Gradius is among the first shmups I've played and the first horizontal one as well, and for the most part it was pretty fun. The ability to choose different upgrades for your ship is pretty neat, though admittedly after a while you're just sticking to the same strategy for picking them. I think this system sadly also causes a big issue with the game, whenever you die you lose all your upgrades, and past the first stage it really just feels insanely difficult to build them back up. To this end, I basically played until I lost my first life and then considered the run over there.

The levels themselves are mostly susceptible to learning, but a few can be quite troublesome especially without a fully upgraded ship. Stage Three with the Easter Island heads feels pretty unreasonable without an option or two to help deal with the projectiles they shoot, and the final stage to this day I cannot beat. Everything else I think makes for a good starting point for Shmup beginners since it certainly was suitable for myself.

Unfortunately since I don't think I have the skill or will to beat every stage in one go yet, I'll mark this as completed for now. I can definitely see myself coming back to it with more experience in the future though, because it was pretty fun. If interested, my hi score is 262100.

Thanks to early successes like Space Invaders and Galaga, vertical space shooters were one of the most popular game genres back in the 80s. There were many different games made by plenty of different companies that followed this formula, changing it up enough to seem somewhat original, and building their own legacy over the years, such as with Defender, 1942, Xevious, and plenty of others. One of these contenders, starting a little later on, would be Konami's Gradius.

For the first true game in the series after whatever the fuck Scramble was, Gradius still holds up extremely well from what I can tell. Sure, it is not my favorite space shooter from that era, and it has plenty of problems, but for what it did for the genre, it is pretty memorable. That being said, my time with it did go by better with a second playthrough.

There is literally no story other than "kill aliens", which is fine by me, the graphics are pretty good for NES, the music is good, the control is pretty much what you would expect, although I wish you could move up and down a little faster, and the gameplay is your typical space shooting goodness, with a little extra in there to make it interesting.

Like I mentioned, it is your typical space shooter, except what makes this one unique when compared to others at the time was not only the level design and progression, but also the fact that you now had powerups that you could acquire to make your ship more powerful. When you defeat enemies and get the weird orange things, the powerups will highlight, and if you use them, it will activate an upgrade for your ship, such as ground missiles, shields, more speed, and floating options which give you additional firepower.

This makes the game a whole lot more fun, as it is fun to mix and match what weapons and abilities your ship will have, and what makes it even better is that not every upgrade can be used at once, so you have to be strategic about what you activate when and where, and what you will lose upon dying. Speaking of dying, though, that's where my problems with this game start to come in...

THIS GAME IS FUCKING HARD. LIKE, I MEAN, RIDICULOUSLY HARD. It is without a doubt one of the hardest NES games I have ever played in my life, not the hardest, but right up there, even more so then fucking Ghosts n' Goblins. You can only take one hit before dying without a shield, and throughout practically the whole game, it LOVES to throw an endless string of bullets your way, and it extremely hard to dodge it all. You will die more then likely, and this is gonna be a recurring thing in the entire series, so it won't be getting old any time soon. Now, I'm not saying I can't handle it, or that the difficulty shouldn't be like this, but good lord, you better be prepared for it.

In terms of other problems with the game, it gets pretty repetitive throughout, not with the gameplay, but with the obstacles the game throws at you. Numerous hazards and enemy types, including mini bosses, are reused throughout the game, and in terms of one of the bosses of the game, you have to fight it SIX TIMES throughout the whole game. It gets pretty tiresome after a while. But hey, at least we officially got the Konami Code with this game, so that's pretty cool.

Overall, while it is insanely hard and can be pretty repetitive, it is a pretty fun way to officially start the Gradius franchise, and a really good port of the classic arcade game. Let's just hope the future games don't give me as much trouble as this game.

Game #88

On the Japanese side of the web, there's not much to say about Gradius that hasn't been said before. One of the most important video games period.

One of the first games to sell one million copies in Japan. The direct influence behind countless games such as Konami's own Axelay, Salamander, or Parodius series. A staple in Yu-Gi-Oh cards to the point of appearing in GX. One of Kamiya's primary influences. A soundtrack so beloved it appeared at the Tokyo Olympics. The origin of the KONAMI CODE, eat your heart out Contrabros.

On the English side of the web however, the first Gradius is widely considered an "aged" product and a semi-obscure curiosity that was thrust into a bit of spotlight by its inclusion on the NES Classic Mini and Nintendo Switch Online.

Having played most of the Gradius and Parodius games beforehand, even 1LCing Gradius 2 yesterday, I wasn't quite sure what to expect playing Gradius 1 again. After all, the last time I played it was for 5 minutes in high school. While I very rarely am one to critique graphical fidelity, I'll admit it took me a moment to adjust to the original Gradius' pixel art. Coming off Gradius 2, one of if not the most impressive looking NES games which had the VRC4 to give it a boost, Gradius 1 felt antiquated even compared to its direct sequel on the same console. However, once I had adjusted I was truly blown away by the world laid out in a mere 64 kb of rom data.

Gradius 1 is a very simple game. The same way Final Fight 1 can be considered a metric to measure other beat em ups by, Gradius 1 is my new metric for shmups; if a shmup is as good as Gradius or better, it's at least a passing grade. There are no custom loadouts to be found. There is the trusty laser, the double, 2 options, and a frontal shield. The sense of routing is surprisingly complete; for example the player can rank up to fly past ghostly easter island heads IN SPACE and come up with loadout plans between levels. There are just enough fodder enemies in between levels for me to come up with plans such as using the laser for the entire game but switching to the double shot in the last level due to the lack of a boss to worry about. Other games of the era like Galaga had their secrets in the form of twin ships, and Gradius has... flying between broken mountain pieces for extra points?

