Retro Reboot SHMUPtember 2025 | Life Force (NES)

Growing up with the NES, games that I consider the cornerstone of my upbringing in this hobby are titles that I affectionately call the Konami Trilogy; Castlevania, Jackal, and Life Force. Yeah, they have sequels within their own series, but when we were building our Nintendo collection, they were games that I spent the majority of my time playing. When it comes to a month celebrating the space shooter genre, Konami's Life Force is perfect, as one of the first titles I became enamoured with.

Known as Salamander in Japan, Life Force is a spin-off of the Gradius series, and features a more streamlined version of the Gradius power-up system. Another big change is the ability to continue where you left off immediately after death, which curbs some of stubborn difficulty from the mainline games. I played Life Force first, so by the time I got my hands on Gradius, there was a familiarity, as many of the weapons make their return, such as the two laser variants Ripple the powerful standard Laser, the Option, Missiles (which can be powered up), and a Force Shield.

The graphics are great, each stage sports its own atmosphere, which ranges from flying through giant pulsating, fleshy organisms, an asteroid field to ancient Egypt. If the Gradius/Life Force series is anything, it's amazingly strange. Each of the six stages, or zones, culminates in a wicked boss battle. As a kid, these enemies were emblazoned into my brain, I always though they were the coolest things in the world.

Life Force does have a great deal of slowdown and graphical flickering, especially when playing two player. A lot of the effects clash, and can get hard to see the action. This is something that plagues a good majority of NES games, and sometimes it can save my bacon, but it does get messy.

The controls are spot-on, they're very responsive and the hitboxes are quite generous, contrary to D-Force, where your helicopter took up the collective space of Lake Huron. Threading needles and evading projectiles are a synch, and as aforementioned, the ability to pick up immediately following death saves a headache. If you have any options, you can recover them, providing you aren't too far away upon respawning.

It has a respectable challenge, ad it may be a strange caveat, but I do find Life Force to be a little bit too easy with the quality of life changes made from the Gradius games. I eat my words there, because Gradius II is one of the toughest games in the series I've beat, and the challenge only escalates from there. I probably shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth with Life Force. Sure, it's a pushover when compared to the other games, but it isn't without its curveballs. While I can just power through many of the bosses by getting extremely close to the core and blasting away, there are two speedrunning valleys where the stage will scroll super fast. It can catch you off guard, but it's a rush.

All these years later, I am surprised that there was a significant lack of mini-bosses in the first Salamander. I may have to double-check the archives, it could be that wasn't necessarily a staple for the franchise. The bosses are fairly easy, at least until stage 5, the Temple Stage, where the Tutankhamon head fires Skittles at you. The environment also veers into some incredibly cramped quarters, putting your maneuverability skills to the test.

Speaking of, going back to the visuals for a moment. I always loved the details on the temple bricks, they actually have hieroglyphics etched into the stone. In an age with hyper-realistic visuals where you can see Krato's eye boogers, it's difficult to explain how impressive this looked in the 1980's. It's one of those details that we may have taken for granted, and comes off fairly humbling now, when witnessing how far the technology has come.

Konami music compositions during the 8 and 16-bit period have been ingrained in my soul at this point in my life, and Life Force has no shortage of memorabile tunes. Miki Higashino (known for her work on Suikoden), Hidenori Maezawa, Shinya Sakamoto (Rush'n Attack), Satoe Terashima ("Vampire Killer" in Castlevania), and Atsushi Fujio (TMNT Tournament Fighters) collaborate for some amazing music that sets the tone and adds personality to each stage. Sound effects are also delicious on the ears. Life Force, Contra, and Jackal feature what I affectionately call "Konami-splosions", which is what I refer to the final defeat of any given boss stage or enemy, where it echoes out for about two seconds. It signifies that whatever it is you just blew up is NOT coming back.

Even just being a solid video game, Life Force is a slice of childhood for me. Not only is it one of the games that symbolize what Konami video games meant to me as a kid, or even being a building block for my understanding of video games, it's something that's a time machine for me. In my forties now, if I turn that NES on, hit that Start button, and I'm suddenly in my grandmother's basement playing with my brothers. Or I'm in the living room in 1994, trying to beat the game without using the 30 lives code, while my mom, who had just returned home from a year of rehab, would watch from her chair. Or staying up all night after moving in 1996, and trying to beat the game as many times as I can (I maxed out at 6 at the time). Life Force isn't the best SHMUP, but it's the first one I latched onto, and it's one of the games that defines the NES for me.