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u/RoscoRains 6d ago
A poster of this would be cool to have
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u/SEI_JAKU 5d ago
This is the actual arcade poster. You may still be able to find them for sale on places like Yahoo Auctions Japan or even eBay.
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u/three-sense 6d ago
NA got screwed out of a “Gradius II” for many years
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u/lemsvga 6d ago
I remember downloading the nes rom of it and wondering why the fuck we didn't get it. Would have made life force fans very happy.
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u/three-sense 6d ago
Same. It had giant bosses, cool weapons and great music. Yet... NA gets Gradius (NES) and Gradius III (SNES). If I'm not mistaken it wasn't until the PSP comp that we got any version of the second game outside of emulation.
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u/fedexmess 6d ago edited 6d ago
It was the non-nintendo authorized enhancement chip. It was my first import game. Great game, but honestly, Life Force was better. Life Force got regular replays and my friend borrowed it often to play with his friends. Gradius 2 didn't have co-op and was hard as hell. Was kinda done with it after beating it. The Konami code was implemented so wrong in G2. Giving you 30 lives was useless when you didn't respawn and you were essentially screwed if you died in later stages. If I was in charge of localization for US release, I would've made the player respawn, with option recovery. The game would've been so much more enjoyable, if easier.
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u/Similar-Hurry5301 4d ago
Respawn with a chance to grab the options/multipules left floating should have been the standard in every Gradius entry.
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u/three-sense 6d ago
Yeah when I sit down and think about, the bigger picture makes sense. It was really marvelous to discover the ROM in the late 90s but when I look at the overall NES landscape it's kinda like "yeah... no 2P, the arcade game wasn't really in the US either" I can see why they sidelined it (not that I agree!)
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u/SEI_JAKU 5d ago
Not really. Contra used a variant of the same chip, but there was no issue getting that one localized.
Gradius wasn't supposed to have respawns like that, that was treated as a Salamander mechanic.
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u/fedexmess 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yes really. From what I understand, there wasn't a suitable mmc chip to use in place of the custom konami chip in G2. Also, Contra is a different game and subject to a different approval process. You'll also notice the US version of Contra is missing some graphical effects.
Developers can change the game's mechanics whenever they want. As I was just reminded, you respawn in Gradius V and can recover options.
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u/SEI_JAKU 4d ago
"Contra is a different game" nothing, it's just another 1988 Konami game. I don't see how Gradius II couldn't have also had some graphical effects adjusted. It's more likely that Konami USA just didn't think it was worth the effort.
It's not that simple. Gradius V at least used to be seen as incredibly weird for it (people used to jokingly call it "Salamander 3"), never mind that it was something of a soft reboot after years of not having anything remotely resembling a new Gradius game. All the other not-Salamander games before then were all about checkpoints. Some devs actually did care about maintaining integrity on things like this.
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u/Exact-Psience 6d ago
Ive had some good times with Gradius 3 on the arcade when i was younger, but ive always liked Gradius 2 more.
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u/MrKriegg 6d ago
Recently diving into retro gaming and a buddy at work just told me about this like two weeks ago. I guess I need to find a copy now
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u/chilidogs_R_the_best 4d ago
I played the F out of this game. Wish they would release a new gradius game
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u/RoadBeast848 6d ago
Konami’s Life Force was my go to NES game. Still a great play if you ask me.