Vulcan Venture

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.

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...

...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.

Luckily, the PC Engine CD Port made the Continue feature more useful than the Arcade original. Despite being sent back to the beginning of the stage where you lost, you have now the chance to power-up.

Revisional Differences#

Extra Lives#

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.

100 Lives Glitch#

In the "Older" version, getting 100 lives would result in a game over. This glitch has been fixed in the "Old" and "New" versions.

References#