Gradius III Arcade 1 All Edit mode
8Gradius III. Easily the most painful shump I have played so far. And yet I still enjoy it somehow.
I initially planned to 2 loop clear the game, but after realizing how difficult it is I settled for 1 loop clear. I may do 2 loop clear in the future if I feel I am ready for it.
What makes Gradius III so painful is the three notorious stages: Stage 7-Fire, Stage 9-Cube rush, and Stage 10-Final Stage.
Fire stage has indestructible fireballs and can easily overwhelm you, and extremely difficult to recover if you die here. The boss is no pushover either, if you don't have a shield ready it can prove to be a big threat.
Cube stage. One of the most unfair and ridiculous stage in history, thanks to the cube rush. They charge at you with supersonic speed, and the way they charge at is very, very awkward. Even though the cube rush is different each time, there are a few consistent things:
_The order of what cube will charge at you is always the same. Which means you can remember which cube will do a mad dash and which will not.
_The cubes that will home on you if meet with another cube/wall, they will be stuck, this is particularly useful in some cube rush variations.
_The time when the cube homes on you is also always the same. Ex: The 12 and 13th cube will always home on you after they get to near the end of the side, unless they hit a wall.
Knowing this, and with a good RNG, you should be able to get past this hell. The boss can be dealt with quite easily with two Options or one Option with 3 speedups.
Final stage. We are not done yet. This stage while not as insane as the previous two, it's long, hard, and have annoying checkpoints. I actually have had quite a few game overs at this stage.
Of course, pay attention to other stages as well, they aren't pushovers.
There are a couple of checkpoints you want to learn in order to beat the game more consistently, like stage 9 checkpoint, stage 10 after midboss, flesh wall, and stage 3 sand wall part. You can try and learn recovery checkpoints at stage 6/7/8 too, but it's very hard, I couldn't learn them :(.
Big thanks to Refkey and other Grad bois for helping me out with Gradius III details.
I use Edit Mode, with Normal Missiles, Tailgun, Twin Laser and Speed Reduce. It's almost identical to type B but I prefer NM over Spread Bomb. And Speed Reduce because 3 speedups are hard to control in final stage.
This is played on MAME.
00:07 Stage 1
02:06 Stage 1 Boss Goliath
02:43 Stage 2
06:04 Stage 2 Boss Bubble Eye
06:33 Stage 3
14:05 Stage 3 Boss Big Core MK III
15:23 Stage 4 (more like Bonus stage if you think about it)
16:09 Stage 5
19:27 Stage 5 Boss Dogas
20:01 Stage 5 Boss Vaif
21:12 Stage 6
25:52 Stage 6 Boss Gregol
25:07 Stage 7 (Pain)
27:15 Stage 7 Boss Wyvern & Vulture Dragon
28:03 Stage 8
30:22 Stage 8 Boss Choking Weed
30:58 Stage 9 Cube Rush failed attempts (Agony even)
47:31 Stage 9 Cube Rush successful
50:24 Stage 9 Boss Lizard Core
51:18 Rush of the Bosses (Tetran, Covered Core, Big Core MK II, Crystal Core, Death MK II, Dellinger Core)
55:10 Stage 10
59:27 Stage 10 midboss Disrupt
01:03:42 Stage 10 Boss Bacterian
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