Salamander III announced for Gradius Origins for Switch [by M2] - Coming August 7, 2025

[Sumez]

AM Show version sounds interesting

https://x.com/Shingi/status/1905353827462906357

Ok this does sound really cool. Based on how it's desribed, it sounds to me like it's a later revision, and not an early location test like some posts in here have been implying?
If it performs better with more action on screen, and has more graphical effects going on as well, it doesn't make sense they'd make that worse on release, just to make the game harder??

I was thinking, M2 doing Gradius 3 sounds like a really missed opportunity to make the "classic badass M2 hack" (similar to how they have been missing that opportunity for all the Toaplan releases), though of course that effort is all going to Salamander 3 which I appreciate.
BUT, the collection is omitting the SNES version of G3, and for a lot of mortals that's generally considered the best version of the game, or occasionally even the best Gradius game altogether.
While it's a bit easy for a shooter on defaults, the arcade difficulty setting does pack slightly more of a punch. My thought, however, was - how cool would it be, if M2 would have deviced a golden inbetween, one that retains all the stages and graphical splendor of the original arcade game, but sanded down a bunch of the more infamous difficulty spikes that gives it is hardcore reputation. Hell, it might sound like sacrilege, but easing out the game's recoveries as well, could easily end up making that into a fantastic game.

But maybe that is basically what we are getting with the AM Show version? We'll see...

Is there a reason M2 is disliked by pockets of this community? Not specifically here but just among arcade people. When they announce or release something and most people are excited, I see a handful annoyed with M2's involvement.

I never see a reason given though.

While I do have some issues, not with M2 specifically, but the overall standard of official emulator releases - and a few personal pet peeves of which even M2 are guilty, I don't think I've ever seen any straight-up dislike for M2 particularly?? Especially not in this thread? The best I can do is some mild disappointment when they occasionally don't live up to the expectations they have set previously. Or just laments about how slowly they tend to work.

Which posts are you even referring to here? I find it hilarious that Steven immediately joins in to take a jab back at the supposed M2 hate, trying to reason why it exists, when it as far as I can tell is a complete boogeyman.

[Sumez]

#49 September 1997

Spoiler

Wow. Classic "game sucks because you can continue infinitly"-itis.
It's amazing a publication like Edge was allowed to stoop this low. Integrity ruined.

[BIL]

Spoiler

Ah yes, the famously console-original Salamander 2, natural companion of Gradius Gaiden.

EDGE/NG's early issues pack some howlers. DOOM review is legend, misapprehending diehard shooting in a different yet equally hapless way to that Salamander 2 piece. You see, while S2 squanders its potential by allowing newbies to slop out a 20CC in ten minutes, DOOM tragically neglected to include a "Talk" command. :[ A personal favourite is the gymnastically erroneous SNES Dracula XX review, which
deepthroats the "late PCE port" myth, then upchucks on Rondo in absentia. "Not an original idea in its Wolfsbane-stuffed head!" our plucky pseud chortles, spine impressively unsprained by his deeply self-satisfied autofellatio.

Conversely, their early 00s STG coverage was absolutely first-rate. PS2 DOJ, DC Ikaruga, DC Border Down, PS2 Psyvariar 2, R-Type Final, and Gradius V's previews and reviews were clearly knowledgeable work, if memory serves. Cognisant of the genre's innate strength (no nonsense) and limitation (no nonsense), with a working appreciation of arcade ethos. Their coverage of older STGs likewise, with Soldier Blade, Battle Garegga, and Blazing Star all given articulate press. Surely more I'm forgetting; this period of the magazine was key to snapping me out of a mainstream ennui. Not just STGs, but run/guns, fighters, puzzlers, and future cultics like Otogi; they really kept the good stuff front and center.

