seems to even heat-seek for combos when you successfully hit the first enemy. There’s no cost to doing this move. You don’t take damage from it. It doesn’t use up one of your super bombs. It’s effectively a free, unlimited-use mini-super-bomb. That sounds cool, except it had an unintended consequence when I attempted to play this with both my father, my niece Sasha, and my nephew TJ. No matter who my partner was, the game would inevitably devolve into us spending the entire time trying to throw each-other. We didn’t CO-OP-erate. It was silly. It was chaotic. It got old quickly. It hastened a state of boredom along faster. BUT, there was nothing to stop us from doing it. I can’t tell if this is bad design on the development team’s part for this mechanic or bad design on God’s part for me and my family.
Verdict: YES! – $2 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gokujou Parodius!
aka Fantastic Journey
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1994
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Don’t expect a major leap forward with the second real Parodius game (assuming the MSX original was a proof of concept). This feels more like a more-of-the-same expansion pack with eight new levels and a couple new characters. Whether that’s a good thing or not really depends on how much you enjoyed Parodius Da!, because the main game being satirized in Gokujou Parodius is the previous game. A lot of the gags and setpieces are fully dependent on you already being a fan of Parodius. Which isn’t to say there are no improvements. Far from it. The timing of set-pieces are really well done. The cat ship? It shows up early in the second stage instead of right before a boss. I’ve never understood the logic of putting a mini-boss directly in front of a big boss. Well, while you finish the cat right before the boss, you encounter it throughout the level. There’s an excellent speed-zone bit, and a couple of the settings really stand out, like the opening claw-game stage. So why didn’t I like this more?

Here’s a great example of “the step forward is really a step backwards.” The showgirl is back, only this time she’s twice as big. That sounds great, except this time around, each pass she makes only has half the available safe zones to navigate. On paper, that sounds more intense. But really stop and think about it: because the choice of how to navigate to safety is already made for you, logically it’s less exciting because there’s only one option to escape. You don’t have to struggle with the tension that comes with having choices. That’s just how it works, and if a dummy like me can grasp that, surely Konami, who have been making one banger after another (seriously, there’s only three NO! votes left in this entire feature) should have fundamentally got this. What they should have done was turned this from the traditionally “can’t kill” walker into a King Kong-like “knock it off the building” trope.

But, other tropes I’ve never cared for have been improved. I’ve never been a fan of the “crumble wall” segments from Gradius/Parodius. Shooting the walls to clear a path is too limiting and thus there’s no excitement. Remember: the most flexibility a player has, the more they have to think about what to do, which means the choices are more exciting, which carries over to the gameplay. I think Gokujou Parodius’ development team must have agreed with me, because this is the best implementation of the crumble wall in any Konami shmup yet. They managed to open it up in a way that causes white knuckle near-misses without feeling cheap. Having an emphasis on falling blocks hidden within the walls, which causes wider gaps to navigate, which makes the whole thing much more open, and thus more exciting.

Probably my biggest knock, and this will probably be controversial, is the reason why I don’t think this is on the level as Parodius Da: the boss fights. They’re fine from a gameplay perspective. It’s safe to say that Konami had this part of shoot ’em ups down to a science. In terms of their personality or memorability? I don’t really think they’re that amazing. A few of them feel like they’re trying too hard. There’s genuine quirk and there’s forced quirk. Gokujou Parodius’ bosses feel artificially wacky, and frankly, the franchise isn’t going to get much better from here.

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Of course, being a coin-op, Gokujou Parodius features extreme difficulty. Well, unless you pick the fish. In my final run through the games in this feature, I played as the fish, which certainly nerfs some of the levels, especially the final one, but that’s the only character who really saps the challenge. For all other characters, the difficulty situation will be almost entirely fixed in the upcoming home ports. But, for the coin-op, it’s certainly a thing that would turn off a lot of players. There’s also a few minor differences between Fantastic Journey the coin-op and the SNES/PlayStation Parodius. The biggest one is the bunny girl that I did my first play session with in the coin-op. She has a totally different gun in the SNES/Super Famicom game. What gun? Oh, just the boomerang gun from Thunder Cross. Yeah, I’m ready to play that version, please. Gokujou Parodius in arcades is fine, but nothing special.
Verdict: YES!  – $5 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gokujou Parodius!
Platform: Super Famicom
Released November 25, 1994
Directed by Nobuniro Matsuoka
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

The Super Famicom version of Gokujou Parodius adds Kid Dracula (an NES and Game Boy parody series that went away for no reason), Goemon (aka the Mystical Ninja), and Upa from the Famicom classic Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa. Also, some of the guns were changed around. The most notable, as mentioned in the coin-op review, is that Hikaru and Akane now have the boomerang gun that I fell in love with from Thunder Cross 1 & 2. Does it work as well as in those games?

There’s three other big notable differences. One is that the adjustable difficulty works wonderfully, which leads into the second big change: the after-game bonus level isn’t f*cking impossible. Unfortunately, it’s just not a very strong stage. It has a few unique enemies, like satires of the tentacles from the original Gradius. There’s also another boss, but again, it’s just not that fun to fight. As far as bonuses go, this whole thing was weak. But, almost everything that led to it was pretty good. Well, except the third addition over the arcade game: lots and lots of slowdown.

The amount of slowdown you’ll experience will be dependent on who you use and what your loadout is. For example, with Kid Dracula, it was constant. With the bunny girl, it became constant once I had all four options and the boomerang. It’s not a deal breaker, but after playing through a coin-op where it almost never factors in, it stands out. There’s also heavy balance issues with the characters, but at least that feels in service to the entertainment value. Like, Kid Dracula’s gun is so incredibly overpowered that it almost feels like a satire on its own. The Super Famicom port is fine. An imperfect port of an imperfect sequel, but since the PlayStation version has INSANE amounts of slowdown, the extra characters might make this the best version of it.
Verdict: YES! – $5 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Parodius Da!
Part of Gokujō Parodius Da! Deluxe Pack
Platform: PlayStation*
Released December 3, 1994
Developed by Konami
Never Released in North America
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

*I did NOT play the Sega Saturn version. It doesn’t have the hidden level the PSX version does.

The final version of Parodius Da! in this feature is the one found in the PlayStation 2-in-1 pack, and it’s far and away the best version of the game. Sorry Saturn fans. You got hosed, because there’s an extra level hidden in this game that ranks among the best levels in any Gradius-engine based game. For whatever reason, that’s only in the PSX build. I’ll get to that stage in a few moments, but first, I’ll note what this package does not offer: the Omake/Lollipop score rush mode found in the PC Engine and SNES builds. While I really enjoyed that mode, it is just a nice bonus on top of an already solid game. It’s missed, but not to the point that I would have considered its exclusion a deal breaker unless the gap between the SNES and PSX was close. It wasn’t. However, you shouldn’t expect profound changes in the PlayStation version of Parodius Da!, but rather a series of subtle ones that add up to a greater whole.

Besides the bonus level, the most notable feature Parodius Da! on the PSX doesn’t offer is any attempt at an audio/visual upgrade. While it retains every frame of animation from the coin-op, any visual changes are barely noticeable. It’s a little disappointing. I know this sounds weird coming from me, but I was really hoping for an updated soundtrack that replaced the memorable, cheerful classical music chiptunes with full orchestral renditions. That would have been insanely cool, but alas. During the ball maze level, I weirded out my sister by singing Homer Simpson’s version of the Nutcracker, which she had never heard before. “I need a present for my wife, or I’ll have no sex for life! A diamond ring! A vase by Ming! Some kind of useful kitchen thing!” and she stared at me afterward like 😶. As for the graphics, again, subtle changes over the SNES version. On the left is the SNES build, and on the right, the PlayStation. The water effect is much more rich in it, but otherwise, it’s pretty much the same, right?

