My history with Gradius.

My first Blog post, lets talk about Gradius...

A 'Shmup'. A 'shooter'. A 'horizontal shooter'. Does this sum up Gradius? No, no it doesn’t. Does it broadly outline the genre that Gradius (or Nemesis, depending on your taste and/or physical location on this planet we call Earth) lives within, sure – if you’re the sort of person that likes their entertainment neatly defined and ordered by general theme, you’re probably happy to hear it slots in the genre rather nicely. I never liked the term 'Shmup' however, back in the day it was always ‘shooter’, or if you were talking to your Nana, a 'Tele-game' (her words).

As it clearly states, this is Gradius 

That laser. A mesmeric screen wide, single pixel string of blue hot plasma death, times by five if the Vic Viper is fully optioned up, instantly cutting a path through alien space craft and environmental hazard alike, with those ‘plinky’ explosions, the power-up SFX loud in the mix, creating an aural carnage feedback landscape (great death metal song name no.1) that spurred you on because, well, it sounded so satisfying.

I didn’t care how far I got through the game on a credit, I had one main and not very lofty goal – I wanted a fully pimped out Vic Viper for a minute or two just to see and hear the fireworks. I never did complete Nemesis back then, and I still haven’t to this day – I don’t even try. But I do play it quite a bit – (in the now easy to obtain Gradius form)

Using the eyes, ears and reflexes I currently own and run, old and bent as they are, I continue to enjoy a bit of Gradius. I still get satisfaction from the power up system, which is balanced against enemy fire rate (a fact I never cottoned onto back in the day) so that the game doesn’t become too easy for powered up players. It’s a little blunt and doesn’t quite balance the game, but is probably the best they could do at the time. I don’t pick Laser anymore though, its double all the way for me now. its fires diagonal up and forwards, missiles fire down. that's most of the screen covered without breaking a sweat. work smart not hard.

Options are still a great invention, quintupling your firepower is an awesome sight and feels great, the glowing pulsating orbs tracking your ships movement in fluid fashion, and another small detail I missed when I was a wee nipper – the more speed ups you have the greater the distance between the options. Don’t know why.

The game has a lovely alien dispensing tool set in general. Konami, as was common in the 80’s and 90’s, got it right. On multiple fronts. 

As much as I love the visuals in the game (Easter island heads are very cool indeed) for me, these days it’s the audio that is really memorable, from the triumphant, strident upbeat ditty that opens the first part of stage one to the maudlin, soothing game over/high score tune, every one of them is a hum-able, spacey sounding ear-worm. Add on top of that unique, surprising SFX (standard booms and bangs are few and far between) and you have soundscape that puts you firmly in another world.

The Vic Viper is one of the coolest looking spaceships in video games, if not the coolest. Even the chubby version in Parodius looks great. Arguably old Vic looks even better in Salamander (Lord British also rocks). Back in the day Konami were simply the best at designing sleek looking sprite based spaceships. Irem went weirder and cornered that end of the market, Namco went boxy and did themselves proud on a few occasions (really hitting their stride with Starblade).

In the 80’s If you wanted to feel like a death spewing chromium space god for ten minutes, you listened to Metallica on your bright red ‘Boots’ branded non-copyright infringing ‘personal cassette player’ and played something spacey designed by Konami.

Build your own paper craft Vic Viper!

So anyway, despite its many and obvious qualities, its perhaps the memory of the effort, and the rising excitement of going to play this game when it was shiny and new that makes me still want to play Gradius to this day. Heck, i even have good memories of playing awful games like 'Tokio' because they were new and fresh, like me in the 80's. Not now though, old and crusty now.

Will today's kids have similar memories of whatever designed by committee piece of trash it is they play, conveniently piped into their eyes via the net? Probably not, if only because the experience of obtaining their golden moments is so different, they'll have their own tales of mischief to tell... Ad-nauseam. In my dotage, i'll pretend to listen to the codswallop and nonsense they come out with, humming the Gradius music under my breath as i nod and grimace at appropriate points to make it look like i'm engaged by the godawful prattle.

Anyway, Gradius i salute you!