1CC "Demo": Gradius (Arcade/PSP) - 1-ALL No Miss Impossible Clear (523,100 to 2-1)
2(CHECK THE PINNED COMMENT FOR MORE INFO REGARDING VIDEO QUALITY)
Gradius (Arcade/PSP version)
©1985 Konami
Here it is, the game that started it all. Well, you could say Scramble is what truly started it all (apparently Konami counts that as part of the Gradius series? See the Gradius Galaxies intro for clarification), but we'll ignore that game for now.
Sure, compared to the later games in the franchise, this one's pretty simplistic. Hell, Big Core is the boss for the first five stages. But that's what gives this game its charm: It shows that a game can be enjoyable without going too overboard in content and design. This game paved the way for future great games to come, and for that, I thank Konami for bringing us this gem.
The gameplay of Gradius (otherwise known as Nemesis in Europe) is pretty simple. You control the Vic Viper, a spaceship employed to take on the ruthless Bacterian forces. You go through seven stages in a looping fashion (where the game gets progressively more difficult with each loop you complete), shooting aliens and exploring various terrain, all culminating in a boss fight at the end of each stage. Various waves of enemies or orange-colored enemies drop power-up capsules that advance a slot on the power-up meter on the bottom. Speed-Up increases your speed up to five times (I go with 2), Missile gives you a downward firing missile that slides along the ground until it hits something, Double gives you an extra shot going upwards at a 45 degree angle, Laser gives you a laser with a wide hitbox that can pierce enemies, Option spawns up to four orange orbs that follow your ship and fire along with you (their behavior in this game is quite buggy), and ? is a Shield power-up that only protects you from the front and can withstand 15 hits.
Scoring in this game mostly revolves around killing enemies; you'll see that I go out of my way to farm every so often. That's just a thing I do in Gradius games; I like seeing that score value go up. :)
Impossible difficulty is a difficulty setting exclusive to the Playstation, Sega Saturn, and PSP ports of the game. It basically sets the gameplay to Loop 2 rank right off the bat, including a 50% chance of enemies spawning suicide bullets starting on stage 2. This makes the game much more challenging to play, as you'll have to dodge way more bullets and the Shield gives you zero protection from the sides or front, meaning sections like the Zub Rush in stage 2 are problematic. These ports of the game also determine extend rates based on what difficulty you play on, and Impossible difficulty grants one extend at 50,000 points, meaning with default settings you'll only have 3 extends for the entire credit. Still not as "impossible" as the game claims it is, though. I could've made it farther into Loop 2, but I'm a bit out of practice with high loops in this game, so I kinda shit the bed a little. Oh well.
Gradius Collection's version of Gradius has a weird bug where every Amoeba in stage 6 (not just the red ones) drops a power-up. I've played on two different discs and they've both had this result, regardless of difficulty level or loop. I guess it's just a thing with the PSP version.
This game has been bringing shoot 'em up fanatics all over the world joy, challenge, frustration, and achievement since May 29th, 1985, and without this series as a whole, I wouldn't be the passionate gamer I am today. And it all started with this simple little 7-stage 35-year old game with little variety in stage design. Who would've thought? But seriously, thank you, Konami, for bringing us this wonderful franchise of games--and for changing my life.
Played on my PSP using Gradius Collection.
Other Videos By SuperViperT302
Other Statistics
Gradius Statistics For SuperViperT302
At this time, SuperViperT302 has 1,521 views for Gradius spread across 11 videos. His channel currently has around 8 hours worth of content for Gradius, roughly 1.54% of the content that SuperViperT302 has uploaded to YouTube.