If you’re curious how close it looks compared to the arcade, here’s some comparison shots that I chose because you can see the difference, or lack thereof. It’s really a matter of dimensions and stretching. Super Nintendo is always left. Arcade is always in the center. Right is always PlayStation. Here’s the clowns in the second level.

Here’s the trees in the Japan level. The PlayStation build DOES have a richer, fuller falling-leaf effect and is probably the most stand-out “special effect” added to the build. It’s not much, but it’s there.

And here’s the ball maze.

So it’s really close visually, and I guess that’s disappointing, right? On one hand, it perfectly replicates a 1990 coin-op. On the other hand, 24 of the PlayStation’s 32-bits are going to complete waste (the original coin-op is, shockingly, an 8-bit game). Well, except in one sense: there’s no slowdown this time. Or at least, there isn’t on the default settings or under, and you feel it. I really didn’t care for the gigantic Moai ship in the coin-op. It just plays too slowly and, once you’ve destroyed all the targets, you have to spend too much time waiting around for the action to scroll back so you can take out the bottom targets. It’s pretty boring, actually. On the PlayStation, the tempo is vastly increased thanks to the horsepower. The result is one of the most tedious stages is instead reborn as the mid-game highlight it was meant to be all along. But the whole game is like that. The same game you already loved, only without any of the technical hangups. It was that aspect, and not the extra level, that really hammered home to me that this was the best version of Parodius, hands down.

So, what about that extra level that I declared “one of the best?” Well, it’s not actually part of the natural progression. It’s an alternative Stage 2 that you must unlock after beating the first boss. Here’s how you do it. As soon as the buffer zone between the first and second levels starts, shoot every one of the enemies in the first row that comes out at the bottom of the screen. Then, when the second row of enemies comes out the top, you have to only shoot the one in the front. This is the part that annoyed me about this, because depending on your loadout, it might not even be possible to only kill the front one. And you’re not even done yet! After shooting that front enemy in the second row, you have to not kill anything else. If you do this correctly and avoid dying, after about ten seconds, there will be a fairly long load time, then every enemy on screen will explode and you’ll enter yet another buffer zone before the train station begins.

It is worth the effort because the stage is fantastic. It’s a little on the short side, but I like that aspect. It has a lot of unique enemies, one-off sprites, an excellent use of the tight squeeze trope, and one of the best bosses in Parodius Da! But, I hate that you have to unlock it, and I especially hate that the method for unlocking it is so arbitrary. What a waste of a masterpiece of a stage. None of the other games with extra levels make you jump through hoops like this. At some point in those other games, it’s just like “here’s an extra level. Thanks for buying our product!” I’m also not sure why they didn’t bother putting this in the Sega Saturn version, because it’s seriously THE highlight of the game and one of the best levels in a shoot ’em up EVER! It’s fantastic, and most people who owned this collection probably never even played it. What an absolute travesty!

In my hypothetical Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection, they can right this wrong and add the extra stages from both the SNES and PlayStation games into the order of the levels, placing the bathhouse early and the train station late in the game, creating a definitive version that would be in the upper-echelon of Konami’s shoot ’em up library. I guess that’s the thing that frustrates me most of all. Over the last couple months, I’ve played six versions of Parodius Da. I did it the “right way” and spread out playing the different versions so that I wouldn’t get burned out on it. When I thought I was done, I had to go back and check things to see how close the versions were. And I’ve come to a sad realization: the best version of this game really doesn’t exist. Not yet. It’s somewhere between all the different ports that have existed. The best of those versions is the one included in Gokujō Parodius Da! Deluxe for the PlayStation, but now I kind of hope Konami does one final Parodius Da! and gives us the game they should have included here.
Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gokujō Parodius! ~Kako no Eikō o Motomete~
Part of Gokujō Parodius Da! Deluxe Pack
Platform: PlayStation
Released December 3, 1994
Developed by Konami
Never Released in North America
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Gokujō Parodius on the PSX has so much slowdown that I went back and replayed Parodius Da on PSX again to see if I somehow hallucinated the lack of slowdown I experienced playing it. I didn’t. Now, Gokujō Parodius is much more technically advanced than Da!, but still, this is pretty damn bad slowdown. While it’s always sort of there if you have a full loadout, it’s especially noticeable when you choose the fish. I wish this build had a hidden extra level, a bonus boss fight, or some new player characters to make up for it, but it doesn’t. This was SO disappointing after the best version of Parodius Da, from literally the same disc mind you. Gokujō Parodius on PSX is still a quality game, but really, there’s no reason to play this specific build over the superior SNES version that offers more characters and probably a little less slowdown. So, this is a historic first: I’m awarding both a YES! and nothing in value.
Verdict: YES! – No value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

TwinBee Yahho!: Fushigi no Kuni de Ōabare!!
Platform: Arcade
Released April 19, 1995
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – TwinBee

The final original TwinBee shmup goes out with a decent-sized bang. This is basically “what if a shmup took place in Alice in Wonderland?” I mean, it’s not called Alice in Wonderland. In fact, the giant robotic doll you fight that looks exactly like Alice is actually called “Emily” but, trust me, this is Alice in Wonderland: The Shmup. There’s Cheshire Cats. There’s evil playing cards. The only thing it’s missing is growing and shrinking. How can you make an Alice-inspired shmup and not have growing and shrinking? I’m as mad as a hatter over that. 

My biggest concern with Yahho is the lack of fairness. There’s several attack patterns I’m almost not entirely sure are survivable. Thankfully you come back to life where you died and have as many credits as you need to win. With that said, over the last sixty-five games in this feature, I’ve gotten pretty damn decent at shmups, and I want to genuinely win without needing to reload quarters. I want the glory of victory, dammit! But when the screen looks like this:

(shrug) I’m sure there is a way to survive, but it feels like blind luck. That’s fine. I’ve played enough brawlers and run & gun games that I can appreciate a shameless quarter shakedown as long as the game is fun, and there’s no doubt that TwinBee Yahho! is a ton of fun. While I think Bells & Whistles is certainly the cleaner game, I appreciate the heavy emphasis on setpieces in this follow-up. It’s probably the most cinematic classic-style shmup ever made up to this point. It almost feels like they were trying to steal a bit of that Star Fox magic with all the character dialog, talking head windows, and shifting camera perspectives. This is a shmup that really wants to tell a story. Now, if you can’t read Japanese, that story might be lost on you. It’s basically an expansion of the TwinBee radio dramas that ran for 96 episodes in Japan. That’s not what’s important, though. This is:

The camera movement is limited strictly to the backgrounds. The gameplay stays entirely 2D, but the backdrop creates the illusion of doing loopty loops or flying on your side. It can be very disorienting, which I suppose means the illusion is successful. Actually, it’s one of the most successful background tricks I’ve experienced in any game. It works. Now, whether it’s welcome will be up to you. I thought the camera tricks were neat. On the other hand, I thought the giant talking head windows were hugely distracting in those rare times where they show up in the middle of stages. Thankfully, such moments are few and far between. The other big knock is the “lose an arm” bit returns from previous TwinBee coin-ops. After the last SNES game, I was kind of hoping that mechanic would be retired, but to their credit, they really came up with a way to make it work. How? Well, first let me note that Yahho has the heaviest emphasis on ground-based targets in the franchise. Thankfully, they didn’t leave you hopelessly overmatched this time. For the first time, there’s an item that helps with the ground targets. This:

Yea, it’s a big ass bomb that has a big ass blast radius. Awesome, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, it’s great that they finally addressed the problem with the ground based targets and the speed at which you can hit them by creating an item that’s tailored to them. It only took them until the very last goddamned shmup game (the last TwinBee game was an RPG) in the franchise to do it, but better late than never. Hell, if I’m being honest, the item they created is even more powerful than one I or anyone else would have reasonably expected. It’s so unbelievably useful that the first time I saw it, I thought it must be a one time item. Nope. You get it until you lose the arm throwing it.