I don't know if their staff matured (it happens!), or were fired out of a cannon into the sun with better hands taking over (it happens!) - regardless, I keep those 02~04 issues in pride of place with the games themselves. Some of the best mainstream English-language coverage of STGs and wider arcade content I ever saw. Paperstock is bangin', too. They have no qualms sending up early infamies like the DOOM or Gunstar Heroes reviews, either.

[bcass]

Based on how it's desribed, it sounds to me like it's a later revision, and not an early location test like some posts in here have been implying?
If it performs better with more action on screen, and has more graphical effects going on as well, it doesn't make sense they'd make that worse on release, just to make the game harder??

Sounds like it may have been a cost-cutting exercise. Something I can easily imagine Konami doing. If indeed the translation is accurate about this version preceding the actual normal release.

BUT, the collection is omitting the SNES version of G3, and for a lot of mortals that's generally considered the best version of the game

That is indeed a shame. The SNES port is the best version of the game, but it suffers from horrendous sprite flickering. Would have been nice to get a version without that artefact. The slowdown I can live with, because the game was clearly designed around it.

or occasionally even the best Gradius game altogether.

Not heard that claim before. For my tastes, it doesn't match G2 as it's too long and has even worse slowdown than G2. G2 is a way more focussed game, quite possibly because it had an alarmingly short dev time - just 6 months if I recal correctly from the interview text found in the Steam "Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection".

[Sumez]

EDGE/NG's early issues pack some howlers. DOOM review is legend, misapprehending diehard shooting in a different yet equally hapless way to that Salamander 2 piece. You see, while S2 squanders its potential by allowing newbies to slop out a 20CC in ten minutes, DOOM tragically neglected to include a "Talk" command.

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/doom-infamous ... ry-1559763

In trying to remind myself of that classic review blunder, I came across this more modern article which both hilariously manages to repeat the exact same tonedeafness that made the original review infamous, but also just makes me depressed about the state of video game criticism in an era where the media has been embraced by people who don't understand it. Much in the same way as that preposterous quote from the Last of Us TV series showrunner, which implied that the game managed to completely revitilize video games which were all dumb arcade games up until that point.

[BIL]

It presupposed games way beyond its years, games like Skyrim, Mass Effect and Undertale wherein the player can indeed talk to the creatures, can indeed form alliances.

I disagree that this review missed the point of Doom; to me, it seems like Edge recognised Doom as a gaming landmark and was speculating upon what might be

Similarly, we mock Edge's review because it was speculative. Like the residents of Salem, we denigrate and label as outcast whatever does not fit, whatever doesn't adhere to long-standing and outmoded ideas of what video games ought to be.

In which a developmentally-stunted ignoramus is deeply horrified by the concept of genre.

When I read the bile spat on a daily basis at women or femininity of any kind in the gaming industry, I see a culture not only failing but actively resisting sophistication.

Standards of sexuality, gender and race representation.

Now I'm more worried he's horrified by the concept of consent.

The Last of Us

More like The Gas Of Us, compacted onto a sweet oatmeal base for its authors' huffing pleasure.

"Hurr, guys, what if Gears Of War w/ RUHVENGE" "Mm, yes" *parp*

[Sumez]

Gradius 2 is my own favourite as well, but gets a lot of merit just from actually being the only one of the original trilogy that I prefer playing in its original arcade incarnation rather than a port.

Sounds like it may have been a cost-cutting exercise. Something I can easily imagine Konami doing. If indeed the translation is accurate about this version preceding the actual normal release.

This is speculation on my part, but I don't really buy it. People tend to assume that you can just throw more expensive hardware at a video game and it'll run faster - and especially for titles that rely on 3D acceleration, or other bandwidth-based bottlenecks, that is almost true. For classic 2D arcade hardware and games programmed in assembly, much less so.

For an early iteration of the game to straight up run better baseed on different hardware alone, they would either have had to rework the game entirely for a very different hardware specification, or somehow managed to make the CPU itself run notably faster (probably at least twice as fast). This isn't as simple as "make the CPU more expensive", as their limitations are typically based on their architecture, not build quality or any such thing.

