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Greg Livingston:

• Opening (powerup sequence)




• Which enemies give you powerups?


• What distinguishes them from the enemies which do not?




• Body (space mountains)




• What are the environmental hazards?


• What are the enemies?


• How do enemies interact with the environment?


• How do enemy attacks layer one another?


• How do challenges develop over the course of the stage?


• If you had to assign the body a theme, what would it be?




• Conclusion (enemy rush + boss)




• How do enemies attempt to fill the screen? Do you have any influence over them?


• Any words of wisdom on Big Core?

Perikles:

I answered the questions with the first loop in mind. While I do think that the differences of higher loops are profound and a fascinating point of discussion on their own (suicide bullets will change a lot of the approach to the game, and so will the increased speed of enemies in the third loop) I surmised you're first and foremost interested in the first stage as it presents itself in the beginning.

Feel free to probe into my ramblings, especially if I happen to miss the point entirely!

Which enemies give you powerups?

There are two types of enemies that will bequeath power-up capsules:
1. The last enemy within a specific "unit" of enemies.
2. Regular enemies with an orange colour palette.

What distinguishes them from the enemies which do not?

Following the above paragraph:
1. Only the long cordons of enemies in the opening section of any stage is considered to be such a power-up "unit". You cannot encounter these anywhere else. The last enemy of those "units" is always going to be the one you're finishing off last, there is no fixed pattern for this.
2. While ordinary enemies sport a blue colour, the enemy ships that leave a capsule behind will wear a contrasting orange that differentiates them quite nicely from those foes that do not drop anything.

What are the environmental hazards?

The first stage features both a ceiling and a ground that are lethal to touch - while both have uneven patches, they have consistently the same thickness for the most parts. This can be easily observed by the missiles that will move across the entire ground even when it looks like they should/might get stuck in the small crevasses in the ground.

Furthermore, there are inactive volcanoes/hills that are likewise deadly if you collide into them, with the exception of the swathe in the second one on the ground (in the middle of said swathe is an invisible 5,000-points capsule in the Famicom/NES port of the game) which can be accessed.

Finally, there is an approximately rhombic rock in the air before the enemy rush section of this stage - it behaves just like the volcanoes/hills. All of those structures are impenetrable even for your laser, which is not always the case in later stages where you might be able to hit enemies through floors due to the generous hit detection. In the Famicom/NES port, you can get an invisible extend at the tip of the back edge if the thousands digit of your score is even.

What are the enemies?

- Ships which fly on determined paths.
- Little pods that slowly move on the ground/ceiling.
- Hatches that will spawn a fixed amount of ships before ceasing their work.
- Turrets on the ground/ceiling.
- Duckers that are allowed to freely move horizontally and will leave the screen from the direction they came from after a while.
- A second type of pod that jumps around and fires several bullets in a fixed pattern whenever it lands on the ground.
- Another variant of turret that fires laser beams across the screen - this enemy is exclusive to the first stage.

How do enemies interact with the environment?

Most enemies are either immobile (turrets, hatches) or use defined paths (ships). The exception to that are the duckers and the jumping pods which will move according to the player's position on the screen. Both enemies will try to stay close to the Vic Viper and actively try to shorten the distance between them. The non-jumping pods might also have a similar behaviour, yet are so slow that it is not apparent whether this is true or not.

While it is not important in this stage, duckers are able to move even through otherwise impregnable terrain which can turn them into deadly threats. Since there are several enemies on the ground/ceiling in the first stage you have to be wary not to crash into the perimeters. However, there are no enemies that are covered by terrain (unlike some of the later stages), it's a straightforward task to take them all out.

How do enemy attacks layer one another?

Enemies always fire at certain intervals after arrival, and every enemy that fires normal bullets (all of them except the laser turrets, the hatches and the jumping pods) will fire an aimed bullet. Since there is a considerable amount of time before enemies are allowed to shoot, it is dependent on the actions of the player whether enemies will be able to create overlapping patterns or not.

The leaping pods will unleash several bullets at once if they land which makes them larger threats than other enemies, and the laser-firing turrets can synergize with other enemies in that they cover large horizontal stretches of the screen.