OR, until you pick up another item. Remember how you got the triple shot from ground-based targets in previous games? Well in TwinBee Yahho, there’s four weapons that rotate from a single pick-up, and one of those four items is the bomb in question. In my opinion, this doesn’t quite work out as well as they probably hoped it would. In theory, one arm gets the gun, the other gets the bomb, right? Well, you can do that, provided you get the items in the correct order. Or you can dual-wield triple shot guns, or you can have the big bombs in one hand and the triple shot in the other. In practice, I couldn’t keep BOTH arms alive long enough to get a good feel for it, even when I tried to cheat. I should also note that when you have only one arm, the bomb is so useful, especially in later stages, that you’d be foolish to take anything else. Sure, it’s not very useful against bosses, but you’ll want to use charge shots against them anyway.

And speaking of the charge shots, there’s four styles of charge shots as well that you have to select at the start of each credit. One is the traditional wave of fire. One is the boxing glove you can see in the first pic of this game’s review. One is a really weak spread weapon that I don’t recommend. The third option is the strangest: it allows you to give birth to up to three drones, like you’d get with the green bell. Then, charging them unleashes a bomb similar to the one in Pop’n TwinBee for the SNES.

TwinBee Yahho does all the stuff I love about a good Konami shmup. The locations are genuinely fun, high-energy facades. The enemies are memorable. The bosses feel like events. It doesn’t take forever to build up a formidable loadout. Really, the most disappointing aspect of Yahho is that it’s a very short game. Five full stages and then a remarkably strange finale themed around a chase against Dr. Warumon. Some games stick the landing with their climax. TwinBee Yahho not only didn’t stick the landing, but the plane exploded midair and it bailed out at the last second only to discover that someone had swapped its parachute with a tombstone. There’s no satisfying final boss. The whole thing just kind of ends anticlimactically after a certain point. I guess, in a sense, the giant Alice is the final boss and the last level is a glorified epilogue. I’m not taking away anything from TwinBee Yahho because the game had been damn fun up to that last sequence, but it does kind of break my heart. Especially since that was it. The last memories of the last coin-op TwinBee. Talk about going out with a whimper instead of a bang.
Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection
And now let me talk briefly about Detana TwinBee Yahho! DELUXE PACK

Originally, I planned on doing full reviews of both games featured in Detana TwinBee Yahho! DELUXE PACK for the original PlayStation, but unlike the Parodius PS1 collection, no additional levels were added. The two games included are the same games, only both now come with an options menu. The most important inclusion to both Detana!! TwinBee and TwinBee Yahho is adjustable difficulty. Especially with Yahho, you can feel it, though even on 2 out of 7 (pictured above) Yahho can get quite fierce. Yahho also includes extra voice-overs and, I think at least, a very slightly improved collision box. Maybe. Or maybe it was the placebo effect. I enjoyed replaying both games very much but I think I’m all out of words for them. If you wish, consider both an easy YES! Because the gameplay is, more or less, identical to the coin-ops, and, because the options are more extensive than the coin-ops, I would not be angry if the coin-ops were not included in my hypothetical Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection. Hell, these versions might even be preferred. For that reason, I’d award $2 in bonus value to each game for the options menus.

Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius
Platform: Super Famicom
Released December 15, 1995
Directed by Nobuhiro Matsuoka
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

It’s safe to say that, after dozens of Gradius and Gradius-like games, the formula is starting to become predictable. Except, like, shouldn’t Parodius be where the formula is played around with? Where a surprise or a twist should happen? Sadly, there’s no such moments like that in the third and final 16-bit Parodius game. I take back what I said about Gokujou Parodius, because THIS is the one that feels like little more than DLC. Which might not be a bad thing, depending on how much you enjoy Parodius. If you’ve liked the previous games, Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius is more of the same. If not, well, Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius is more of the same.

The big original hook of Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius is the “Oshaberi” part. Oshaberi means “chattering” or “chatterbox.” Usually the context for it refers to idle, frivolous talk, so a more accurate English translation for the purposes of this game would be “bullsh*tting.” At the time of its release, Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius probably set some kind of record for a cart-based title’s voice samples. The entire game has running commentary that describes themes, enemies, setpieces, and bosses. Unfortunately, if you’re not fluent in Japanese, this won’t do anything for you. For a hypothetical future compilation, if they recorded an English dub of it, I’d award bonus value.

I can’t argue that Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius is a bad game. But even with direct parodies of familiar Konami games, I just didn’t think this was as good as previous titles in the series. Hell, there’s a level that’s a direct parody of Xexex, from the art style to the enemy patterns, but it’s just not well done. It’s not terrible either. It just feels like this is the Parodius made out of ideas that were cut from previous games that they then decided to doll-up with the commentary. There’s nothing particularly clever about it. Like, the showgirl returns, only this time, she’s faster. Oooh.

Everything right about Parodius on the Super Famicom returns as well. The pitch-perfect adjustable difficulty. The optional ability to immediately respawn after dying. The fact that there’s not separate buttons for normal shots and missiles. Seriously, that might be the most underrated aspect of the SNES games. I hate having to press two different buttons. But, overall I felt the humor didn’t land nearly as much, the levels were much more bland than the previous two games, and the bosses dragged thanks to their increased hit points. It’s still a pretty fun game because the Gradius formula is hard to screw up, but it’s also not hard to see why games like this weren’t long for this world.
Verdict: YES! – $3 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Salamander 2
Platform: Arcade
Released January, 1996
Programmed by Takeaki Hasegawa
Developed by Konami
To Be Included in Gradius Origins
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Salamander 2 is the sequel that honestly feels like it doesn’t want to exist. Like they felt like they had to do a sequel to a Gradius game because the technology was getting better, but they had no inspiration at all for it. The weird thing is the first Salamander felt the same way, but that game feels especially inspired compared to its sequel. The biggest change this time is to the options. Now, there’s two tiers of them. You could get a large one, or you could get a small one. The small ones are especially under-powered and kind of useless. Now, two small options will combine to form a large one, but it begs the question: why bother if the game will occasionally drop big ones and small ones? Shouldn’t they all be small to start? Also, you can sacrifice options for power shots. The small ones will make a tiny little shield around you for a second or two. Sacrificing a big one is basically a bomb. It looks like this:

Functionally, it’s more like a high-powered homing missile that never seems to aim for what you’re hoping it will aim for unless you save these exclusively for bosses. But even after activating this, you can still pick-up the now reduced-in-size smaller option. So, I guess that’s kind of neat. Less neat is the fact that you can double-up the power of the guns, but a max-power gun only lasts for ten seconds before it goes back to the previous tier. This system MIGHT have worked if they had done the Gradius item bar system, but Salamander 2 uses the same system as the original Salamander, so the super-powered guns never seem to appear when you want them the most. Thankfully, there’s only six pretty boring levels to slog through, along with some of the least inspired bosses in the franchise. The first boss is pretty cool. Here it is:

Very cool.  But, after that, there were bosses that didn’t feel like bosses at all, and this sensation is punctuated by one of the most ridiculously spongy final bosses in any game in this entire feature. It’s terrible.

You’ll notice there’s a lot of bullets there. Salamander 2 often feels like it’s an attempt by Konami to do a Toaplan-style bullet hell. It didn’t do that bad a job, except for the fact that the whole game is boring. I didn’t actually struggle all that much even when enemies were spraying waves of bullets not far from me. At most, I only needed to wiggle a little bit to make my way through a swarm of bullets. For most enemies who launch tons and tons of shots, the opening is just right there in the center of the cluster they create. It feels like a bullet hell that doesn’t understand bullet hells. It also doesn’t feel like it understands why the bosses are considered highlights of other games. Salamander 2 is competent blandness run amok. Well produced, and a total bore.
Verdict: NO!

Sexy Parodius
Platform: Arcade, PlayStation
Released March, 1996 (Arcade), November 1, 1996 (PSX)
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan*
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

*Apparently the coin-op was available in other Asian countries.

