A Blog with a purpose to discuss important things in life, like politics on multiple levels (mostly swedish), music, movies and video games together with the challenges in my personal life (that is none actually, it's just a smooth ride, or is it?).
Got through my favorite Konami shooter once again, this time the arcade version. Helped a lot by the fact that I could turn up rapid fire for everything. Mostly the same as the NES port, but certain differences. Audio is better, you even have a voice both describing what happens, what you should do against the bosses and what power-ups you picked up. The stage shifts are nice since it just go into the next one by turning the ship. They also have arranged the stages a bit differently since stage 2 is stage 5 and vice versa and no Egyptian mummy head for end boss or a stage themed after that.
Also, the power-ups doesn't work like on the NES since there you could save up and choose the ones you wanted, instead you get what you get. I assume the port was made to look more like the Gradius-series since it's a spin-off of that. Would I play this or the port? Doesn't matter really. Pretty much the same. Maybe slight benefit for the port with the Konami code giving me enough life to not need to save scum past certain parts.
A couple of weeks ago I got my hand on my families old NES 8-bit system and a couple of old games. Didn't work since it hasn't been cleaned... ever and we got it in early 1990's. So I began by cleaning the systems and the games and I got them to work, both those who had worked since day one and even some import games that had problems to work and my dad blamed those games for the future trouble. One of those games was Life Force or Salamander. It's a scrolling shooter where you pilot the Vic Viperand if you have a friend (or a working second controller) the Lord British (or Road British as my manual say). Your planet is threatened by the galactic monster Zelos who plans to devour it so you set out in your ship in a suicide mission to enter the monster and destroy it's heart. So this was also the first time I succeeded and won the game. I flied threw the six stages and won losing probably around 100 lives (using the Konami code for 30 extra lives certainly helped).
What makes this game special compared to all other shooters? Well, two-player mode and the awesome music. Lets begin with stage 1:
Pumping you up for a space adventure, traveling through attacking creatures, teeth and appearing walls (making multiple playthroughs a necessity knowing if you should stay in front or at the back of the screen due to the dangerous environment who appears out of nowhere). That is until you hit a wall with some strange outgrowth. The screen stops scrolling and the wall dissipates and something looking like a brain pops out, The music changes and it is boss battle time:
Most awesome boss music at the moment as you dodge the enemy fire and tentacles or whatever trying to hit the core. Made much easier if you are fully upgraded which just for the first boss is one loop around him and then continuous fire on his eye for 5 seconds. BOOM!!! And then onward. The saddest thing about this game is that it is on the Virtual console... in Japan and the US, not Europe. I feel slightly cheated by that fact. Maybe it will show up on the Wii U VC or the 3DS eshop... maybe even the TG-16 with CD quality soundtrack... although that will lose some of the nostalgic feeling.
