5/6/2023 0 Comments Gradius gaiden bosss![]() ![]() ![]() The next game - Gradius III - is great but entirely too difficult and Gradius IV is fine but a little bit flat coming off the back of the near-revolutionary Gaiden, but they're both a good time. Every other Gradius title is variously excessive or in some way flawed - even Gaiden has that irritating plant boss - but not Gradius II. One of the most beautiful sprite-based games I've ever seen, it's such a pure, tightly designed arcade experience. Its immediate sequel Gofer: Gradius II, however, is an absolute masterpiece. 1985's Gradius, while archaic compared to the rest of the set, is still very enjoyable and surprisingly ahead of its time. It's brilliant and it's crazy and it justifies the price of the whole collection by itself. There's a stage that effectively recreates the first area of the original Gradius, only to have a black hole open up and begin vacuuming chunks of the terrain into its singularity, meaning the player has to avoid mountains as they're ripped out of the ground and hurled towards them. The bosses are wild variations on series mainstays with the series stalwart Big Core mothership shows up in a terrifyingly souped-up form at the end of the boss rush stage (on the first time through the game, anyway), as well as many other callbacks. ![]() You want Easter Island Statues? There's a galaxy of Moai heads, including screen-filling ones that laughingly taunt you. Fanservice? There's a whole level made up of damaged, degraded, decomposed spaceship corpses from the previous games, some of them still partially active, firing plaintive shots at your Vic Viper. Choice of loadouts? How about a fully configurable power-up bar, so you can put Option on the first chunk if you so please. It presents the Gradius formula on the kind of steroids that would make even circa-1993 Vince McMahon blush, with every element that defines the series taken up to 11. You can't really go wrong.Īn astonishing achievement, Gradius Gaiden ranks as one of the very finest "shmups" I've ever played. Pick one of the five available games here. However, and most excitingly, it also includes the only localised release of PlayStation 1 masterpiece Gradius Gaiden. It's packing the arcade versions of Gradius through Gradius IV, all of which are variously excellent. So, I thought it a good opportunity for an All Together Then covering the 2006 PSP compilation Gradius Collection, a gorgeous little treasure box of side-scrolling shooter goodness. Konami's Arcade Anniversary Collection releases today! And, amongst other, lesser games, it includes Gradius and its amazing sequel Gofer: Gradius II (listed as Vulcan Venture, which is wrong and stupid). ![]()
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