The good news is that the PSX and Arcade versions of Sexy Parodius are identical, except the PSX version has adjustable difficulty. The bad news is they’re identical. Sexy Parodius is the one Parodius shmup I had never previously played coming into this feature (probably a poor choice of words). I felt some degree of sadness as the title screen loaded, knowing this was it. The only Parodius that followed this is a Japanese-exclusive turn-based game. Hell, this could very well be the last time I play a Parodius game for the first time (I played the next game in this feature before playing this). Well, after playing Sexy Parodius, yeah, it was time to end this franchise. They were clearly out of ideas for levels and especially bosses. Besides Salamander 2, I’d even say that this has the weakest lineup of bosses of any Gradius game of the 90s. A couple stand-outs, like Medusa or a penguin wearing a toilet seat on its head, but for the most part, the designs and attack patterns are uninspired.

To really nail (probably a poor choice of words) how lazy and uninspired the design is, the boss rush features three bosses from Parodius Da! and one from Gokujō Parodius instead of new bosses. Okay, so the evil mouths eventually combine to form a bigger mouth and that’s new, but then the final boss of the rush, which looks original, only uses attack patterns from the previous four bosses in the rush. Whoa, careful there, fellas. I almost sat up in my chair for a moment. Actually, I became genuinely listless playing this, which hasn’t happened much in this feature so far. Sexy Parodius is so phoned-in that it feels like an assignment that nobody wanted. Like the CEO of Konami said “gentlemen, we need another Parodius to fill a gap in our arcade release schedule” and everyone who might have had an original thought said “not it!” in unison, leaving only Uncreative Joe who was late to the meeting because his zipper got stuck.

The big twist with Sexy Parodius is that each level now has an objective to it, mostly collecting or destroying things. Well, the first level’s goal is just “beat the boss” which isn’t exactly optional, but after that, the objectives take priority and mostly succeed at giving players more to do than just shoot with reckless abandon. It’s actually not the worst idea for a Gradius-style shmup. I REALLY liked the fairy collecting in the next Parodius game in this feature, which is a remake of Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius. For Sexy Parodius, the first actual objective is collecting 300 coins. My first time playing the coin-op, I actually failed it with 298, and I thought I was doing pretty good. So, it’s not a token gameplay mechanic. That’s a good thing, right?

But, I don’t think the objectives are a win at all, and here’s why: branching paths. Normally I’d totally go down on them. I MEAN I’m down with them. Ahem. I mean, I’d prefer an option that allows you to play every single stage if you want. I think one of the best quality of life ROM hacks I’ve ever played is a Castlevania III ROM hack that removes the branching paths and gives you a complete level tour, but I’m down for having a variety of levels. Except, Sexy Parodius has levels that can only be accessed by failing objectives, and if you want to experience the whole game, you’ll need multiple play-throughs and have to avoid shooting things in some stages. The latter part of that could have easily been fixed by letting players choose which level they want if they succeed while taking the option away when they fail. The real kick in the ass is that the better levels are the ones you play when you miss the objectives. This could very well be the worst version of branching paths I’ve experienced in a retro game so far.

Before I wrap this review up, I have to tell you about one of the worst closing sequences to a game I’ve seen. Here’s how Sexy Parodius climaxes (probably a poor choice of words).

“You’ve already had to fight several identical walls like this one in this level, except this wall has three targets. Blow up this wall!”

“Okay, I did it!”

“Cool. Now here’s another wall, but this one has five targets and even more crap spamming the screen. Blow up this wall too.”

“Okay, this is getting tiring but I got one more in me. I’ve made it this far, afterall!”

“You’re tired of not fighting walls? Well how about yet another wall, this time with TWELVE targets!”

“……… Nah, actually I’m good, thanks.” (turns off game)

What a boring way to end a game. Yes, I get what they were trying to do, but as a gag it’s not funny because the gameplay is too repetitive. And even if it wasn’t meant to be a joke, it doesn’t work as climatic sequence anyway, because, I mean, it’s f*cking walls! Like most other Gradius games, there’s no boss after these final walls. THEY ARE the last boss, unless you count the bonus level. I’m not even mad about the shameless blanketing of bullets coupled with low visibility, even on the easier settings mind you. By this point, I already realized why Sexy Parodius was the last original Parodius shmup. They were creatively bankrupt at this point, and in retrospect, the franchise was on a downward trajectory after Da! and was going to crater eventually. Well, it happened, because Sexy Parodius just isn’t fun. The set pieces, bosses, and new characters are lame as f*ck and the jokes don’t really land. The gameplay is still Gradius and if you are incapable of being bored by Gradius, you’ll enjoy a handful of new levels, but otherwise, it was clearly time to put this franchise to bed. Probably a poor choice of words.
Verdict: NO!

Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius: Forever with Me
Platform: PlayStation
Released December 20, 1996
Directed by Kazutomo Terada
Developed by Stone Heads
Published by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Forever With Me is a remastering of Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius that rights a lot of wrongs. Some of the more boring boss fights are replaced with better ones in this build. Like, the Big Core MK I just shows up in JOP. Not a satire of it, but the real thing, and apparently the subversion of the expectation of a joke is the joke. Well, that’s not funny, so here’s a dog instead. You’ll notice in the picture its attack pattern is still the Big Core’s, more or less, but it just works better. That’s not to say they only repainted bosses, either. After three previous games spent as a mini-boss, the Cat thing is now a full-fledged boss in Forever With Me and a highlight of the game. There’s also several small changes to the level layouts and new set-pieces.

There’s also new graphical effects, background gags, and even replay value. Hidden in the game are seventy fairies that must be located by shooting the area they’re hidden in, then collecting them. After you find these seventy, a fresh batch of seventy more are hidden in different locations. Now, I think they kind of skimped on the unlockables, as the only character you can get is Kid Dracula, and only if you get all 140 fairies. But, it’s a great idea that I had a lot of fun with. So much fun, actually, that I’m kind of heartbroken it took all the way to the 70th game in this feature for Konami to come up with something like this. By the way, it is different from Sexy Parodius’ objectives, because the fairies aren’t just on the screen. You have to reveal them AND collect them. They’re genuinely hidden. Now, it could have been better by having the fairies be numbered to let you know how much progress you’ve made. I feel a modern game would know to do that, but this sort of “collect-a-thon outside of adventure games” thing wasn’t super common back then.

Another neat addition that’s exclusive to the Sony versions are ACCIDENT levels. You have to turn them on in the options menu. These are like bite-size bonus mini-stages with a series of repetitive challenges. Oh, and they’re polygonal enemies, and there’s always something 3D-ish about their vulnerabilities or attack pattern design. There’s no bosses for these segments, and as far as I can tell, no fairies are hidden in them either. So, these are just for funsies optional stages, hence being a toggle. But, they’re certainly fun if you want to pad-out the game.

And Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius: Forever with Me is STILL not done with the new content, providing not one but two local leaderboard-driven bonus modes. First, remember the scoring-driven Omake/Lollipop levels? Yep, there’s a brand new one that’s called Omake 1 in the menu. Sadly, I felt this was probably the weakest of the Omake levels in any version of Parodius, including the PC Engine version. No awesome surprises at all. It’s solid and fun, but a bit of a letdown.

Omake 2 is a totally different experience. Instead of being themed like a score rush, this level takes place on a race track and highly incentivizes using the SPEED UP boosts. Instead of competing for a high score, you’re trying to post the fastest time. The course is always the same and you really have to work to memorize it because some of the turns are, simply put, ridiculous. Dare I say seemingly impossible if you use too many speed-ups. But, as a completely out of left field change of pace to the shmup formula, I really liked this. Real crowd pleaser too, as everyone wanted to take turns trying to post a high score.

So Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius: Forever with Me is superior in every way to the Super Famicom game. But I also must stress that, like the SFC original, fluency in spoken Japanese is absolutely required to be able to fully appreciate the game. The “chattering” part is back, and apparently some of the dialog has been updated, but it’s entirely in Japanese. Also, like the original, some of the set-pieces just aren’t very good. The Xexex level was a total flop for me, and that’s coming from someone who thinks Xexex is the bees’ knees. I would have loved a deluxe version of Parodius Da, which I still think is the best game in the franchise. I guess improving a weaker game is a good thing, but I still prefer Da! Oh well, we’ll always have the flasher Moai, I guess.
Verdict: YES! – $5 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Wait, what?

Solar Assault: Gradius
aka Solar Assault: Revised*
Platform: Arcade
Released July, 1997 (Original)
Released December, 1997 (Revised)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

*The version released in the United States titled “Solar Assault” is the Japanese “Solar Assault: Revised.” Since the original Solar Assault was basically a glorified prototype that should never have been released, I only played Revised for this feature.

Well, at least they finally figured out a way to freshen-up the Moai stage: make it 3D! The best way to explain Solar Assault is take Star Fox 64, add a version of the Gradius item bar that’s completely missing the speed-up slot, and then remove the NPC aspect, all-range mode, the barrel roll, and the somersault. That’s actually a very accurate way of looking at Solar Assault. It’s so well done that Nintendo could have modified this and released it as Star Fox 64-II with minimal fuss. You know how I talk about shared DNA? Solar Assault isn’t a cousin to Star Fox 64. It’s a fraternal twin. Does the item bar, including options and the classic shield design, make it feel like a Gradius game? Nope. Not even a little bit. It’s Star Fox 64, period. Easily the most Nintendo-like Konami game I’ve ever played in my life. That’s not a bad thing, by the way.

Actually, in many ways, I like this better than Star Fox 64. I was never a big fan of the all-range segments in that. The on-the-rails stages and bosses felt more “pure” somehow and there was always a hint of jank to the truly 3D elements. Well, there’s no truly 3D gameplay here. All the 3D elements like turns through corridors or buildings are on-the-rails. Thankfully, the illusion of 3D is very well-crafted, leading to heart-stopping near-miss moments. Angela owes me $5 for doing a sentence with three hyphens. There’s a lot of smart design choices, too. The classic Gradius item capsules return, and they linger on the screen when you would logically scroll past them, giving you time to collect them. That’s probably one of the reasons why it’s not a hard game, which is stunning for a Konami arcade game. The developers apparently decided “speed-up” wouldn’t work for this format, and that’s fine. The game controls like a dream, with smooth and accurate analog controls. Why mess with that for the sake of tradition?

Sadly, I couldn’t recreate the arcade experience, which featured an open cockpit deluxe cabinet along with a gigantic flight stick equipped with a fire and/or missile button. But, the game still manages to be pretty immersive. The levels have a “theme park dark ride” quality I was hoping for. I didn’t really expect this to have exciting settings, and I was wrong. The levels are very well-themed, with even boilerplate settings going the extra mile to make them stand out. The opening level is an asteroid belt, only set directly above a planet, with the outline of a black hole off in the distance. It might offer nothing new in terms of gameplay, but the Moai stage, a scary forest, and a pair of spooky space stations feel fresh in both look and gameplay. My breath was constantly taken away by some of the sights.

Solar Assault is not perfect. There are two major flaws in it. The first big problem is that it’s very easy to lose where you are on the screen. Even though I’m nearly 36 and nearing my third decade of gaming, Solar Assault’s action got so crazy that I still managed to lose track of my exact position on the screen multiple times, especially at the end of the game. This didn’t happen with every ship. I strongly recommend playing as Lord British (no, not that one), who fires the classic Salamander ripple rings. The ship is reddish-pink, and it just stands out more, plus the weapon was much more effective anyway. A bigger problem is the bosses are too spongy. Hell, in my first playthrough, I beat the first three bosses by running the clock out even though I’m pretty sure I was hitting most of my shots on them. It’s telling that, once I switched off Vic Viper to Lord British, I was beating bosses with time to spare.

The strangest thing of all about Solar Assault is that the basic enemies are much more fun to fight than the bosses. Even the traditional Big Cores show up, and they’re just not fun to do battle with because they’re too damn spongy. They don’t look great either, and I only barely recognized them as Big Cores. Oh, and the finale does the typical Gradius “the last boss doesn’t fight back” gag, and even that is spongy to the point that it loses all its entertainment value. There’s really nothing wrong with Solar Assault that some light rebalancing couldn’t fix. Even Konami seems to have recognized this, hence this being the rare game that was released, then immediately redone with new segments, an entire new level, and rebalanced difficulty and basic enemy attack patterns.

I did fiddle around with the original build, which wasn’t as good as Revised and I don’t recommend even trying it. It’s so clearly an unfinished prototype, and one that feels like it was released simply to gauge the reaction. Hell, they later did the same thing with Castlevania 64 in a way. But even the Revised version of Solar Assault is a short game at six levels. Still, it’s just awful that this has never seen a home release. Of all the games in this feature that’s true of, Solar Assault hurts the most. Sometimes early 3D games have a gimmickness to them. Not this one. It’s one of the very best games I’ve reviewed in recent years. I loved it.

I really don’t give a sh*t if it’s little more than Konami’s take on Star Fox 64. Solar Assault really feels like the type of game that could have stoked new interest in the Gradius franchise. That was NEVER going to happen if they kept this in arcades, and especially never going to happen if the US build only got a limited release. Solar Assault might be one of the best coin-ops ever to slip into obscurity. It’s a non-entity in modern gaming, and nobody is better off for that. I’d never even heard of it, and it’s just a fantastic game. What a tragedy this whole thing is. It just hurts my heart that it’s slipped so far under the radar. This was actually the final original game I played for this feature (though not the last sequentially), and I’m wiping tears because it feels so good to have found one last hidden gem/killer app for a potential future collection. Do the right thing, Konami, because you didn’t in the late 90s.
Verdict: YES! – $15 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gradius Gaiden
Platform: PlayStation
Released August 28, 1997
Directed by Teisaku Seki
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan*
NO MODERN RELEASE*
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

*Ported to Gradius Collection for PSP and the Japanese version of the PlayStation Classic

Gradius Gaiden IS Gradius #4 or #5 depending on how you feel about Salamander/Life Force. Yes, there’s an actual Gradius IV coming up, but only because they chose a name instead of a number. There’s no twist in the formula that fundamentally changes the Gradius format. This is the sequential heir to Gradius III’s legacy, period, end of story. So, why is this so much better than the others except maybe Gradius II? Because this is all the good stuff with none of the bad. Because the levels are often not just facades. Like the above stage? The crystals can reflect your lasers! Well, provided your ship shoots lasers. If it doesn’t, it’s just another pretty stage. Gradius Gaiden has a lot of those.

So why isn’t it just outright the best Gradius? Well, you kind of have to be a big fan of Gradius for a lot of Gradius Gaiden’s level themes and design to work. Like, the second level is a scrapyard full of failed Big Core variants. It’s like Parodius without the humor, played entirely sincerely in a way that works. In addition to tons and tons of callbacks and hidden details, this is a game that largely sets up expectations with level themes that seem familiar, but then some incredible twist happens. Take those Moai heads. It’s been done in nearly every Gradius game, but this time, the statues break apart after being destroyed, creating secondary hazards that keep you from going into cruise control. That’s a nice subtle change. There’s also the not-so-subtle, like the sixth level. It starts with a very familiar setting: the first level of the original Gradius, which has returned multiple times at this point. Seems kind of late in the game for this particular memberberry but I guess that’s fine and HOLY F*CKING SH*T! THE LEVEL IS BEING SUCKED INTO A BLACK HOLE!

