in them and others wishing they had been done differently. Ashida joined the project as director, which was met with a somewhat negative reaction from employees working on it. One of the team's biggest ideas was the stage designs, as they wanted them to feel fresh and new, as well as being distinct from previous Gradius titles. The project's theme was "interactive", signaling that levels should be engaging and react based on the player's movement and actions. As the first game in the series to use 3D graphics, the team focused to make stages take advantage of this. The first stage, featuring large, reflective metal planetoids, was a sort-of homage to Gradius II and its first level, which had fire-coated planets with large dragon-like enemies bursting out of them. Some stage ideas, like the "volcano" theme in the fourth level, were incorporated from other Gradius games, with the majority being original ideas. A "boss rush" segment was added as the idea was popular among other Konami staff. Several stage ideas were cut from the final game as the team had disagreements over how they would function, most notably a puzzle-like stage where the player shot reflective spheres to open up passageways. Development of Gradius IV lasted for roughly ten months — midway through development it was put on hold while staff was shuffled. The subtitle "Fukkatsu", translating to "Resurrection" or "Revival", was added to represent three different ideas: the revival of Gradius series antagonist GOFER, the revival of arcade games in general, and the revival of more "stoic" shooting games, as the staff was displeased with how the shooter genre was mainly relegated to bullet-hell, "daimaku" games for more hardcore fans. The player's ship, the Vic Viper, was redesigned several times as the staff was unhappy with how most of the revisions turned out. The final design was made to emphasize the ship's "sharpness", since it was redesigned for a 3D video game. The "edit mode" from Gradius III was cut from IV as the team felt it made the game unbalanced. Gradius IV was presented to the public at the 39th JAMMA tradeshow in Japan in November 1998, shown alongside Konami's own Evil Night. It was officially released in Japan on February 4, 1999, running on the Konami Hornet arcade system. To help promote the game, Konami hosted an online-ranking tournament: once a player's game was over a password