Back to the Past: Life Force (NES)

Games by Koshai on Feb 21, 2010

As promised I will be back with a Back to the Past blog so here it is. So what game I am featuring now. It’s Life Force from NES. YAY!!

Released back in 1988 as a direct port of Japanese arcade version named Salamander, this game was the bomb. This is by far one of the best shooting games I have played besides 1943 during that time. The game is a spin-off to the ever popular Gradius series. You control an awesome looking fighter spacecraft and defeat the bad guys coming in your way, while getting powerups in the middle. There are six types of powerups: Speed, Missiles, Ripple, Laser, Option and Force. The powerups can be taken through player’s choice. The player has to stack up the power according to the power type: the first power option the player can stack is Speed and the final stack is Force (when the player has collected 5 more stacks). If the player chooses one powerup, the stack resets and the player has to collect more power stacks. The player can also increase its power one more time by selecting the powerup one more time. The powerup system is innovative and is adopted by the Gradius series. There are six levels in total, in which there are 3 side scrolling levels and 3 vertical overhead scrolling levels. The type of levels changes alternately. The boss battles are not epic, however it makes up with lots of obstacles in your flying path and this is the reason, the game is sometimes hard, since you have only 3 lives and 3 continues to finish the whole. However, if you can master the game and memorize the level you can easily beat the game in one life. I can carry my playthrough until I kill the final boss with one life and that’s when the hardest part starts. You have to exit the base at high speed while passing through small gaps of the closing barricades. In my recent playthrough, four weeks ago, I managed to collect 10 lives in which I lost four of them at the last point. So my advice would be memorizing the whole level. The game boasts one of the best music that I have heard in NES era. Konami has the reputation of making some of the best music soundtracks for the NES. I still love hearing the music even in 8 Bit form. As part of the feature, I remixed the music soundtrack from Level 1 and Level 5. They are not my best work though since I made them in rush. So enjoy!!