From what I can tell, G3 uses two 68K CPUs, which should already give it quite a lot of processing power for the time. If they could in any way have clocked those faster, they'd have no reason not to do that on the final hardware design.
So I guess, if anything was cut, they could have originally used maybe three or four CPUs instead of two? It's the only hardware change I can think of which wouldn't have required a complete reworking of an already functional game.
But this sounds unlikely to me. Two of them is already a lot, and if you're programming a game like this to take advantage for multiple CPUs running in parallel, you'd probably run into diminishing returns really fast. It's not like the game has a lot of complex enemy AI and pathfinding. Most likely the two CPUs used by the game are performing entirely unrelated operations that aren't expected to ever conflict. And there's only so much of that in an arcade shooting game.

Again, it's just speculation - but I really doubt they changed the hardware after already having a fully playable game. That would have been a lot more expensive than just going with what they had. But then again, if they did make a later revision that ran faster, that also implies they'd figured out their performance bottleneck and reworked a lot of code anyways - which also doesn't sound like something a Japanese arcade developer in the late 80s would have done.
Another theory could be that the slowdown in the final game is the result of some sloppy code added in in the 11th hour while trying to make things more challenging. This sounds more likely to me than changing the hardware.

Would be interesting if people are able to extract the original ROMs from this upcoming release and get it working in mame. That would help uncover all of its secrets!

[OldSkoolShmuper]

I like EDGE's page layout and their previews, but definitely not their reviews for the most part.

This is interesting, EGM November 1995, an early look at Salamander 2, and a racing game called Vic / Vic Viper ?

[BIL]

a racing game called Vic / Vic Viper ?

Ha, interesting. I think that's what became Speed King? I always heard the arcade version blows away its PS1 port.

[bcass]

If the hardware was changed close to release, then it's possible the code was less optimal than it could have been if it had to be significantly adjusted to accommodate different hardware, hence the worse slowdown. According to the MAME Gradius III driver documentation, the hardware uses two custom graphics chips (052109 and 051962). There's something interesting in the repo notes:

This board uses the well known 052109 051962 custom gfx chips, however unlike all other games they fetch gfx data from RAM. The gfx ROMs are memory mapped on cpu B and the needed parts are copied to RAM at run time.

There's also something wrong in the way tile banks are implemented in k052109.cpp. They don't seem to be used by this game.

With that in mind, maybe there's a bottleneck with the type of RAM that was eventually used for fetching graphics data? K052109 is a Tile Layer Generator - the second paragraph suggests that 052109 tile banking is not actually used by this game - why? Late-stage hardware change? Other?

[Sumez]

That's interesting, and something I didn't consider. Similar to my theory about a late-stage addition to the code causing shitty performance, it could definitely be another addition made to account for a different hardware alteration that didn't by itself cause slower performance. That's my theory on the Super GnG slowdown, tied to it being a launch title. It does some really weird things which seem completely redundant.

When looking into the Gradius 3 hardware, I did read the part about copying graphics to RAM at runtime (which actually isn't too uncommon in later arcade games, or every console outside of the NES), and it's possible that this is what the secondary CPU is used for (anyone who's messed with the game would know I'm sure).
I wouldn't expect it to be copying graphics data on every single frame however, which is the only thing that would be able to create continuous slowdown. There could be other similar fixes alongside it however, particularly in regards to sprite updates.

the second paragraph suggests that 052109 tile banking is not actually used by this game - why? Late-stage hardware change? Other?

Could be a holdover from other hardware revisions. If graphics data isn't mapped directly to rom, there is probably less advantage to bank switching
I wonder how much stuff on screen is animated by rewriting video ram every frame... Should be possible to check easily just by firing up mame

[Bassa-Bassa]

Gradius III's AM Show presentation was in 1989 Oct., and that's the version they're adding here for the first time (there're around even old press articles picturing it). The game being released in Dec. means that they really didn't have much time for major hardware changes, but those were different times, so who really knows.

a racing game called Vic / Vic Viper ?

