Gradius Origins lit a fire under me to Just Keep Playing STG, so that's what I've been doing. Masses of Konami keeping mostly to theme, but also some others with a focus on PlayStation releases--I'll talk about each game in the play sequence that's been happening.
Gradius Gaiden
The oft-celebrated and thus, perhaps taken for granted if you've been exposed to the decades of praise. It's all earned and warranted, and the scope of presentation and drama can still render one emotional for the sheer artistry on display. In love with the bio stage music, in love with BIG DUCKER. Please don't talk to me about Heaven's Gate.
Gradius IV: Fukkatsu
Maligned for reading as uninspired compared to what preceded it, but is a solid contender all the way through, and next to
III's ludicrous spikes, probably the hardest-earned loop 1 clear in the series. The vertical bombs are mad fun to fling around, and no other shmup soundtrack is even attempting to match the gameshow cheese of the music here. Better bubble stage than
III, and a nightmarish vertical descent in the final stage.
Gradius V
A loop that is too long and visual aesthetics with the charm of a warehouse, but clever mechanics, standout bosses and highlight level concepts/execution win the day--don't miss out on the cell stage, meteor field and green goop shower. Initially I had a read on the game as being too favourable to the free-aim directional option configuration for all the scrolling shifts and nasty surprises that await, but I concede to that being mostly player rust talking, as a subsequent run with freeze options and the short-range flamethrowers utterly demolished the game and resulted in a more positioning-dependent, active and ultimately more fun playstyle. You can just point and shoot your bendy beams all over... it just doesn't necessarily result in the most interesting mode of interaction.
Einhänder - for the first time
I almost consider this a boss rush game, despite the levels being substantial enough with some memorable setpieces... they are just utterly transcended by the boss roster, each a veritable event thanks to the game's elaborate framing, direction and the diverse animation work they're all subject to. They feel like convincing 3D entities that interact with 2D play mechanics in a legible way and express so much personality through all their patterns. Fukui's music accompanying these showcases, especially for the last few confrontations, is some of the most gripping drama expressed in the genre through choreography and gravitas.
Harmful Park - for the first time
An exceedingly chill shooting experience, if bumbled through on its default settings. The depth is there for optimizing scoring multipliers, and the claws come out on higher difficulties, but you can really just let the cartoon silliness wash over you and come out of it contented. Some highly creative setpieces--no one forgets the jilted-at-the-altar diorama bit--carry fairly mundane progression and mechanics, and it's nice that the humour is comparatively less bawdy than other comedy shooters like
Parodius.
Zanac and Zanac Neo - for the first time
Games like this really stress how on their own level Compile were in the STG space in their time. I don't know how they put the MSX and FDS to work in 1986 pushing this degree of hyper-dense bullet curtains, but they sure did it, all the while brandishing about eight flavours of shot types to boot--"ahead of their time" doesn't begin to cover it. Even through the extreme length (a common Compile pitfall) the action remains engaging for its high dynamism. The remake presented in
Zanac x Zanac retains the strong points while injecting just enough dazzle to maintain interest for a new spin; in particular, the drum 'n bass electronica soundtrack is one of the most immaculate the genre has been graced with. Somehow, there are four times as many weapons present, an excess of riches even for Compile--and a brilliant swansong for their shooting legacy.
Gradius (MSX) - for the first time
Just a great port. The Famicom port released just a bit before this, and is also good, but my preference is probably with this version: the Konami MSX house style is just too appealing, and it retains the arcade game's long laser if you're fond of that. The hurdle that unfamiliar players will face is obviously the incremental, tile-by-tile screen scrolling, but you acclimatize to it pretty quickly from my experience; playability is rarely impacted by it (at least here). The bone zone added to this version begins the throughline of various elements found in the MSX branch of the series that are echoed by megafans-turned-developers in the future as they get the chance to make their tributary nods.
Gradius 2 - for the first time
The MSX sequel, not the arcade game, as denoted by the Arabic numeral instead of the Roman. Introduces the recurring MSX series nemesis Dr. Venom, a space goblin man for more of that sweet, sweet
Macross influence; James Burton as his opponent pilot makes this the formative narrative text future works would adhere to. This is a wildly creative game, and becomes even more so when put into context of predating the more widely played and known arcade
Gradius II, which itself set many templates the series would thereafter follow; the stylings of this space saga are perhaps more obscure, but no less meritorious.
It establishes a pattern for the subsequent MSX games where the twitch arcade shooting core is supplemented by long-term progression systems of escalating power as a secondary goal, in here accomplished by infiltrating end-of-stage cores and stealing their weaponry to augment the player's weapon reel with new upgrade options--but only if you manage to defeat said boss quickly enough, providing an incentive for more efficient, daring play. While novel, and the rewards powerful--plus goofy, like the Up/Down Laser--the continuous core mini-stages also signal to a kind of repetition that does the otherwise very strong level design dirty by the end, as the ostensible final stage of the game contrives a distress signal to retrace one's flight path all the way back to the beginning of the game in reverse order, turning a cool 40-minute loop into a dismal 75-minute endurance run; the final boss being as tough as they are rubs ever more salt on the fresh wound. Despite these enthusiasm-mitigating factors, there's too much good stuff here to ignore, so maybe the round trip will be worth it after all.
