Editing Gradius (video game) (section)

==Development==
''Gradius'' was the creation of [[Konami]] game designer Machiguchi Hiroyasu, and it was the first video game he publicly released.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews">{{cite web |title=Machiguchi Hiroyasu Gradius Interviews (Translated) |url=http://shmuplations.com/gradius-machiguchi/ |website=Shmuplations |access-date=8 December 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190729084921/http://shmuplations.com/gradius-machiguchi/ |archive-date=29 July 2019}}</ref> Hiroyasu joined the company in the early 1980s, as a programmer, at a time when Konami was trying to transition from being a producer of medal machines to a videogame developer.  Konami assigned him to a small team with the task of producing a game that could establish the company in the videogame market.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews"/> He asked the team what kind of game they'd like to work on, and they replied that they wanted to make another shooting game.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews"/> The shoot'em up genre had seen a resurgence at the time with [[Namco]]'s ''[[Xevious]]'', and the goal of this project became to make a shooter that could surpass Xevious.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews"/> The project was at first intended to be a followup to Konami's earlier game ''[[Scramble (video game)|Scramble]]'' (1981); it was titled ''Scramble 2'' and reused many of Scramble's materials and game mechanics.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews"/>

Development of ''Gradius'' lasted for about a year, a time filled with anxiety for the production team due to a lack of confidence in creating their first game.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews"/> Members of the project came up with ideas that were then tested on the arcade monitor to see if they worked.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews"/> While designing the Option satellites, the team tested over 20 different movement patterns which were whittled down through the process of elimination.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews"/> The game was produced for the [[Bubble System|Konami Bubble System]] 16-bit arcade hardware.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews"/> Hiroyasu wanted the game to have a visually distinct world with unique enemies and locations, which was something relatively uncommon for shooters at the time.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews"/> Inspiration for mechanics and story were derived from films such as ''[[Star Wars (film)|Star Wars: A New Hope]]'' and ''[[Lensman]]'', with the Laser weapon being directly taken from those in ''Lensman''.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews"/> The idea for a power-meter mechanic stemmed from the team's desire to give players the freedom to select whichever weapons they pleased.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews"/> Early versions had the player collecting individual pick-up icons, which were cut for not being "satisfying" enough; it was instead replaced with a selection bar where players collected capsules to allow access to other weapons, an idea based on the function keys on a keyboard.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews"/> The [[Moai]] enemies were added to pay homage to ''Xevious'' and its [[Nazca lines]] as well as giving the game a sense of mystery.<ref name="Hiroyasu Interviews"/>