$20 Game of the Week/Lost Classics: Gradius (NES, SNES, Game Boy, Arcade, Playstation 1, Playstation 2, PSP)

In less than 48 hours, one of the greatest first person shooter franchises will make its return. So what better time than the present to take a look at one of the other types of shooters? Before FPS games, 2-d side scrollers (and their cousins the vertical scrolling shooters) ruled over gaming. They came at a dime a dozen, but three series stood out amongst the rest: Darius, R-Type, and Konami’s Gradius. Gradius had some awesome levels, cool music, challenging gameplay, and a unique power-up system. There have been several classic entries in the series, including the spin-off series Parodius, and the two-play cooperative Life Force/Salamander. Lets take a look at this classic series, becuase its as gamers, it’s imperative that we don’t forget where we came from, particularly in this age of Unreal Engine 3 graphics, Havok Physics, and Emotion engines.

While many believe that the series started with the arcade game Scramble, it was the original Gradius that introduced the concepts that made up this franchise. You collect power-ups by grabbing an amount of red orbs. The power-up you receive is determined by a meter at the bottom of your screen. You choose which power up you want by grabbing the desired amount of red orbs. These power-ups range from simple speed upgrades and missiles, to force fields and the option (which trails your ship copying every action you do for up to 4 times the power). Using this method, you can make your ship into a near-invincible powerhouse. These games also features evil Moai statues, bosses whom you have to defeat by shooting their core, and the parade of bosses that usually shows up near the end of each game. Starting in Gradius 3, players can choose which weapons they wished to upgrade to. Gradius Gaiden featured four selectable warships, each with their own abilities and skills. Oh yeah, the Konami code was also present throughout the NES versions of many of the games in the series, and it usually gives you a full weapons upgrade. In Gradius 3 however, using the wrong combination can lead to disastrous results. There are also a couple of overlooked but still just as awesome Game Boy games in the series. Nemesis and Gradius: The Interstellar assault
kept up the series’s signature action even in black and white. Of course there has also been the solid Game Boy Advance entry, Gradius Galaxies.

Thankfully Konami has given gamers several opportunities to revisit this great series. Among them being a PS2 compilation of Gradius 3 and 4, forthcoming Virtual Console releases, and more importantly, this PSP UMD containing 5 of its games. For a $20 spot, this collection contains Gradius, Gradius 2 (until now never before released in the US), Gradius 3 (the arcade version), Gradius 4, and Gradius Gaiden (which until now was only released in Japan). Although Parodius, Life Force, and several other notable games in the series have been left out, there is more than enough content to keep fans of the series happy.