Electronic Gaming Monthly rated the NES version the 76th best console video game of all time, calling it "one of the coolest shooters ever, and ... one of the first big two-player simultaneous shooters on the NES." They particularly noted that the graphics in the fire stage were "mind-blowing back in the day". Anime is a 1988 OVA mini-series by Studio Pierrot, directed by Hisayuki Toriumi. There were three episodes released on VHS and Laserdisc between February 25, 1988 and February 21, 1989. The series was licensed by a British company Western Connection. The series is not canon, however; as the MSX Gradius series states that the events with Gofer take place over a two-hundred year period following the crisis with Zelos and his Salamander Armada. In this mini-series, it is revealed that the Bacterians capture sentient life to create leaders for their space armada. They capture sentient life via a dark fog going through space that changes inorganic matter into organic matter (the large brain-like final bosses in the games); and that they are a crystal-like life-form in origin. Noriko Hidaka provided the voice of the protagonist Stephanie. In the anime, the Lord British Space Destroyer was named after one of the protagonists, Ike Lord British of planet Latis; thus making it Lord British's Space Destroyer. Releases Vol. 1: (based on Salamander) Vol. 2: (based on Gradius) Vol. 3: (based on Gradius II) References Bibliography External links How to Play Life Force instruction manual Salamander anime at DCTP 1986 video games Arcade video games Amstrad CPC games Commodore 64 games Cooperative video games D4 Enterprise games Gradius video games Konami franchises Konami games MSX games Nintendo Entertainment System games X68000 games Horizontally scrolling shooters TurboGrafx-16 games ZX Spectrum games Ocean Software games NTDEC games Mobile games Video games scored by Mark Cooksey Video games scored by Miki Higashino Virtual Console games for Wii U PlayStation 4 games PlayStation Network games Konami arcade games Video games developed in Japan Hamster Corporation games Multiplayer and single-player video games