Velgress

I’m gonna make more of these a day so this doesn’t take me literally 50 days.

Still in early 1984, we’ve got a game that’s pretty important for two reasons. One is that it introduces yet another staff member to LX Systems! Her name is Chiffon Bola, and while I don’t hear much talk about her from fans who discuss the meta narrative of UFO 50, she is EXTREMELY important. She’s notable for being y’know, another woman, and a programmer this time! She’s the lead programmer on this project, alongside Benedikt Chun, who directed it. Chiffon seems like a cool lady, she’s big into bikes and her effect on the company was a positive one, for sure. It’s absolutely possible that her suggestions are what truly made this game, as it is yet another game with a female lead, and one that would become a major part of the company’s character lineup: The Space Pirate Alpha. She’s a lady in green space armor with a rifle, and she’s got a LOT of Samus Energy going on.

Velgress is about Alpha, who is captured by the Demon Princess Chakras and thrown into a deep pit known as Velgress. It’s a deep pit filled with traps and monsters, and now Alpha has to escape alive! The best way I can describe this game is by calling it “Upwell”. Notably, the creator of Downwell IRL worked on this game, so like, makes sense? You can run, jump, double jump, and shoot, and your goal is to move up a shaft. As the camera moves, so does a spike pit at the bottom. All floors crumble and break underneath you as you land on them, so you have to CONSTANTLY be on the move. The only thing that actually kills you is the bottom of the pit, everything else wil lstun and throw you, and will PROBABLY end with you landing in the spike pit, but maybe not! You might be able to jump out of it. But you’ll probably die.

Velgress

You die a lot in Velgress. But it’s built with that in mind, it’s VERY replayable. You die, press A, and with an animation of you being thrown into a pit, immediately jump back into the action. It slams you back to the first stage, which after the first time of getting to level 2 and dying being jarring in a “AGH DAMMIT, MY PROGRESS” kinda way, you get over it fast. The game is like 5 minutes long. It’s VERY short. Only the four levels, the last one being mostly a boss, and a shop inbetween.

Along the way, mini bosses will show up. They barely even try to attack you, but if you kill all three in each of the levels before they run away, you get the good ending. I never got the bad ending, they’re not hard to kill.

Velgress

Another cool thing about Velgress is that it uses random generation. That wasn’t unheard of back then, but it’s a cool addition, and fits this gameplay very well. Its is also notable for having more than one musical theme! The other games would have one track, and then maybe an ending theme, but Velgress has different music for each level. I like level 1’s theme a lot, the others are just okay.

I didn’t super love this the first time I played it, but after sitting down to beat it, it really grew on me. But I can’t deny the game is very, VERY short. Also, I dunno why, but it reminds me of Kid Icarus even though it’s nothing like it. Maybe it’s the music.

7.5/10

ALSO, important to note, I got the early lore of LX Systems completely wrong. I’ll edit my earlier posts and fix it.