Gradius II Famicom playthrough! Konami chip w/ enhanced gfx & sound, not allowed on NES! FLASHING FX
2WARNING: the boss at the 30 minute mark triggers intense screen-flashing FX!
Playing through Gradius II for Famicom, in the emulator Mesen in Windows!
My shmup playlist: • smbhax's Shoot-'Em-Up adventures!
0:00 - start
0:25 - playthrough
21:56 - boss rush?!?
30:25 - FLASHING FX!! 8oo
34:26 - had to get Speed =P
37:56 - plus 30 lives??
40:58 - ending & credits
43:45 - burning 40 lives
45:50 - wrap! Wikipedia on Salamanders
This seemed pretty hard so even though it has unlimited continues I just save-scummed the whole darn thing instead of like letting myself die at the start of each new stage. = P
There's a quite long boss rush fairly early on in this, sheesh! Some rough yellow screen flash FX from one of 'em, too. Oh and a tentacled one where I had to figure out that hitting diagonals on the controller moves you a lot faster (like you can do with circle-strafing in Doom ; D) 'cause otherwise it might've taken a Speed powerup to beat them. : P
Although not long after that I DID have to buy a speed powerup to get through a narrow diagonal tunnel thing it whooshes you through, bleh! : P
I'd accumulated 40 lives by the time I wanted to end it at the start of the 2nd loop! 30 of 'em came in this weird sequence near the end where the UI disappeared, a creepy boss crept out, I got 'em, then the UI came back with 30 more lives added on! = oo (GameFAQs says you can also get 30 with the Konami code at the title screen. Hm there's also a "Max out abilities" code you can use "once per level," it says.)
As far as I can tell from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradius... , https://tcrf.net/Castlevania_III:_Dra..., and https://tcrf.net/Castlevania_III:_Dra... , Konami used their own custom chip to get the enhanced graphics and sound effects in Gradius II for Famicom; that chip would not have been allowed in an NES cart since Nintendo didn't allow third parties to make their own carts for the non-Japan markets. Besides which, it would have required audio pass-through from the cart, which the Famicom can do, but the NES can't.
8/9/24
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