Now, the black hole bit works even if you don’t recognize the level. But it WORKS BETTER if you are a Gradius superfan. So do the twists with the Big Core variants you fight. And the final boss and really the entire climax relies heavily on callbacks to make any sense and I imagine will be very disappointing if you lack that context. Like, it literally morphs into three seemingly random Salamander bosses, for no reason. The gag of the last Gradius bosses being weak and essentially defenseless has long overstayed its welcome by this point, and this one doesn’t even have a memorable design to make up for it. It’s not a satisfying climax at all, so I want you to imagine dropping a new player in with THIS finale. Shooting a giant head that runs the whole thing is memorable. Shooting a thing that morphs into three bosses from an old spin-off of the actual game you’re playing is not.

This is the boilerplate Gradius game, only everything is different enough that it feels like an entirely fresh experience for veterans. This is a SEQUEL in all capital letters. That’s fine with me, and I imagine it’s fine with anyone who has read this far into Konami Shoot ‘Em Ups: The Definitive Review. I’m not entirely sure it’ll be fine for someone playing their first Gradius game. That’s why now I think I kind of understand why this never came out in America. This is not the kind of sequel that makes new fans. Not every amazing game is also an amazing jumping-in point for its franchise. While I genuinely think any fan of action games should be able to appreciate Gradius Gaiden for its amazing level design and enemies, realistically, it’s a tougher sell in a country that never really embraced the franchise to begin with. It’s a great game, but to genuinely be amazed by it probably requires preexisting knowledge.

I’m also a little disappointed that more wasn’t done for the after-game experience. After the hidden fairies in Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius: Forever with Me, I was really hoping that something like that would be in Gradius Gaiden, and there isn’t. The junkyard level has two paths, each with a unique boss, and there’s a secret true final boss at the end of the boss rush that can only be fought during the game’s second cycle. But, after seeing those things, you’ve experienced everything Gradius Gaiden has to offer. Even though this is very deep into my marathon, I would have been game to find all the hidden content for Gaiden, something I didn’t want to do for Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius. A shoot ’em up that leaves me hungry even after my fourth run through it is a true rarity in this feature. That’s why I consider Gradius Gaiden the best of the franchise, at least for me. Gradius II might be a literally perfect game and Gradius Gaiden isn’t, but Gradius Gaiden is the game I enjoyed the most in this entire feature.
Verdict: YES! – $15 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gradius IV: Fukkatsu
Platform: Arcade
Released February 4, 1999
Directed by Hiroyuki Ashida
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan*
NO MODERN RELEASE
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

*Coin-op only. Included in various collections.

My resident arcade expert Dave really doesn’t like Gradius IV and talked about it like it was programmed to be the entrance exam into Hell itself. That’s basically how I felt about the coin-op version of Gradius III, so I was prepared for the worst. Well, Dave and I are very, very far apart on our assessment of the fourth sequential Gradius game. I thought it was fine, and the biggest problems were ones typical of the era. Much like with Super Castlevania IV, I have a bonkers conspiracy theory related to this game and Gradius Gaiden, though I think this one is probably even more likely than my SCV4 “the eight way whipping was a last second addition” theory. Strap on your tinfoil hats for this one.

It’s not really a conspiracy so much as a weird suspicion about Gradius Gaiden. I think it was meant to be a very late-era Super NES game, which is why it barely got a bump in the audio/visual department when the project was moved to the 32-bit PlayStation. Oh, it’s almost certainly not true. Gradius Gaiden’s development cycle was well documented, but it’s fun to wonder, isn’t it? What makes it believable is Gaiden certainly isn’t trying to look “modern” by the standards of the late 90s, which is very strange for a home-exclusive 1997 PSX game. Gradius IV the first real Gradius of the polygon era, IE one designed entirely with graphics that were typical of the era. It shows, because it’s so clumsy with its handling of polygons and “advanced” visual effects that it ends up pretty damn cheesy. I’ve never thought of Gradius as a “cheesy” series, so the tonal shift is jarring. Like, there’s actual goddamn explosions during the game. As in live footage spliced into the game, and it doesn’t match the look of the game at all and it’s so distracting and wrong.

To the explosions’ credit, my family was cracking up so badly that I had tears pouring down my cheeks as I squeaked out “why would anyone do this?” Perhaps they’re playing 4D chess and this was a ploy to induce fits of laughter that would cause loss of lives, forcing faster game overs and thus earning the game more money. I’M ONTO YOU, KONAMI! But, they only have a handful of explosion effects too and it’s kind of funny that Konami thinks a giant space triops would explode in the same way that a space station does. Where it gets weirder is the first boss doesn’t have the live footage explosion when it dies. They made a different effect for it. It’s like someone on the development team was caught screwing around with a Video Toaster at their work station after the first level was complete and they said “that’s pretty cool! Let’s put it in the rest of the game!”

At the start of Gradius IV, I was worried that, because “cutting edge” graphics were the hook, the game would be full of repeated set-pieces and bosses, only now they’re polygons instead of sprites. I was right, to a certain extent. Like, the Moai stage’s new twists aren’t new at all. They break apart, just like the ones in Gradius Gaiden did, and the boss is the same two-headed giant Moai as before with a new attack pattern. The only fresh part of the whole thing is that it’s a 2D game with 3D graphics. Yippie. But, there are some really memorable segments. The lava level waves up and down and it’s so hypnotic when it happens that you wish you had more time to sit and admire just how breathtaking it is.

Actually, my biggest knock with Gradius IV is the lack of a nice BANG to the gunplay. There’s a feathery lightness to the whole thing that becomes especially pronounced during boss fights. They’re all a bit spongier than I care for to begin with, but they ALL lack a nice, satisfying snap to them when you land your shots. The worst by far was the new “armor-piercing” gun that’s the sixth and final loadout’s laser weapon. I do NOT recommend using it, but the other guns don’t do much better in the satisfaction department. Even something as simple as the “Konami Bing” or whatever that noise is that signals a landed shot in dozens of Konami games would have made all the difference in the world. It’s rare that I comment on sound design and music because I spent the majority of my play sessions with the game muted, but I thought Gradius IV had some of the worst sound design in the franchise.

Okay, so the first polygonal Gradius that’s meant to be Gradius (that assuming we don’t count Solar Assault) was never fated to age as gracefully as other games in the series. But, let it be said that I’ll stand by Gradius IV as being not that bad, actually. Hell, I gave both the odd-numbered games in the series a NO! for their coin-ops so it’s only fitting that both even-numbered ones scored a YES! I really liked a lot of the boss designs and attack patterns. There were still plenty of twists to keep me interested from start to finish. A bizarre but absolutely true final note to end this review on: Gradius IV is easily the most generous in terms of the collision box. There were so many times I caught myself saying “how did I survive that?” Of course, a counter to that is I’m sure at least some of the sponginess was related to small collision boxes for the bosses, especially the Big Cores. I don’t want a re-release of Gradius IV. I want a full remake of it that fixes the crappy soundtrack and offers toggles for difficulty and collision. But, this is an underrated game. I’ll die on THAT hill, Dave.
Verdict: YES! – $6 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gradius Galaxies
aka Gradius Advance (EU) Gradius Generation (JP)
Released November 9, 2001
Designed by Hideaki Fukutome
Developed by Mobile21
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Seriously, I laughed more at the GBA version of Gradius than I did at any Parodius game. I honestly couldn’t tell if it was serious or not. As the last original Gradius game in this feature, I mean, it’s fine. I guess. There’s no real stand-out set-piece, though not for a lack of effort. The problem is the “twists” are just kind of the same things they’ve already done, only framed differently. For the Moai stage, after a third of the stage being the normal, extremely tired Moai stage, they start to emerge from the ground like zombies. I mean, they’re just the same old Moai statues with the same evil ring bullets, but they, you know, come out of the ground. Or for the expected remake of the original level one Gradius stage, instead of the whole level being sucked into a black hole, a mountain falls off the ceiling.