How do challenges develop over the course of the stage?

This is contingent on how the player chooses to use the power-up capsules. For one, the rank system will slightly change enemy aggression which means that your foes will become more belligerent the more options you have/if you select double/laser/shield. Speed-ups on the other hand will not influence enemy behaviour.

Second, a certain order/preference of power-ups will also drastically alter the development of the challenge in this stage. One example: if you select double and missile, you're able to take out every enemy even when occupying the middle of the screen. The laser on the other hand requires the player to have the Vic Viper/at least one option close to the ceiling if he wants to take them out.

One of the crucial aspects of difficulty comes with the amount of speed-ups that are selected: not only will the Vic Viper accelerate with more speed-ups, but the spacing between options will also become larger. This works particularly well with the laser since it enables the player to have an option all the way up without getting in harm's way. The flip-side is that environmental hazards as well as some dodges might be more difficult with a faster ship.

Outside of those general considerations: due to how the hills are arranged, the game nudges you to the vertical position from whence enemies come in the first place which makes it intuitive to route the stage. One might say the closing stretch with three hatches, several turrets and then the laser turrets thereafter is a slight increase in the (overall even) difficulty of the first stage since this is the first time you have to deal with so many enemies simultaneously.

If you had to assign the body a theme, what would it be?

In stilted terms I like to think of the entire first stage as of the conceptual evolution. Since you start the game with no power-ups whatsoever, you're not able to work with the options and weapons yet. The first stage is designed around this fact, the main weapon alone is easily able to take care of everything. This allows you to prepare your craft for the stages ahead, as you see fit. It is highly recommended to quickly select missiles in order to keep a large amount of enemies covered by just one choice of the power-up selection, but even that is not required.

How do enemies attempt to fill the screen? Do you have any influence over them?

As far as I'm aware, the amount of rocks that will be spewn about is dependent on the rank. I'm not entirely certain, but I do believe there are less of them if you have less power-ups activated. The trajectory itself seems to be static, although it is hard to tell bearing in mind how fast they travel. There are several specific alignments of your options that will allow you to destroy many rocks (thus earning more points) without moving once after the initial positioning, it's not trivial, however. It also seems to require the laser and at least two options, preferably three and missiles, too. You are always safe on the ceiling in case you're in bad shape or if you simply don't want to risk it.

Any words of wisdom on Big Core?

The Big Core will always try to align itself with the vertical position of the player before shooting its volley of laser beams. If the player is too far away it might fire the lasers regardless in a certain interval. Interestingly, you're most likely going to destroy the barriers in front of the core out of order or perhaps all at once (especially when using the laser) instead of successively as you might think. It is not possible to obliterate the score before getting rid of all the barriers, though.

On a marginal note: the very first Big Core in the PCE port seems to be considerably more resilient than all of its brethren afterwards. Many a times this one timed out one me where the others would perish in time and I wonder why that is.

Greg Livingston:

I appreciate the focus on the first loop. While I have heard how looping is important to Gradius games, I haven't braved the second loop yet. Plus, the scope of the video would get pretty wide.

I also appreciate the long responses, there's a lot to chew on. If you don't mind, I'd like to run my responses past you to go a little deeper. I tried to keep things concise.

Opening, 2

So some capsule-bearing enemies are distinguished by color (red), while others are distinguished by behavior (flying in single file). There's something natural about taking down a full line of enemy craft. Maybe because it's particularly easy. Rather than pegging enemies across the entire screen, you can sit in one place and clear out a whole platoon.

Environmental hazards

I like the phrase "easily observed," since I feel like it applies to everything in the stage. The playfield is pretty clean. There's no vertical scrolling, your floor and ceiling are constant, almost no land is in the middle of the screen, and the changes in elevation are sloped. Neither you nor your enemies have much cover.

By clean, I mean that you can parse the screen easily: predict where bullets will go, decide where to fly, etc.

The tunnel in the volcano and the floating rock are unique and make for good landmarks, breaking the "rules" that everything else follows here. These parts are just a little less clean.

Enemies, 1

There are a ton of different enemies. It's easy to take for granted how each one has a unique approach to the Viper. Even the hatched ships will align with your ship horizontally before moving sideways.

