Vulcan Venture

Vulcan Venture
Also known as: Gradius II: Gofer no Yabou (JP) Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami Platform: Arcade (Konami Twin 16) Released in JP: March 24, 1988 Released in EU: April 1988 This game has regional differences. This game has revisional differences.

It's Gradius II... is there anything else to be said?

DESTROY THEM ALL! (Warning: it's not possible.)

Regional Differences

Title Screen

Gradius II	Vulcan Venture

Powerup Names

Gradius II	Vulcan Venture

In Gradius II, the non-beam laser is called Ripple Laser, like in Salamander, but in Vulcan Venture, it's Pulse Laser, the name from Salamander's localization (and update) Life Force. Also, as it was with the Nemesis set of the first Gradius, the player-following orbs are called Option and Multiple, respectively.

Gradius II	Vulcan Venture

To coincide with the name differences, these powerups also have region-differing announcer voice clips when selecting them in the powerup bar. These are for the Ripple/Pulse laser...

Gradius II	Vulcan Venture

...and these for the Options/Multiples.

Continue

Taking another localization cue from the US version of Nemesis. Vulcan Venture gives at the player the chance to continue the game after getting a game over, as opposed to Gradius II where if the player loses his last life, the game is immediately over. However, Vulcan Venture offers unlimited continues. Since Vulcan Venture was released only in Europe in the arcade, this version didn't receive the Nemesis (US) treatment of spawning orange enemies when players die to give a chance at power-up recovery, instead it uses the regular Gradius/Nemesis (EU/UK) respawn system. Due to this, dying at certain checkpoints still makes progression (almost) impossible. This makes this feature less useful than the predecessor.

Revisional Differences

There are three versions of Gradius II listed on MAME: "Older", "Old", and "New". The newest set, for whatever reason, changed the "non-Only" dip switch thresholds for extra lives; previously they were the same settings as in the Gradius version of the first game, the newest set increases the values significantly.

All the Vulcan Venture sets keep the setting values from Gradius II's non-New versions.

Old	20,000 Every 70,000	30,000 Every 80,000
New	20,000 Every 150,000	30,000 Every 200,000