So there’s a large “been there, done that” vibe to Gradius Galaxies. It’s certainly not a bad game. I’m giving it a YES! and everything. But there’s also nothing really notable about it. Well, unless you play the Japanese version. Exclusive to Gradius Generation, when you beat the game, you unlock a challenge mode that made me sit up in my seat. For about twenty seconds, until I realized what it was.

It’s exactly the same game you just already played, broken into forty-seven bite-sized chunks. As in, thirty or less seconds per challenge. Challenge A is roughly equal to the game on NORMAL, and after finishing every single stage, Challenge B is unlocked which contains the same challenges set on HARD. It’s sort of like Gradius meets WarioWare, and it is challenging, because you start each segment from scratch with no speed or gun boosts. The problem is that they created a “challenge” for seemingly every square-inch of the game, when not every square-inch of the game is suitable for such a challenge. Like, there’s a challenge for each buffer-zone between levels that ends at exactly the point the stage would be starting proper. If they had limited this concept to just the bosses and the big set-pieces, and maybe put a worthwhile reward for completing it, like a new ship or even a new level, hell, this could have been the best feature in Gradius history. Instead, it’s almost entirely busy work, and you need to beat all forty-seven of them to unlock the much meatier Challenge B.

Make no mistake: there’s some damn good gameplay in this challenge section. I’d reached the point where I wasn’t dying a ton in Gradius games and nearly aced the game. When playing the main mode, I only really died in the speed zone (which got me several times). These challenges reminded me how hard the game is when you don’t have a full loadout. It just doesn’t work because they overdid it. Well, their hearts were in the right place, I suppose. It’s rare enough to complain about bonus content missing the mark, because this is bonus content. But this would have been a lot more welcome in one of the better Gradius games. I don’t even know if I would have complained about the oversaturation of challenge stages if this had been a feature in Gradius Gaiden. For Galaxies, hell, not a single boss is among the elite of the Gradius franchise. It’s just north of the middle of the road. Not a disaster, but nothing special. If nothing else, it’s proof that Gradius is pretty hard to screw-up.
Verdict: YES! – $3 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

PLAYSTATION PORTABLE COLLECTIONS

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There’s four collections of Konami shoot ’em ups for the PSP, and at first, I was going to play through every game in them, but honestly, it’s overkill. TwinBee Portable offers a Tate Mode for its games, which is nice, I suppose. The more interesting builds are Gradius Collection and Parodius Portable, which reworked the games to be wide-screen. That’s not the blessing you think. Maybe some day I’ll talk about them, but I don’t think they’re likely to get a re-release. At the time these were released, they didn’t get the best reception because the PSP was not suitable for shmups with its crappy D-pad and crappier little analog nub. Thankfully, I got to play these with the comfort of a PS5 controller. Anyway, there’s two MSX remakes and one Game Boy remake spread among the four collections, which felt like a great way to cap off this feature. Enjoy!

Parodius
Remake of Parodius for MSX
Part of Parodius Portable
Platform: PlayStation Portable
Released January 25, 2007
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

The first of three PSP remakes contained within collections I played, and I had the highest hopes for this one. The other two remakes that I’ll be giving the full review treatment for already got a YES! but Parodius for MSX I’ve already given NO! to twice before. I was hoping the gameplay would be improved, and to a degree, it is. The slice-scrolling of the MSX original is gone, replaced with the expected smooth scrolling. Plus, the game runs in widescreen. REAL wide-screen. No stretching here. So, the remake of the original Parodius is a rousing success then? Well, no.

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The problem with the Parodius remake is it’s still the same game, with the same rules, as the MSX version. What was spongy then is spongy now. What takes forever then takes forever now. While the boss attached to the rope was easier to defeat because the hit box seems more accurate (and the hit boxes can apparently be adjusted in the options menu), other bosses were every bit as miserable to fight as they were on the previous build. The giant Moai took forever. The twin maids took forever. The giant eyeball took forever. The part of the game where the ceiling collapses took forever. Plus, they stuck to the original game’s format, so all five characters are just skins that all have the same potential weapons and upgrades. I’m SO disappointed because they had an opportunity to vastly clean up a game that wasn’t very fun to begin with and they didn’t take it. The gameplay is better because the scrolling is better, but the original Parodius is still a badly designed game, and I’m glad to be done with it for good now.
Verdict: NO!

TwinBee Da!
Remake of Pop’n TwinBee for Game Boy
Part of TwinBee Portable
Platform: PlayStation Portable
Released January 25, 2007
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Wikis: Konami – TwinBee

Following Parodius Portable’s remake of the original MSX game, my expectations for the remake of the Game Boy version of Pop’n TwinBee were pretty low. I expected, more or less, the same game with sharper sprites and color. While that’s technically what I got, TwinBee Da! on PSP is so damn good that it makes Parodius retroactively worse. It’s so good that we suspect they might have used the original development notes and figured out where mechanics and enemy attack formations had to be cut due to the limitations of the Game Boy. You could even call this Pop’n TwinBee: Arcade Edition. Remember how you threw whole clusters of bombs in the early TwinBee coin-ops? That’s back! Actually, I don’t think the bombing mechanic has ever felt better.

It’s also much, much harder than the Game Boy original was, because there’s just so much flying around the screen. Yet, the graphics are so damn crisp and vibrant that it never becomes too busy to follow the action. It’s still a short game at only five levels plus a grand finale boss fight. Except, the weakness of the Game Boy game is now a major strength in the remake. The boss rush that caps off what is now the fourth level was fairly weak in the original build. In this one, not only do the colors and reworked sprites make the bosses feel less generic, but they actually put up quite the fight. I even ate a GAME OVER during this sequence. And the final boss was a major pain in the ass too. But, the strength of the well-designed levels carries over to the boss rush. There’s no downtime in this TwinBee. It’s short but potently fun from start to finish.

I can’t stress enough how impressed I am with the entire direction of the Pop’n TwinBee remake. It’s one of the best looking games in the series, easily. You would never guess this started life as a Game Boy title. But it has perfect, even generous collision detection while maintaining a fast pace and a lot of action. Nobody would have possibly expected this in a collection like this, and the fact that it’s part of a collection really makes this a kick in the pants. Of all the “lost” gems in this feature, this one might shine the brightest, yet it’s treated like a throwaway +1 for a collection. If Konami ever does another collection, HOPEFULLY they don’t forget this one.
Verdict: YES! – $7 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection

Gradius 2
Remake of Gradius 2 for MSX
Part of Salamander Portable
Platform: PlayStation Portable
Released January 25, 2007
Developed by Konami
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Wikis: Konami – Gradius

Welp, this is it. The final-final-final game of Konami Shoot ‘Em Ups: The Definitive Review. You’ve reached the end. Hope you enjoyed it. I wish I had ended on TwinBee, because this remake of Gradius 2 for the MSX is not a major step-up over the original. Actually, I’m pretty sure this is what the game would have been if it had been made for the MSX2+. If the MSX2+ was, you know, wide-screen. The graphics are marginally improved and scrolling is marginally smoother. However, there’s still a TON of slowdown. It’s certainly preferable to play this build over the MSX one because smoother scrolling helps with immersion. BUT, if this isn’t an option, you’re not missing out on anything, really. Kind of a letdown for a final review after everything above, really.
Verdict: YES! – $6 in value added to Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection BUT only if the MSX build isn’t in it. If it is, then this is $2 in bonus value.

FINAL TOTAL

YES!: 52
NO!: 24
Target Value: $60 – $70
Total Value: $292

And that final total is before factoring in any bonus value, including the automatic $10 in bonus value for a nearly fully-loaded Infinity Gauntlet of Emulation. Now, of course my hypothetical Konami Shoot ‘Em Up Collection is never going to happen. So, let’s play around with some combinations, shall we?

