by [name redacted]

This is an early draft of a feature or review (depending on your perspective) that soon after went up on Insert Credit. The version there is probably better. Still, interesting to compare.

I must be forward: although the series has charmed me for two decades, Gradius is as cold, arbitrary, and unforgiving as videogames get. It almost feels like it doesn’t want me to play it. For my part, I abide where I can; I turn the game off when I lose my first life. The only chapter that has stuck to me through the years is the NES version of Life Force — yet I adore the game. Life Force is one of my favorite games for the NES. It’s one of the best shooters I’ve played. It’s probably one of the games I have the greatest affection for, overall.

Clearly something is odd here.

The formula isn’t all that different; Life Force remains a classic horizontal-style shooter (even in its vertical stages), and a reasonably tough one. It relies on memorization as much as any shooter from its period. Unlike its earlier drafts in the arcade, the final version retains the traditional Gradius-style upgrade system, where collecting power capsules moves a marker along a bar; the player can select what he wants when the marker hits the appropriate box. The weapons and upgrades are a slight variation on the standard fare. Most of the series mainstays are present, from intergalactic Moai to erupting volcanoes to floor-and-ceiling planetscapes. Even the level structure is familiar: every round begins with several rows of enemies, flying from right to left, each row leaving a power capsule; the main stage follows, with its particular theme; at the end, a pattern-based boss.

What differences there are, appear subtle. Most obviously, Life Force allows two-player cooperative play. To facilitate this, players will respawn instantly rather than return to a checkpoint upon dying. The player’s Options (glowy drone units which follow and mimic everything the player does) remain on-screen, to be reclaimed by either player. The theme is more organic than usual, and involves a lot of environmental interaction. And as I mentioned, every other stage switches to a vertical orientation.

Of the changes, that last one sounds the most drastic: a complete change of perspective. In reality, it doesn’t really add or remove anything. I’m tempted to call it a gimmick. It’s not, though; it’s just an attempt at variety in level structure. I barely remembered to list it, since the vertical levels feel fundamentally the same as the horizontal ones.

While that variety in itself is one of the game’s strongest points, I think the real key is in the respawning. There is something discouraging, in a game which requires as much concentration as a shooter, about not only dying and losing all of one’s power — but then being thrown back to a checkpoint. For one, to me it feels like unfair punishment; the mistake of dying should be its own curse, especially if doing so leaves me defenseless. What’s worse than the perception of unfairness, though, is the break in continuity. By stopping and restarting, Gradius forces me to break my attention, then to spend a few moments in reorienting myself, both toward where the game has deigned to throw me back into in the level, and toward where I was mentally and emotionally only seconds before. I have to get my vibe back. Re-establish communication with the game. That’s tough to do, especially if the game makes recovery as difficult as Gradius does. Life Force has flow. I die, I come back, I keep moving. Heck, I can even recover my Options — both the second-most expensive items to earn, and perhaps the most important in any Gradius game. So I’m not even back in the hole as much as usual; all I have to do is fix my weapons and maybe raise some new shields.

What I have found interminably strange is how little Konami seemed to learn from Life Force; all the subsequent games were a return to the well-trodden template of the original Gradius — much as how most RPGs today still rely on the same mechanics as the original Dragon Warrior, for no particular reason except familiarity. Sure, you’ll see enemies and weapons and level ideas borrowed from Life Force; Gradius is a series built on inside jokes and reference — to the extent that Konami’s own parody, Parodius, feels more like underhanded satire than a mere spoof. Perhaps, as Square seems to be learning in assigning Yasumi Matsuno to a main-series Final Fantasy, or as Nintendo found by matching Retro Studios with Metroid Prime, the best way to remove one’s self from the trappings of tradition for its own sake is to get an outside perspective.

Thus, Treasure and Gradius V. Thus, the second game in the series that I really like. More than that, Gradius V feels like the answer to all that Gradius could have been yet never quite was. The series has effectively been reborn. So what’s the difference this time? What did Treasure do that Konami hasn’t been doing? Most of the answer is above. The trick (and Treasure’s skill) is in making sense of it all.

In both its mechanics and its material, Gradius V is more or less a direct sequel to Life Force. I think this is more a pragmatic than a sentimental decision; Life Force is the most clearly progressive game in the series. As it also is a kind of a side-story, I suppose framing Gradius V as a follow-up frees Treasure to jettison whatever they don’t need. (And by Jove, Gradius does have its baggage.)

The instant respawning returns, as does the two-player cooperative play. This is dandy, and welcome. Of course, the default experience is still a solitary one and the game does provide a toggle in its setup menu, for anyone who (for whatever reason) prefers the traditional flavor of respawning. A lot of gratuitous weapons, enemies, and level concepts intrinsic to Gradius, are missing — yet there are still a lot of in-jokes and references, where they will fit (including references to Life Force). Further, one of the only common complaints I have read about the game (aside from “Get that Ikaruga crap out of here!”) regard the absence of series icons like the Moai.

Although these details help, they remain details. Where Gradius V finds its focus is in the most curious and distinctive feature of Gradius, as a series. I keep mentioning them on purpose; I wonder what effect, over the course of the article, my description of Options has had on you, as a reader and presumably as an individual interested in game design. If you’ve never played Gradius before, they are a puzzling phenomenon. If you are familiar, you probably grinned a little (on the inside, at least) when I brought them up. I have already mentioned how vital they are to success. I don’t think it’s all that bold to say that Options are what make Gradius what it is in the same way that R-Type is defined by the R9’s Force module.