Salamander (MSX) - for the first time
After the narrative preamble of aged Emperor Lars (previously James Burton) sending off Iggy Rock and Zowie Scott on their mission,
Salamander on the MSX makes the initial impression that it's only modestly adapting the original for the first two stages... at which point it then diverges. A choice between three stages is offered, and there are stages and bosses not modeled after the arcade game in the mix--including the hidden stage riffing off of
Gradius 2, required for the good ending and only accessible by having that game's cart inserted in the MSX's second cartridge slot (!). The meta-progression system this time mingles a gradual power curve and inquisitive poking around: weapon upgrades are made available after collecting enough energy capsules dropped by particular enemies, and the prophecies related to besting the final bosses and attaining the good ending are discovered through flying into suspect spots in the environment, sometimes requiring those same powered-up weapons to access. There's just enough here to make the game feel distinct from the source material, as the script is flipped with experiments in scroll direction--a vertical section seguing horizontally--or rethinking the existing bosses, like with a mobile Zelos Force that menaces with its huge hitbox while a minion stalks the player attemping to steal away their options. This is the only
Gradius-derived Konami MSX shooter that allows for four options on screen at once, a feat that is both powerful and luxurious.
Gofer no Yabō: Episode II - for the first time
Also
Nemesis 3: The Eve of Destruction. Releasing in a post-
Gradius II world, this is a sequel and a culmination that grabs all the ideas, ongoing continuity and loose threads rattling around the series at this point, still relatively early on but already dense and convoluted as anything like the best of them. James Burton is dead, but his life is still in peril: the villain ensemble--Bacterians, Gofer and Dr. Venom all represent--engineer to travel through time and kill the infant James, thus erasing him and his future resistance from history; it's up to James's descendant David Burton to stop the temporal ambush.
This is a game that comes off as a developer working with the foreknowledge of conveying climactic action, and so there's a drive to pack in as much as possible: four ships with their own weapon configurations and different option movement patterns to choose from push forward the notion of customizability that's always existed in the series, in their own flavour. The secret-hunting element is perhaps at its most intuitive and enjoyable here: find the conspicuous corners and be rewarded with either a new weapon or part of the temporal coordinates required to access the final stages of the game; in the event of missing one, you're given another go at the specific stage at loop-end, this time hopefully aided by the radar placed near the end of the game.
Nemesis 3 tries some unusual design wrinkles, particularly towards the end: an impenetrable wall must be blasted away with a properly timed one-use laser, and the final boss practically requires a tail gun to contend with the entry hatch littered with turrets around its back. An earlier stage has you navigate a field of black holes, and I don't think it's possible to escape their gravitational pull without a certain level of speed-ups; being sucked in isn't death but a restart of the level, giving you opportunity to power up. Item checks like this are an awkward fit but speak to the kind of console-oriented design sensibility that runs through Konami's MSX output, and are definitely memorable for it. Something else remembered for later are particular bits of level design that are directly recreated or adapted by subsequent series devs like Treasure/G.rev and M2 for their own games.
Parodius: Tako wa Chikyū o Sukū - for the first time
The often ignored/confused-for-the-sequel original. One can forgive the mix-up, as at a glance the typical pastel exterior of future
Parodius is not represented here, instead hewing close to the aesthetic of its system siblings in predominantly portraying the dark expanse of space... even if on occasion it's framed by confectionery. This kind of atypical in hindsight differentiation makes the game interesting in context of its legacy, as the tone has not fully locked into place yet: Yamashita's classical music arrangements lean toward the dramatic more than committed silliness, and some of the stage and enemy imagery appears as vaguely gruesome--such as a pile of uncartoonish organs--and straightforward instead of the sex farce the series would increasingly turn into. As a period snapshot, the playable cast consists of the usual suspects-to-be, but reflects this particular window in time by the presence of Popolon from
Majō Densetsu/
Knightmare, never again to be seen in this particular Konami get-together production. For more of the unconventional, experimental MSX shooter design, check the diabolical final stage, which requires precise acquisition and use of the novel "warp to the opposite side of the screen" timed bell power-up to bypass two otherwise impassable walls on the way to the final boss--itself a break from the norm, as a dream-eating baku that actively fights back.