Incidentally--I'm surprised they're actually called duckers.

Enemies, 2

It's interesting how much design can be dictated by flat ground. Turrets and hatches can't float: they're installed on pieces of land. Duckers can't fly, and pods need ground to jump off of. And because so many enemies are tied to the land, along with the fact that there is no land in the middle of the screen, bullet and enemy paths are really clean. Duckers move along the ground, while hatched ships and bullets move from the edge of the screen inward. It also means shooting down enemies requires a choice: either you fly close to the dangerous terrain, or you activate a spare weapon (be it double or missile).

Development of challenges

Your comments show how Gradius keeps its focus on environmental hazards. Too many speedups, and you'll crash into the ground. If you have trouble with land-based enemies, use the double and missile. And elements like the hills and laser turrets use the environment to momentarily make the middle of the screen unsafe.

The theme

The first stage is definitely simple enough that you can stick to the default pea shooter gun, which speaks to how clean the first stage is.

I also think your idea of "conceptual evolution" applies to the environment: starting in outer space, confronting gradual slopes, and finally flying past a floating rock.

Enemy rush

I've never felt great about this part. The other enemy rushes tend to have a core idea. This, on the other hand, just feels like a test to see if you have enough powerups. The trajectory of rocks is all over the place, tantamount to random, and anything but clean.

Perikles:

Glad if I can be of assistance! Very curious to see the final result and the responses to that, too.

While loops eo ipso are more of a bonus than anything else (at least in games like Gradius that will go on indefinitely), I do think that it adds a substantial layer to this particular series, and notably in the first game. In a lot of games, looping means that difficulty parameters will be altered. Oftentimes this is achieved by more and faster bullets, sometimes more resilient enemies. While some of it also applies to Gradius, there's furthermore suicide bullets - any enemy that is shot down can retaliate with a bullet of its own, the higher the loop, the more likely it is that they will extract revenge, in later games they will also spew out more and more suicide bullets with each loop. The reason why this is of pivotal importance is due to the power-up system: those once harmless cordons of power-up units are now a lethal threat since you have to deal with a cloud of bullets if you decide to shoot them down. Since the hitbox of the Vic Viper is very large in the first Gradius, this can cause much grievance - do you risk getting assassinated or pass up on some precious capsules? I've heard purported that Gradius is the very first game to include suicide bullets - I don't know if that's true, but I'm absolutely certain that the developers at Konami had this aspect in mind when designing the stages. I wholly understand your reasons not to focus on that, yet felt compelled to explain why I think it's not quite insignificant.


As for your remarks:

- The PCE port actually has vertical scrolling in the first stage in case you want to mention that. I think it's a splendid and interesting port, might be worth referencing.

- It's quite relevant that the laser has a much larger hitbox than it looks like. The straight laser is at its best in this specific Gradius game, afterwards it never reached those heights again (both literally and figuratively speaking). I'm not sure if this was intended or not, but if you move around a bit, you can hit enemies that visibly never touch the laser. By virtue of that quality and the rather lacking shot frequency of the double, the latter - while still very useful - is usually not as efficacious as one might think.

- Speaking of shot frequency: the regular pea shooter also has an on-screen bullet limit which rewards aggression. If you're close to your enemies and use auto-fire (or mash sufficiently fast) you'll be rewarded with much more projectiles than you'd get from far away. This also reflects on the risk-reward of getting close to enemies or steering away from them for safety's sake.

- On a more subjective note: the more I play Gradius games, the more I get accustomed to high speed. I used to play all the games with two speed-ups, I never could play them with just one as some other players like to. However, with further loops and some notably difficulty games in the series (III arcade) I realized that a third speed-up would be in order to handle the aforementioned suicide bullets more easily (and for strategic option spacing). And despite all the terrain, I think that playing Gradius games with a fast ship feels extraordinarily natural. It definitely takes time getting used to, but it's very well implemented.

- I wholeheartedly agree on the active volcanoes, I'm not sure what the appeal of these is supposed to be (other than the thrill of racking up some points if you manage to align your options properly - or the visual set-piece mayhap).