Parallaxscroll, thanks so much for posting the scans of the old mags. Wonderful stuff to read, I don't have the Gamepros and EGMs of 1989, only from 1990 on. Great to read about Gradius II, it looks fantastic for a game from 1988. Life Force was one of my earliest experiences on the NES, and you can imagine how frustrating it was hardly used to videogames. Little did I know that shoot-em-ups are a very tough genre!
Without the Konami code I would have had a hard time finishing it.
Too bad that we didn't get Gradius II. I think there is a collection of Gradius for handhelds, otherwise I guess the only way to get it is the Famicom version. I just played a couple of weeks ago Gradius III and V again, and I had a great time.
The chip development for the NES cartridges were exceptional. If we compare the first generation of games with games released from 1991 to 1994 it is a huge graphical and processing difference.