#Gradius 2 cheats snes series#

Using them to overcome the odds is a whole different story though, for brutal is the most common word used to describe Gradius III and its checkpoints.

Sounds pretty simple, wouldn’t you say? Yes, there are no complications in the way controls work. Each configuration plays drastically different from the next, to the point where you need to practically devise completely different strategies to play the game with each one of them. The order of the cells in the weapon array is as follows: speed-up, missile, double, laser, option/multiple, ? (shield) and ! (a screen-clearing smart bomb that replaces the effect of the gray capsule seen in previous chapters). These upgrades correspond to the highlighted cells of the weapon array, which in turn is cycled by collecting orange power-up capsules. By default one button shoots, another drops missiles and a third one triggers upgrades. Besides that, the player must choose between the technical course (regular game) and a beginner’s course (easier game with only the three initial stages). Not much has changed from the basic gameplay of earlier games, except for the weapons rearranged in four basic configurations (A, B, C, D), a limited weapon edit alternative and several shield options. Pop the bubbles to go from legend to myth!Īs the story goes, the Vic Viper spaceship returns to battle the evil Bacterion army in Gradius III. Including the exclusive ones from the SNES version / finish the game to You even get to unlock a special practice area for the dreaded cube rush in the “Extra Mode” screen, which also includes Gradius / Salamander bonus stages (unlocked by getting hit by the energy balls from the final boss) and Extra Edit (allows selection of weapons from all ship configurations, Gradius III has absolutely no continues, but each checkpoint reached is unlocked in the Stage Select option for your suffering delight. Go to the options and set “wait level” to 2 in order to experience the original slowdown, but leave it at 0 to get rid of it and enjoy a seamless game with no loading times whatsoever (you can also change it on the fly by pausing the game).

This slowdown tweak is one of the neatest things you get in the console version. With four options/multiples the slowdown was so heavy in the last part of the volcano stage that very early on I decided I would play without the slowdown on the port for the Playstation 2. Much accursed for its alleged slowdown problems, now I know that this slowdown was *already* heavily present in the arcade game (judging by what I could see from MAME). Now I can say that’s partially true, and I take the opportunity to grant forgiveness to the SNES port for everything I might have declared in the past.

You’ll often see people cursing the checkpoints in the game and how it's impossible to recover when you die. The most well-known fact concerning the arcade version of Gradius III is the consensus among gamers about the extraordinary leap in difficulty from Gradius II, which isn’t actually that shabby in this regard. Were they made by the same team, perhaps? I wouldn’t doubt that. One of these intros is, in fact, very similar in style to the psychedelic intro to Mars Matrix on the Dreamcast. As far as I know these are the only ports of the last real arcade Gradiuses, wrapped in a package that’s enriched by a few nice tweaks and two distinct animated intros that work as a sweet homage to the series. This fantastic bundle doesn’t need any explanation as to what is inside that shiny blue-tinted CD. As we entered the new millennium they were still capable of presenting shmup fans with stuff like Gradius III and IV for the Playstation 2.

#Gradius 2 cheats snes series#

Lovers of the Gradius series owe themselves a great deal of thanks to the Konami of old.