I played Life Force an awful lot, even though I’m really bad at those kind of games. But I ended up liking Life Force in spite of my inadequacy at it, mostly because the developers were kind enough to include a code to let me have 30 tries at completing it. A few years later, I learned about the sequel, Graduis III, being developed for my new (at the time) pet system, the Super NES.
This game is more like Gradius, Life Force’s prequel, than Life Force itself. But all that really means is that you’re not flying around inside some giant space creature, and there is a mysterious preponderance of Moai statues. Other than that, the game is pretty much functionally identical, but it looks a whole lot better.
I rented this game a few times, but never really managed to make a good amount of headway. I did OK at it, and every time I played, I made it just a bit further, which is good, I guess. But I never made it past stage 7 (out of 9, if you’re keeping score at home). Once I made it that milestone, I just got bored with the thing. I’d seen the first couple of stages well over a hundred times at that point, and stage 7 twice. I just didn’t want to play through those first few stages again just to make a few more inches worth of progress in the game. So I kind of gave up on it, thinking that I would come back to it someday.
That day hasn’t arrived yet.
[...] night I had the opportunity to play Giga Wing. It’s one of those games where you take a very-destructible flying machine and move inexorably forward to deal with hundreds upon hundreds of enemy ships. [...]