Hello, and welcome to the worst day of my life. If you haven’t heard, it appears EarthBound, aka the best game of all time, won’t be seeing release on the Virtual Console any time soon due to some legal issues. So, fine. Let’s see what they’ll put out instead in order to earn my money. This week, we’re getting Life Force from the NES. That’s…not too bad. I guess.
Life Force
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
System: Nintendo Entertainment System
Original Release Date: 1988
Price: 500 Wii Points
Christopher Bowen: Life Force – otherwise known as Salamander to the hardcore’s – was actually what really got me into Gradius. The rules are a bit different, but those changes – the most dominant among them the fact that you keep going with no stoppage if you die, versus starting from a checkpoint – make Life Force much more playable than other, older Gradius games. Some of the boss battles from this game are top class – the flaming bird in stage 3 looked REALLY good in 1988 – and of course, the Konami Code extends the replayability of this game tenfold.
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Charlie Marsh: I like Life Force. It’s not the best game ever (obviously…grrrrrrrr…) but it’s pretty cool, blending overhead and side-scrolling shooters into one game to please everyone. Unfortunately though, I recently got Gradius III, and a) I like that game more, and b) buying that left me with 400 points, so I’ll be passing on this for a while, but I definitely recommend it.
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Nathan Birch: It’s another shump! One that I’ve actually played! It’s pretty good!
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Alex Lucard: Life Force aka Salamander was my favorite NES shooter. It gave me both vertical and horizontal levels which was just craaaaazy back in the day. Although now that I think of it, there still aren’t a lot of games that do this. In fact, this was my favorite Gradius game until Treasure gave us Gradius V a few years ago.
Yes, this is a Gradius game, albeit it a spin-off still featuring the classic Vic Viper. This is a must buy for me and I can’t wait to devote a few hours to this game.
Oh, also, the Konami Code works in this. Can’t beat that.
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And on Wii Ware, we’re getting Evasive Space, a maze-like game that looks pretty, but looks boring from here. It’s 1000 points if you’re interested. Now, if anyone needs me, I’ll be over in the corner crying.
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