Konami Classics Take Flight
Many moons ago, the name of Konami was synonymous with quality software for your home console. I still remember to this day playing Parodius on my Super Nintendo, and loving every weird moment.
Sadly, what I have to review here is not a remake of Parodius, but a remake of a few games that came to define side scrolling shoot ‘em ups back in the early days of gaming. Yes, the game in question is GRADIUS ORIGINS, and believe it or not, it features a few of the Gradius family of games.
So, with a variety of quality of life fixes to make the game more accessible to modern gamers, have they killed the spirit of Gradius or enhanced it? Well, let’s blast off and find out!
A Pixel-Perfect Reconstruction
Kicking off with the story of the games, and frankly, there’s not really much to report here. You know how there isn’t much of an overarching narrative in Space Invaders? Yeah, same thing here. We need to fly left to right and make everything that isn’t us dead. Sounds pretty straight forward, yeah?
So, with nothing much to report on the story front, we’ll dive straight into the way the game is presented. And here the news is pretty good, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise: thinking of how much more powerful today’s home consoles are than even the most advanced arcade machines back in the day, a pixel perfect reconstruction should be easy enough, right?
And that is pretty much what we get here in GRADIUS ORIGINS: every game in the collection looks exactly like I remember from my misspent youth, when arcades were smoky, dingy places where you hoped that the thing sticking your shoe to the carpet was gum… Anyway, every pixel is where it should be, and the result is the recreation of almost every game in the series. You can even add various filters to the screen to get that old time CRT look that you were really craving!
Sound too is pretty accurate, right down to an attempt at digitised speech in some of the titles, even if it does sound like a Terminator with laryngitis! All the pew pew sounds, the explosions as enemy ships are blown apart, the bleepy bloopy music: it’s all here. All in all, what is included in GRADIUS ORIGINS is pretty much a perfect copy of games from many years ago. It’s amazing what an Xbox Series console can do, isn’t it?
From Gradius to Salamander
Now, let’s have a look at the games that are included in this collection, shall we?
In addition to the expected Gradius, there is also Gradius II, which has the great subtitle Gofer no Yabou (which translates as “Gofer’s Ambition), Gradius III: Dentetsu kara Shiwa (From Legend to Myth), and then some games that don’t bear the Gradius name. These are Life Force, Salamander, Salamander2 (yes, spelt like that) and Salamander III (and yes, that’s spelt like that too!). These games are apparently spin offs from the Gradius universe, and while I hadn’t played them before, the Gradius DNA is clear to see.
The gameplay of these games is all strikingly similar, so I’ll lump them all together for the purposes of this review. Basically, we need to fly our little spaceship from left to right, shooting enemies and bosses, collecting power-ups that make us more powerful. I did find the power-up system in Gradius a little confusing, as you have to fill a bar in order to become stronger, but the Salamander games have a much more straightforward system in place.
In these games, collecting a new power gives you more bullets or even a turret to fly around and help you with your task of destroying anything that moves! The gameplay is the very epitome of “easy to pick up, hard to master” and while you’ll get a certain distance on your first try, to get to the end of the game is a real achievement.
A Helping Hand for Modern Gamers
If you are struggling, the developers have decided to take mercy on us mere mortal gamers and introduce a variety of modifiers to make life easier. These include the ability to rewind time: if your last spaceship has just gone up in smoke, you can rewind and save yourself (in theory, anyway). My issue is that I usually manage to rewind and fly straight into the same bullet again, but maybe that’s just me.
There are also quick save and quick load options built in now, allowing you to save just before a tough boss so you can go straight back to that point once you have had your ass comprehensively kicked. Or is that just me again?
Finally, there are new modes that have been added to GRADIUS ORIGINS that sound right up my alley. There is Easy mode, which tries to hold your hand a little by making the hit box of your spaceship smaller, and there is also Invincible mode, where you cannot die, but the game records how many times you were shot. Finally, Training Mode lets you practice by adjusting various game parameters, such as the restart points and more.
All these features help to ease you into proceedings, and while they do detract from the purity of the experience, they are still pretty good additions. Add in two player modes for some couch co-op style and the package is complete. The only thing you’ll have to do is make your own lounge carpet sticky!
A Cracking Collection of Arcade Classics
All in all, GRADIUS ORIGINS does what it says on the tin. It allows us to play all the Gradius and Gradius adjacent games in one place, either toughing it out or wimping out with the new features.
The choice is yours, but should you choose to play this collection, you will have certainly chosen wisely.
Important Links
GRADIUS ORIGINS – A MUST-BUY for Shmup Fans? – https://www.thexboxhub.com/gradius-origins-a-must-buy-for-shmup-fans/
Buy GRADIUS ORIGINS on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/gradius-origins/9NBZ94W14R5V/0010