Ha, interesting. I think that's what became Speed King?

The unreleased Vic Viper was exhibited in 1995 Sep. (AM Show) and Speed King had been released in July, so doesn't seem like it.

[Sumez]

Arcade games were produced in much smaller numbers, not using similar mass production means to console games. There are plenty of examples of arcade games receiving hardware revisions during their production run, usually for cost saving measures. That said, I agree, less than two months to make such a drastic decision and retrofit the software does sound tight as fuck. But then again, that could also explain why they fucked it up

[BIL]

a racing game called Vic / Vic Viper ?

Ha, interesting. I think that's what became Speed King?

The unreleased Vic Viper was exhibited in 1995 Sep. (AM Show) and Speed King had been released in July, so doesn't seem like it.

True! Offhand, it sounds like Vic Viper may have been a super deluxe variant / sequel. I wonder if a similarly beefy cab was ever in the cards for Solar Assault (1997), hence the name. Then again, Vic Viper's just a catchy codename.

Looking at YT commentary, apparently there had to be an attendant present at all times, plus a barricade, to ensure the player (or bystanders) didn't get beaten up by the spinning cab.

[pja]

All that chat about Salamander 3 and unreleased Gradius III version and whatnot, meanwhile I'm happy that there's going to be a Gradius 1 with a convenient practice mode (hopefully!) I tried to 1cc this sucker a lot on the Saturn port but I usually was just getting owned in the moai stage and kicked back to the start

[Hazuki]

Konami is really incapable of developing anything nowadays, aren't them? They always outsource development to other groups...

Anyway, good thing they picked the best one for the task this time.

[Sumez]

Konami have gone with M2 pretty much every time they needed something like this

[XoPachi]

While I do have some issues, not with M2 specifically, but the overall standard of official emulator releases - and a few personal pet peeves of which even M2 are guilty, I don't think I've ever seen any straight-up dislike for M2 particularly?? Especially not in this thread? The best I can do is some mild disappointment when they occasionally don't live up to the expectations they have set previously. Or just laments about how slowly they tend to work.

Which posts are you even referring to here? I find it hilarious that Steven immediately joins in to take a jab back at the supposed M2 hate, trying to reason why it exists, when it as far as I can tell is a complete boogeyman.

I mentioned it wasn't here.
It's usually Discord or Twitter where I see the occasional conversation that kind of dunks on them and especially takes issue with the praise they get. I saw it when the Gradius announcement dropped.

[hamfighterx]

Well, you called it - she confirmed on social media that she's the composer! Exciting, really looking forward to hearing more of it. https://bsky.app/profile/chibitech.bsky ... lzlicw2k2c

Interesting that the post seems to now be deleted, maybe she wasn't supposed to confirm that quite yet! But great news regardless, excited to hear it.

[XoPachi]

I regrettably only know Chibi for the Feveron VIP arrange. So I can only put that game's sound over Salamander when I read "Chibitech is doing the music". That puts a smile on my face. :D

[Hazuki]

Konami have gone with M2 pretty much every time they needed something like this

Well, I'd not know. I'm out of the loop with modern releases/rereleases to be frank. But they certainly didn't hire them to develop that new Getsu Fuuma game.
Now I remembered they also got them to develop the AC Dracula remake, which I did play on my Switch last year.

Anyway, the games released in the past century are already enough for 1 lifetime for me.

[Sumez]

Well, I'd not know. I'm out of the loop with modern releases/rereleases to be frank. But they certainly didn't hire them to develop that new Getsu Fuuma game.
Now I remembered they also got them to develop the AC Dracula remake, which I did play on my Switch last year.