The obvious one is Gradius Origins, which will retail for $39.99. Now, I haven’t played it yet, but I’m projecting a value of, drum roll: $15. Actually, that goes up to $25 with its fully-loaded Infinity Gauntlet and it might even get another $5 to $10 from its galleries and bonus features, and Salamander 3 is eligible for up to $15 in value. Keep in mind that, in previous features like Making of Karateka or Tetris Forever, I always noted that if you’re not into old advertisements or box art, you can ignore the bonus value I add for that. And even if you don’t ignore it, the total value still comes short of $40. It’ll need a big YES! from Salamander 3 or it’ll need to earn bonus value from the prototypes, which can earn a little value even if they get a NO! Still, only a single game in it got a YES!, and that’s Gradius II. Gradius I, Gradius III, and both Salamander games got a NO!, so having multiple versions of them ain’t going to help all that much. Having used rewind and save states, the NO! games are not saved by those features. They’re just not aged well enough. Now, the collection will get discounted if Konami’s other collections are any indication (Arcade Anniversary is priced at $7.99 as I type this, but scored an actual retail value of $29). Gradius II *is* worth owning, and hell, if it’s cheap enough, you might as well get the other games.

But what if Gradius Origins had more? Let’s go back to just the $15 we know I’m giving Gradius II and the likely $10 for the emulation, so $25 in value. Let’s add JUST the NES Gradius games and Life Force. That’s +$10 in value just by those three additions for $35, but with the bonus value of the special features, it likely makes it to $40 in value. Doesn’t that by itself make Gradius Origins look pretty silly? Or, forget the NES games. Let’s add JUST the MSX trilogy and MSX Salamander. Salamander got a NO!, but the three Gradius games earned a YES! and a whopping $19 in value, bringing the total to $44 and a victory for Gradius Origins. Hell, let’s really go nuts! What if the collection had all the Gradius and Salamander ports I covered up to Gradius III? $15 for Gradius 2, $10 for the emulation, $10 for the NES games, $19 for the MSX games, $10 for the Game Boy titles, $22 for the PC Engine games, and $6 for Gradius III SNES. Total: $92.

Now, here’s where it gets REALLY damning. Let’s ignore every single home port and pretend that Gradius Origins went to IV instead of III. That’s $31 in value. Okay, still not quite enough, but what if it had Gaiden instead of IV? That’s $40 and a victory. The same goes for putting Solar Assault instead of Gaiden. Now, what if it had all three of those games? That’s probably the most believable alternative package I could come up with. Gradius Origins + Gaiden + IV + Solar Assault = $61 and a win. Remove Gaiden because it’s a home exclusive? Fine, it’s still a winner at $46. Do you see why I’m so frustrated? They had paths to make this happen.

Just for fun, what if Gradius Origins had included zero arcade games? What if it had been focused on 8-bit consoles, including the MSX? Well, it wouldn’t be called “Gradius Origins” then. Let’s call this set Konami Home Origins, and we’ll say it has the NES, MSX, and Game Boy games from this feature. That set would contain twenty-two games valued at $70, before any bonuses are added. Wowie!

All Gradius & Salamander games earned a total of $93. The total value of TwinBee games in this feature was $32. Parodius earned $47 as a franchise ($29 of that from versions of Parodius Da! by itself), while Thunder Cross, which apparently includes Space Manbow, earned $27.

Five games earned the max $15 value: Gradius II Arcade, Gradius II for Super CD-ROM², Xexex, Gradius Gaiden, and Solar Assault. Three other games earned $10 or more: Thunder Cross, the third MSX Gradius game, and Space Manbow. And this really means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but the two games based on licensed IPs, Aliens and G.I. Joe, earned $10 in value.

The total value of all thirty-four coin-ops in this feature was $125. The NES/Famicom/Famicom Disk games are worth $25. The MSX games + Super Manbow for MSX2+ scored $29 in value. The PC Engine games along with Gradius II for the Super CD-ROM² earned $27. The original black & white Game Boy titles earned $16, which is $19 if you throw-in the GBA Gradius. The Super NES games are $22, while the PlayStation titles scored $28.

Twenty-one of the games I reviewed have been released on Arcade Archives. Those cost $7.99 each, so the total value should be $167.79. The actual value? I swear, I didn’t plan this out but it’s perfect: $67. Wow. I mean, come on, that IS funny. And in fairness, those would get a lot more consideration than this review gave them due to special features. Titles like Time Pilot certainly benefit from Arcade Archives’ high score and 5 minute modes. Games on Nintendo Switch Online scored $10.

Meanwhile, twenty of the games have never been re-released, and they earned $82 in value. That’s sad. Thirty games were filed under NO MODERN RELEASE, and those games earned $133. Lots of money left on the table. In short: DO BETTER, KONAMI!

THE END

To my amazing family, to all my friends, and to every single reader I’ve had over the last fourteen years: thank you so much for putting up with me. I know I’m often annoying and I’ve given you many sleepless nights. But, please don’t ever forget that I love you all! I mean that, from the bottom of my heart, which is apparently where all the love must be located since everyone who especially loves people cites their love comes from their heart’s bottom. I would think coming from the top would be better because it means your love traveled less distance, as if you wanted them to feel it faster, but whatever. I’ve tried to think of what I could possibly say that would express the heartfelt love I feel for you all, and this is the best I came up with: you all make me want to find the best version of myself.

Okay, well, fine. Here’s my thoughts on the wide-screen versions of PSP’s games.

When I saw that Gradius Collection and Parodius Portable had true, reworked wide-screen, I became really excited. But, the problem with wide-screen gameplay is that the games weren’t built for it. They might have adjusted the size of the playfield, but they didn’t make any adjustments to the enemies for it. Every single attack pattern that was presumably fine-tuned for the original dimensions of the arcade or television monitors at the time is cut and pasted. Consequently, some tight squeezes or sections built around claustrophobia are actually less exciting. Sometimes significantly so.

Weirdly, they did make SOME adjustments to the bosses, but it’s never to the benefit of the fight. The giant female Moai statue that spits out Moai missiles? The gag with her (poor choice of words) is that her missiles reach the full length of the screen. Hold on, wait a second. The whole point of that fight was it’s built around REALLY close calls. So what happens when the screen is much bigger? Well, this happens:

Now a boss that was built specifically around narrow safe spaces to dodge the attacks has a great big gap between the edge of the screen and the launching point of the projectiles. Well, that boss is ruined. It turns out, you can’t just keep the same attacks on a wide-screen. I actually laughed when I saw that the solution Gradius II had for this was to just position some of the bosses more in the center of the screen, like so:

But, some bosses are still ruined because the logic of the fights no longer makes any sense. I can’t stress enough that Gradius bosses are almost entirely built around limiting your available space to dodge attacks. On the left is the Super CD-ROM² version of Gradius II’s second boss. On the right is the PSP. Does this look like there’s still limited room to dodge its attacks?

That’s just too much playfield for a boss that still has the same attack pattern. It doesn’t work at all. It’s not all a disaster. The Parodius games have little to no slowdown, but who cares when many of the set-pieces and bosses are completely destroyed by the wide-screen format? There’s segments of some stages that do work slightly better in both Gradius and for Parodius. But for the most part, this was actually a pretty epic disaster. The famous electric cage? Dead. Like, dead-dead. Here’s the Parodius version of it:

This is the equivalent of when an old television series with a 4:3 aspect is “enhanced” for modern TVs and that ruins the experience because now you can see ceiling lights and boom mics. There’s a reason why this type of thing isn’t commonplace with retro re-releases: it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. This doesn’t count for the reviews above, but I would actually give every game in Gradius Collection and Parodius Portable a NO! They’re some of the best games ever made, only formatted in a ruinous way. If they ever do something like this again, they can’t simply copy and paste the old games. They have to be entirely remastered, with new logic, or they won’t work.

And now you’ve reached the end. Thank you for fourteen amazing years, and here’s to the next fourteen! I hope you enjoyed Konami Shoot ‘Em Ups: The Definitive Review!