Gradius (NES & Arcade) - Let's Play 1001 Games - Episode 405
13Get out your Contra-codes it's time for Gradius!
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I'm Gaming Jay: Youtube gamer, let's player, fan of retro games, and determined optimist... Join me in this series while I try out EACH of the video games in the book 1001 VIDEO GAMES YOU MUST PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE, before I die. The game review for each game will focus on the question of whether you MUST play this game before you die. But to be honest, the game review parts are just for fun, and are not meant to be definitive, in depth reviews; this series is more about the YouTube gamer journey itself. From Mario games to the Halo series, from arcade games to Commodore 64, PC games to the NES and Sega Genesis, Playstation to the Xbox, let's play those classic retro games that we grew up with, have fond memories of, or heard of but never got a chance to try! And with that said, the game review for today is...
Gradius
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradius_(video_game)
Gradius (Japanese: グラディウス Hepburn: Guradiusu) is a horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up video game developed and published by Konami. The first game in the Gradius series, it was originally released as a coin-operated arcade game in 1985. The player maneuvers a spacecraft known as the Vic Viper that must defend itself from the various alien enemies. The game uses a power-up system called the "power meter", based upon collecting capsules to purchase additional weapons.
The arcade version of Gradius was released internationally outside Japan under the title of Nemesis, although subsequent home releases have the original title. Home versions were released for various platforms, such as the NES, the MSX home computer, and the PC Engine.
Development of Gradius began when series creator Hiroyasu Machiguchi was given a team to work with and asked them what kind of game they wanted to develop. The response was a shoot 'em up, with the intent of surpassing Namco's Xevious.[5] They made it a horizontal shooting game because they wanted to reuse material from Scramble as much as possible, originally naming the game Scramble 2.[5] The development lasted for a year after refining and experimenting with the gameplay. The team originally tried twenty different movement patterns for the Options and used a process of elimination when something did not work.[5] For the story, Hiroyasu's team was inspired by science fiction movies, with the popular sci-fi films at the time being Star Wars and the anime adaptations of Lensman. The team saw Lensman together and it influenced the game's story. Its plasma laser impressed them and is why Gradius features a laser weapon.[5] The Moai were included to add a mysterious element to the game like Xevious and its Nazca Lines.
The first home conversion of Gradius was released for Nintendo's Famicom console on April 25, 1986 in Japan. Due to the hardware limitations of the Famicom, many of the level designs were simplified (the Moai stage for example, lacks the vertical scrolling present in the arcade game) and the maximum amount of options that the player can upgrade to was reduced from four to two. This version added a cheat code that can be entered while the game is paused that grants the player's ship almost all the power-ups. This code would appear again in many later Konami on the NES and other consoles (such as Contra and Life Force), becoming known as the Konami Code.
The NES version of Gradius was released in North America on December 1986. It is the first NES game to have been released by Konami in the region and unlike the original arcade game, the title was kept unchanged between regions. The NES version was produced for the arcades on the Nintendo Vs. System board (under the title of VS. Gradius), as well on the PlayChoice 10 cabinet.
Gradius spawned several sequels, the first of which was 1986's Salamander. The series has continued into the seventh generation with Gradius ReBirth.
It was also re-released on Windows Store[1] on December 20, 2013, GameNow in May 2014 and for PlayStation 4's Arcade Archives on January 25 in Japan. An NES port was re-released for the Nintendo Switch Online on September 19, 2018 in Worldwide and Update release as Gradius: Stage 5 Stronger Version (グラディウス ステージ5最強バージョン Guradiusu Sutēji 5 Saikyō Bājon) on November 14, 2018 in Worldwide.