Ah yeah, the Getsu Fuuma game is a new game, not a port of an existing game, which is what M2's M.O is Also, that game doesn't smell like commission work to me. More like some indie studio wanted to make it and struck a deal with Konami.
To clarify, Konami have gone with M2 whenever they needed to re-release a bundle of old emulated games. Including the PCE Mini.

I mentioned it wasn't here.
It's usually Discord or Twitter where I see the occasional conversation that kind of dunks on them and especially takes issue with the praise they get. I saw it when the Gradius announcement dropped.

Makes more sense I guess. I chose to read "this community" as this forum specifically.
The rest of the shooter internet-sphere doesn't feel much like a singular community at all, to me. Especially not anymore.

The fact that I'm in five different shmup Discords and based on user search, I can tell we only share one of them, pretty much says it all. I'm honestly curious to hear who it is that doesn't like M2 and why.

[hamfighterx]

I regrettably only know Chibi for the Feveron VIP arrange. So I can only put that game's sound over Salamander when I read "Chibitech is doing the music". That puts a smile on my face.

Feveron arrange is fantastic, so that puts a smile on my face too

You may have heard some of chibi-tech's work in some other recent M2 releases: she worked on the remixed music in the Haunted Castle Revisited release (on last year's Castlevania Dominus collection), she has done the 1-2 arranged songs on all three of the Toaplan Arcade Garage releases (opening/menu track and Arcade Challenge BGM), etc. And slightly older, did a really good arrange version of Camino a Mi Amor on the 3DS Sega Ages OutRun port, many arranges for the 360/PS3 Sega Vintage Collection/Sega Ages Online releases.

[Ms. Tea]

I really like that 3DS Outrun track; it made it onto the Data Discs Outrun soundtrack, so I've listend to it a good few times. She also did that fantastic chill Mega CD BIOS arrange that's used as the menu music for all the Switch Sega Ages stuff.

[CerealPT]

i thought this was a LRG exclusive but playasia also has pre orders for the physical version, different cover and everything.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

On the USA region Switch eShop, Gradius Origins is already listed with an August 7th, 2025 release date as a digital d/l + discount if purchased before 8/07/2025 (otherwise, you'll have to pay the original MSRP of $39.99 usd if bought on debut day).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Restart_Point]

i thought this was a LRG exclusive but playasia also has pre orders for the physical version, different cover and everything.

playasia are selling the Japanese version afaics (as you'd expect). Same as Amazon Japan. I just ordered on LRG as the price was better (sent to UK)
LRG appears to offer 3 unique covers (that are not on playasia / amazon)
I just hope the LRG version is identical content to the Japanese one (in English). Havent seen anything to the contrary

[Restart_Point]

Wow. Classic "game sucks because you can continue infinitly"-itis.
It's amazing a publication like Edge was allowed to stoop this low. Integrity ruined.

To be fair this is pretty standard for a late 90s western journalistic review of a 2D shmup. Even in Edge, which I was avidly reading back then.
I really think the appreciation and understanding of good 2D shmups (and 2D in general) has had somewhat of a renaissance since the late 90s when 3D was the Next Big Thing, with a much better understanding of score and other deeper mechanics / qualities that they barely ever mentioned back then, but have been re-analysed by shmup fanatics in recent decades of the internet age.

I mean nobody even commented on hitboxes back then. But this was totally normal. This journalist may have a different view now
On a tangent....i had every UK issue of Edge from 0 (the pilot test issue) to #120 or thereabouts. They are all long gone now, much to my chagrin. Some must be worth pretty penny now

[To Far Away Times]

Been playing a lot of Salamander 2 since the announcement, I made it as far as Doom on a couple of one credit attempts last night, but he scared me like I’ve never been scared before.

[To Far Away Times]

Been playing a lot of Salamander 2 since the announcement, I made it as far as Doom on a couple of one credit attempts last night, but he scared me like I’ve never been scared before.

Yo I fucking did it. Ain’t so scared now.