Parodius Da! Shinwa kara Owarai e
Where the series takes a significant step toward its most recognizable form. The shared arsenal of the previous game makes way for personalized configurations, though this foursome doesn't go for anything too unexpected as of yet, which is a sensibility echoed in the overall structural work too: the parody lies in the set dressing, but the rest is played very straight. So authentic in fact that the game's subtitle riffing on the infamously hardy
Gradius III, at this point in directly preceding memory, comes off as more than just a nod to the freshest source material:
Da! is an absolute monster of rapidly engorging rank, deploying nonsensically furious bullet showers long before the initial loop is over; you'd be wise to be wary in general of "
Parodius is easier than
Gradius" blanket statements as this is a baseline that's more or less carried through in all the subsequent games, each presenting some of the most obscene popcorn aggression to be found in games like this. It's far from a miserable ordeal, as the surrounding design is all exemplary, but those expecting the cheerful exterior to presage a lax approach to difficulty are in for a rude awakening. The series's longstanding ribaldry also comes more into focus here, from stock puerile imagery like panties worn on head, the debut of the hip-swinging showgirl parody of the
Gradius II crab walker, to establishing the tradition of the giant woman boss fight--this one etched bewilderingly into modern popular culture by her sexualized "wow!!" defeat SFX that lives forevermore in the soundboard repertoires of countless YouTube comedy editors.
Gokujō Parodius: Kako no Eikō o Motomete
It's the third game, but this is probably
Parodius as its own formative text, the iconic work that others would respond to and match. Deep iteration is part of it, of course: at a glance you might be excused for thinking things look just the same as
Da! did, but the four-year gap between 1990 and 1994 represents the longest break the series ever had, and a massive absence from the scene of rapidly evolving video game hardware. The art direction of the series is consistent, but the arcade board powering it has undergone a change that reflects heavily in the nuances, with massive adversarial sprites that animate painstakingly, either breathing new life into old faces like the cat and Moai battleships, or dazzling with newcomers like the screen-tall mermaid; even Rika the showgirl is twice the size she used to be. Something that would characterize the series from this point on is the huge playable roster, all armed uniquely, and crafting more of the series identity through those original creations--unsurprisingly, that personal touch means in part leotard-clad bunny girls straddling missiles and paper airplane-riding stickmen shielded by condoms. Even if the spirit of referential parody is well and truly present--a big golden age shooter showcase stage, sly weapon reproductions from
R-Type and
Darius, a
Genpei Tōma Den biwa player tribute boss--the game nonetheless doesn't feel defined by outside or inside baseball namedropping, but in the business of being originally irreverent while making the occasional rib.
Jikkyō Oshaberi Parodius
The fourth game's claim to fame is its preposterously large roster at sixteen playable characters (plus one unlockable pair in the disc release port). While the previous game matched that via second-player clones, there were no mechanical differences between them--albeit the roster being paired by theme once again, there are at least small variations in their power-up reels to justify the grand selection. That's the most meaningful design wrinkle, to clarify: the titular chatterbox running commentary that accompanies the game is corny at best, and when given the chance to mute the feature, I do. There's a bit of a superfluous aura to the game, despite the fundamentals remaining as reliable as ever, as if the central gimmick reserved the brunt of the development muscle and creativity to itself: instead of balancing original material and parodic aspects, there's a high dependency on explicitly and literally referential work all game, and it's of a very safe sort in remaining within the bounds of Konami itself. The gamut is run from
Tokimeki Memorial to
TwinBee to
Ganbare Goemon to
Xexex to
Lethal Enforcers, and it all comes as blasé rather than energizing when entire stages are devoted to the bit, instead of a momentary sight gag or a brief boss encounter. The
Taisen Puzzle-dama boss rush serves as probably the nadir as there's no attempt to adapt the characters to
Parodius's own art style, but to deliberately present them as jarring intrusions professing an aesthetic that I at least do not find appealing even in context of that juxtaposition. If there's one game in the series to skip, it would sadly be this one for its uncharacteristically retreading, plain nature.
Sexy Parodius
Speaking of sex farce: this is the series as it culminates in that sensibility--not abruptly and not without prior escalation (the previous game alone featured a TwinBee with colossal breasts) but undeniably with the most consistent commitment. Instead of the occasional sexual innuendo, now every narrative cinematic is devoted to those kinds of stage bookends, and the series's typical tendencies during stages themselves are present as well, but amped up for the theme. Growing up, I was lightly confused by the game's title as I had the impression that every
Parodius wanted to be perceived as "sexy", but in practice it turns out to reflect a numbers game in realizing an ethos that was always there; if the series goes out, it must do so titillatingly. Fortunately it's not all cheap teases, as the visual artistry reaches its apex in this entry, with attractive palettes and painstaking detail packed into every scene. Structural shakeups also ensure a sense of novelty, in framing the fundamental action around fulfilling client demands for the fly-by-night job agency the protagonists are sweating for; failure to do the job doesn't signal an end to a playthrough, just different interstitial gags and in two instances, a possible alternate stage--filling out the stage count without overextending a singular loop's length, and also diversifying individual playthroughs. I don't know whether the developers knew this would close out the series, but there's no question that through sheer craft they laboured to elevate juvenile prurience into a statement to encapsulate the entire series.
~~~
That's about it. Did you know
the 20th Touhou Project is out? That's some good STG too. Like they used to say in
Parodius: WE LOVE SHOOTING GAMES!