Here’s my proposal: if indeed Options are what makes Gradius tick (and let’s grant that, for this discussion), then why not build the game around them? The best I can tell, this is not what the rest of the series does; rather, Gradius seems preoccupied with generally looking and feeling like Gradius. I think the problem is that Konami doesn’t really know what Gradius is about, so they just hold onto everything that might be a clue — all of the weapons and enemies and systems and mechanisms that are associated with the series. And that’s where the clutter comes from.

Consider the choice of power-up bars in Gradius V. This has been a standard for the series since Gradius II, for the arcade and Famicom; the player is presented with a variety of schemes, each filled with distinct weapons and effects. One scheme might give the player a ripple laser, while the next has a “toothpaste laser” instead; the double shot will shoot in different directions, depending on the scheme; there are different missiles and shields. What seems odd about the new game is how little variety the schemes show. They all have the same laser and the same style of shield. The differences amongst the double shot and missile options aren’t worth getting excited over. The only real difference is in how the player wants his Options to behave.

If Gradius V has a gimmick, there it is; holding R1 gives a degree of tactical control over one’s Options. Depending on the mode you select (and how you want to deal with the game), you can either freeze the Options in place (relative to the ship), revolve them quickly around the ship, spread them out to the top and bottom of the ship, like immense fins, or — and this is really the centerpiece — rotate the Options to fire in any direction. What all this does is further cement the Options as the focal point of the game by giving them something definite to do — therefore giving the player something definite to do with them, therefore adding a new skill to ask of the player, therefore adding a layer of strategy and inner logic missing from the series until now, therefore giving the whole game a reason to be.

It’s heady, I know. Suddenly everything makes sense. Of course you want the player to always have the same kind of weapons; if the player is going to be forced to think on his feet, you need some clarity and regularity for the rule set. Likewise, you want the player at all times concerned with the logic of the gameworld — about what he can do and how he can do it, given his present circumstances and past decisions — rather than distracted by toys and choices that don’t serve any real purpose.

There are two sides to the issue: in order to allow the player the greatest illusion of liberty, you must set strict limitations. And to design a balanced game, you must expect not only the effect of the player’s actions, but what choices a player might be liable to make. If all you have to worry about is some combination of lasers, a double shot, a choice of Options, and how one might use these tools, you know exactly what you want for level hazards and enemies.

This is the quality which usually betrays a Treasure design: a simple, limited set of rules, extrapolated to a bizarre logical extreme on the design end in order to demand that the player learn and apply every fundamental aspect of those rules if he wishes to succeed. The better one plays, the more alternative tests present themselves by virtue of one’s increased capacity for juggling, and increased understanding of the way the game thinks.

That’s all fine. But. When you know what someone expects and how he is likely to react (not all that big a task when it comes to videogames and the average gamer), teasing becomes irresistable. Treasure’s games love being videogames. They revel in tradition. Yet in their postmodern way, they also realize how fundamentally silly those same traditions can be. When they throw boss ship after boss ship down a narrow corridor at you, pressing you against the left side of the screen, just barely destroying each one before it rams into you, even as you scream in terror, you can hear their unsuppressed giggle. You know they’re fond of you, and of what they’re doing — but really, they ask, how can you approach this kind of thing with a straight face?

Judging by the way some people scowl in response, I suppose it’s pretty easy.

Anyway. In this case, the focus on strategy has another side effect.

As in Life Force, Options stick around to reclaim when you die. Normally, they will remain your one constant through the game. And if the game is to rely on them to the extent that Gradius V does, it should well be so. Still, things happen. We make mistakes. Sometimes you end up with nothing. Yet — the game continues. It just gets trickier. Without big guns, the player is forced into a more resourceful, cautious mode. The first time I reached the level four-boss, I was fully powered-up; I lost a credit and a half. The second time, I had nothing — yet I didn’t get hit once. As a friend of mine commented when I relayed the story to him, “That… didn’t used to happen in the old games.” Indeed. Now, instead of the game being essentially over, the psychology just changes.

Gradius V, along with games like OutRun2 and Metroid Prime (and just maybe a few seminal works like Symphony of the Night), is one a of a new breed of sequels. In many cases, these new sequels surpass the originals in nearly every way. When I play OutRun2, I’m not just playing OutRun. I’m playing the focused, concentrated essence of everything that OutRun is. And it’s not because of the mechanics or the design for its own sake. It’s not because of the license.

Rather than just reiterating what’s been said before, or attempting to refit the original trappings to some alien standard (as with all of the misdirected 3D attempts in the PlayStation era), these sequels work to revive the feeling of the original by finding the soul of the series — its center; what it cares about; what makes it breathe; what makes it unique — and filtering that core through all we have learned about design (for good or ill) in the last decade. By doing this, the games somehow come out the other end and feel more akin to Pac-Man or Asteroids than a contemporary project. They appear to escape time, and work on their own rules.

The difference is one of conception. Basically, find what you really care about; what intrigues you personally. Then run with it. If that sounds too mystical, then think of it in terms of a thesis. Once you do that, everything should fall into place.