So Konami decided to add a beautiful princess called Irene La Tias to make the game more attractive and to appeal not only to hardcore gamers but also to a more mainstream audience.

They generally did not include human characters with a strong personality. Indeed, with the exception of the colorful Twinbee and Parodius series, most other Konami shooters felt kind of stern and serious back then: Gradius, Salamander, Falsion, Ajax, Thunder Cross, Space Manbow, etc. One of the most obvious mean used to achieve that goal was the inclusion of a cute girl. Some characteristics of the latter can be seen in XEXEX (for example, the infinite vertical scrolling from the first stage of Gradius II is used in XEXEX during levels 3 and 5), but overall, Konami aimed at creating a piece of software that feels different from their previous shooters. What we can infer from this data is that at least four of XEXEX staff members worked on Gradius II Gofer no Yabô.

Sound Designer: Hidenori Maezawa: Mad City (The Adventures of Bayou Billy).

Sound Designer: Motoaki Furukawa: Gradius II Gofer no Yabô, SD Snatcher, Ajax, Super Contra, etc.

Graphic Design: Kuniaki Kakuwa: Gradius II Gofer no Yabô.

Director, program designer: Toshiaki Takatori: Salamander, Gradius II Gofer no Yabô.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the staff’s previous works: But those were mere steps leading to XEXEX, which can be considered the ultimate Konami shooter. When being different leads to blissĪctually, there was something before XEXEX: Salamander and Gradius II Gofer no Yabô. And then there was XEXEX (pronounced “zeks zeks”), the pinnacle of Konami shooters, the true masterpiece of humanity, the real reason we are there, for it is a mesmerizing orgy of colors, rotations, scaling effects, distorted foes, awesome laser weapons, and marvelous tunes leading to true happiness.

Humans used to lead meaningless lives without any aim.

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