Gradius cameo, who should be interested in this?

[ReyVGM]

I played an obscure Konami game today, Monster Maulers and saw that some of the bosses are actually Gradius bosses too.
I saw that Brain thing with the eye and the two arms, the red dragon (salamander?) and the Moai Heads.

I don't know if people already know this or if that piece of trivia would be ok to send to a Gradius site. Problem is most of them don't really have a 'cameo' section or something.

Any thoughts?

[Discoalucard]

I've actually never heard of Monster Maulers. Any pics?

[Malroth]

Pretty sure this is what you're talking about:

http://gradius.classicgaming.gamespy.com./index2.html

It's near the bottom, I think.

[Neo Rasa]

admin said:

I've actually never heard of Monster Maulers. Any pics?

It's pretty okay. Nice graphics for the time. It's one of those fighting games that has pure action game controls like Street Fighter 2010, Knuckle Heads and a ton of Japanese 2D games that never made it to the US.

Golem (called Brain Golem) is definitely in there. The character designs though are, uhm... www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=&game_id=8741


If you're going to get roms of Konami arcade games you haven't tried yet, DEFINITELY get Surprise Attack if you haven't heard of it. It's a typical Shinobi type clone only in a sci-fi setting with very Gradius-like graphics. There's some cool bits in it like reverse gravity areas and such that keep it interesting. Very catchy music too.

[Deleted]

I CAN NEVER GET THE FUCKING GAME TO WORK IN MAME.

[Dais]

The Konami fire dragon also shows up in TMNT 2 for GBA as one of the ninja boss' attacks:



while I'm on Konami cameos, here's the look-a-like for those Castlevania wall-mounted dragon skeletons from the Shaman King: Master of Spirits series-



There's also Moai heads - the weak ones shoot ripple lasers, while the tough ones shoot missiles:



And the final battle landscape looks familiar, although it might just be something from the anime/manga:

[ReyVGM]

Nice TMNT and Shaman King cameos. I believe that last Shaman King shot looks a lot like Gradius 2 first level with the huge balls of fire.

Shaman King was a Castlevania ripoff anyways, so I'm not surprised they put a CV enemy there

[rorshacma]

Back to the original topic at hand, "Monster Maulers" was called "Kyuhyoku Sentai Dadandarn" in Japan. And yeah, both the Brain Golem and a Moai appear as bosses. In fact, when you fight the Brain Golem, the music playing is a remix of the "Salamander" boss music, and parts of the Moai's theme song is taken from the Gradius 2 Moai stage.

I actually have MP3's of the two songs here if anyone wants to hear them:
http://gradius.classicgaming.gamespy.com./miscmusic.html