In its place is a new level, the Organic Speed Zone, which features a rapid ascent into a brain like area where you fight a skull. The fourth level in the arcade, Center Core, is now the second stage. It keeps the same alternating horizontal and vertical shooting action but adds quite a bit of new content. In some ways calling this a port doesn’t do it justice. Sadly the American version limits you to two options rather than three, no doubt an effort to limit slowdown which is still pretty bad. While it isn’t as powerful as the laser it is far more useful, so much so that it would be brought over to almost every subsequent Konami shooter in some form. The Ripple produces a wave of concentric circles that expand in size the further they travel. In place of the worthless double shot you have the Ripple. The weapons themselves are identical to Gradius with one exception. It creates a different flow to the game for sure but one that I’m sure Konami hoped would be familiar to fans of Gradius. With the adaptation of the weapon grid you now control the rate at which you power up. On the other hand you were at the mercy of what the game gave you, meaning if you died things would be a lot more complicated if the system decided to drop a bunch of missiles rather than options. For the most part they were plentiful enough that you were able to get up to speed quickly.
Instead enemies would randomly drop the individual items themselves. In the arcade Salamander did not use the Gradius power-up system. It’s a strange mish mash but it all works out in the end. The NES game is a port of this version of the game but adds the Gradius power-up system to boot. Mostly this simply involved adding a weird pattern to the game’s backgrounds and a very brief intro explaining the story. For some inexplicable reason the organic theme of the game’s first level was used to rework the entire game so that it takes place in the body of an organism. Salamander has an odd history when it comes to the US. This is one of the best shooters for the system. While we missed out on the excellent Gradius II Life Force served as an excellent substitute.
GRADIUS GAIDEN STAGE 7 SERIES
But it would be decades before I would learn that in actuality Life Force belonged to a separate series called Salamander. And Konami certainly positioned it as such.
It came a year later, featured an identical power-up system and even starred the same ship. I along with millions of kids always assumed that Life Force was the sequel to Gradius.
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