This may be the part where it's expected I go on a tangent about how Gradius must be judged for its time. However, I do not believe in the idea a game's quality can age honestly. Even at the time, Gradius 1 pales in some areas. Other 80s shmups had far more interesting stage secrets as mentioned before. There is also only 1 true boss fight in Gradius 1, which is repeated roughly half a dozen times until the player fights a final boss who does not even move. This is in stark contrast to, say, Sega's Fantasy Zone which has a varied array of mechanically complete boss fights.

Gradius 1 is a bit clumsy in its execution. Even at the time, I'm sure Konami was conscious of serious flaws such as the lack of proper bosses, which is why I imagine Gradius 2 is borderline an outright boss gauntlet game with a drastically increased difficulty (it took me roughly 10 hours of practice to 1LC Gradius 2 and 2 hours for Gradius 1 despite both being the same overall length, though I don't think in any Gradius game I will ever defend the checkpoint system lol)

However, it is also a game of great ambition, breaking new ground for the shmup genre as a whole. Treasure is my favourite studio and without Gradius 1, I can safely say your favourite shmup or mine could very well not exist.

Machiguchi wanted a game that could surpass Namco's Xevious. The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step, and Konami's single step here was all so brilliant and ambitious. The satellites (or Options as they are referred to here) went through 20 different programming revisions before settling on one that could work.

The cinematic tone of the game was unparalleled for such an early NES release. There are no stage transitions, it feels like one continuous adventure. Making the final boss into essentially a victory lap shootout was a ballsy move in an era where devs were intent on making final bosses as brutal as possible for longevity in otherwise short experiences. The execution is not my favourite, but it is inspired. Even the iconic easter island heads were included simply because the idea of them stood out in the otherwise traditional space shooter world.

Gradius is not as great or as legendary as something like Galaga or Space Invaders could hope to be. What it lacks in polish it makes up for in sheer scale and wonder. I may have given Space Invaders 5 stars, but I do not think about Space Invaders very often. Gradius as a series has a habit of coming to my mind. We achieve greatness by looking on the back of giants. For the shmup community, Gradius is one of those giants.

"It's decent, for a 1985 NES shoot em u-" it's a landmark release, for any medium.

This is a pretty good space shooter. Even though there were a lot of this type of games back in the day, the Power-up systrms is what that make it special.

When beating a certain type of ennemies, they will drop an '' Power Capsule'' (name in-game), your ''Power Meter'' at the bottom of the screen can go up to one. When the bar reaches a power up that you want, you can purchase it and a Add-on will be added to your ship, the Vic Viper. This makes you feel extremely powerful, but the only problem is when you die, you lose all your add-ons and restart at the last checkpoint. This makes the game extremely brutal

Graphic wise, the game looks good for his time, however, when there are too much stuff on the screen at once, the game becomes extremely laggy and can be really slow, especially against the orange balls with two arms.

I will be honest, after a while, I used some save states because restarting from scratch can be really annoying. I still have an enjoyable moment playing this game.

Game #19 of my challenge

This port may have its limitations, but I think this is a very respectable version of the game that made shooters what they are today! Gradius is a pretty difficult game, with deaths being extra punishing due to an upgrade system that is rewarding to build-up but pretty difficult to regain after death when you’re balls deep in Easter Island heads, but the tension this creates is palpable, and despite having so many other Famicom games in my collection to turn to, I was hooked the moment I started playing this. With enough persistence, Gradius gives you the tools you need to survive with even the ability to sustain more than one hit if you collect enough power-ups, but like all great shooters, maintaining these upgrades from stage to stage is key to survival and easier said than done. The set pieces are creative with every level introducing new elements to change the way you play every stage in a way that feels so distinct from level to level that it’s no wonder elements like the Volcano section or the aforementioned Easter Island heads have become so iconic, and the level of agency you’re given in terms of when to upgrade what is a great risk vs reward system that is beautifully in-tact on the Famicom (despite a couple compromises), and would only get better in the sequel. All this, and I haven’t even mentioned the iconic music which is respectably replicated here, even if it probably would’ve been better realized had it been ported a couple years later. For Gradius to run respectably on the Famicom in 1986 this is as good as it’s going to get, and I think this version serves as a fun and impressive entry-point into what is an important, cool, and rewarding series of shooters! I’d almost recommend playing this one before the superior PC-Engine version if you just want to familiarize yourself with Gradius’s mechanics.

Lembro de jogar muito na infância e nunca chegar ao fim. A mecânica de escolher os poderes sempre ficou na minha memória.

Jogando agora usando a capacidade de voltar no tempo do emulador do Switch pude ver o quão curto é e o quanto era a dificuldade que ditava a longevidade do game.

Experimentei alguns lags dependendo da quantidade de inimigos e senti dificuldade de saber se estava causando dano ou não em alguns chefes.

Definitivamente um clássico, mas é um produto do seu tempo que estaria melhor em minhas memórias.

A port of an arcade classic; some modifications exist to compensate for the technical limitations of the NES (two options maximum, change of visual design for the shield). The game is interesting because it forces you to think about your run with the purchase of power-ups. The counterpart is that it's difficult to come back from a death, in the last stages, when you lose your upgrades. Otherwise, the overall diversity is good and the title has the good taste of not being too long. Seemingly interesting aesthetic inclinations with the idea of a galactic empire, Bacterion, and its leader, a giant brain.