I'm Give Up Your Appellation's Technical Monkey

Superlative horizontal scrolling shooter, unfortunately let down by the SNES's technical limitations. The developers had the sheer cheek to call it a feature, that they were merely emulating the arcade, but there's no escaping the crippling slowdown, particularly evident on the Bubble Zone and Cell levels. In spite of this, Konami did the game a service. The controls are perfect, the soundtrack stellar, and there's tons of variety in the levels and enemies to keep you coming back for another go.

There's also a SA-1 enhanced patch by Brazilian coding genius Vitor Vilela which adds the vital oomph the game was lacking, so by all means check that out.

Back when I started playing the Gradius games both out of interest and for this website, I originally dreaded each installment that I decided to take on. Given how ruthless each game in the series is, and given how much of a rude awakening I had when I decided to play through the original game, can you really blame me initially? But, now that I have reached this point, I actually find myself being extremely excited to jump back into this series once again. Especially in this case, considering that Gradius II was, undeniably, the best game in the series so far, providing the best arcade action that the series could muster at that point, along with just enough additions to make it that much more satisfying to conquer. So it was clear that, when it came to the main titles at least, the main focus was going to be on making a more tight and satisfying experience for each installment, while also making sure to ramp up the difficulty that much more, just to make sure you don’t forget what you are playing. That all could be clearly seen upon playing Gradius III.

Unlike with Gradius II, I decided to stick with the SNES version of the game for two specific reasons. One, it was the first version of the game that we ever got here in America, so I figured it would only be appropriate to play the game as we originally got it, and two, when this game was released originally in arcades in Japan, the game was apparently much harder then the previous games, to the point where Konami had to pull the game from the arcades shortly after. Think about that for a second. A Gradius game that KONAMI thought was too hard. That is honestly pretty scary considering how hard the previous games already were. So, I played through the SNES version of the game, and I am glad that I did, because this may just be the best game in the series so far. Yeah, I know I said that about Gradius II, but this game just feels like a much more tight, fun, and well put together experience, and with the features in this version, it is more accessible to players than ever before…….. while still making sure to kick your ass most of the time.

The graphics are… basically on par with the other arcade Gradius games like Gradius II, but it still looks pretty good, so I am completely ok with it, the music is quite possibly the best in the entire series so far, having plenty of incredible tracks that had me pumped up to take down any fucker that came my way, while also providing the exact quality I expect from SNES soundtracks from Konami, the control is as I hoped it would be, allowing you enough versatility with your basic movement that only gets better as you keep upgrading yourself, and it all feels great to control, and the gameplay does feel the best that it has ever been so far………. but it is also still exactly what you would expect from a Gradius game.

The game plays pretty much identically for the most part to Gradius II, or any other Gradius beforehand, where you take control of the Vic Viper, take on a set of ten extremely difficult stages, shoot down as many enemies as you can feasibly take on while making sure to avoid all of their fire as best as you can, gather plenty of powerups to upgrade yourself and take out many of the enemies on screen to give yourself an edge up on the threats that you will face, and take on plenty of difficult, yet exciting bosses throughout the game, challenging your skills to an immense degree. Anyone who has played any of the games in this series knows this song and dance, you live, you die, you feel that sense of agony wash over your entire body, and then you keep at it, but is there anything that new that makes this game much more unique then the previous title? Well… no, not too many new features have been added, but the features that are added do still make this a very enjoyable experience.

The biggest new feature to this game would be with the Edit Mode, which is added alongside the Type Select option. Now, instead of choosing one of five sets of upgrades that you could take with you into the stages, you are now able to create your own loadout of upgrades to venture forth with, and there is a lot of different options to choose from, allowing for many different ways of approaching the challenges ahead. There are also specific upgrades that can only be found within Edit Mode or outside of it, which does encourage you to try out many different layouts as you go through the game and inevitably die over and over again. In addition to all this, for the SNES version of the game, there is now a difficulty option screen, and honestly, THANK GOD FOR THAT. Look, I know Gradius is supposed to be extremely difficult through and through, but considering what I had to go through five and half previous games, I will gladly take any assistance I can.

That being said though, the amount of assistance you get from this game isn’t much. The game is still extremely difficult, and will require you to play at your best ability to even get close to beating it whatsoever, so if you are hoping that the difficulty is still retained for this installment, you better believe it is. Even when it came to Easy mode in the SNES version, it was still pretty hard at plenty of points, and it didn’t get any better whenever I jumped up to the other difficulties. And speaking of which, this game also does that bullshit thing Konami loves to do by placing the good ending behind the harder difficulties… and by that, I mean they place the actual ending behind the harder difficulties, whereas in Easy mode, the game just… ends. Then again, the ending is about what you would expect from a Gradius game, so nothing more needs to be said about it.

In terms of actual problems about the game itself, there isn’t really much I could say in relation to that. If you have played Gradius before, you know what to expect when it comes to difficulty, and the locked ending isn’t really that much of an issue this time around, so really, it doesn’t have too much dragging it down. Unless, of course, you are playing the SNES version, which has slowdown EVERYWHERE. Since there is usually a lot going on in this game, it chugs along every step of the way, and while the slowdown does help in plenty of instances, there are also times where it can also be a bit of a nuisance. Thankfully though, there is a hack of this game that exists only to completely fix the slowdown issues, so if you wanted to play through the SNES version without any of that, there ya go. Go nuts with it.

Overall, despite the slowdown issues and how not too much is changed with the formula in this installment, I still found myself having a blast with Gradius III, and out of all of the titles in this series that I have played so far, I guarantee that I will be coming back to this one the most out of them all. Sure, the other titles have their merits, but this one just managed to give me the most enjoyment and satisfaction out of all of them so far. I definitely recommend it for fans of the Gradius series, or even for those who wanna try to jump into it, because it is definitely one of the best places to do so. Aw man, I’m so pumped up after that review, it makes me wanna get to the next title in the series right now! So tell me, when does Gradius IV come out?.................... a whole TEN years later, huh? And before that, there are the Game Boy games that I have to go through, huh?...... ok, that’s… that’s fine. I’m definitely not sad at all…

Game #386

While this game is just as great as Gofer no Yabou, This game is HARD. AS. HELL. I don't know what they were going in their mind when making this game. This game might be the best in terms of soundtrack, how many stages there are, and the graphics, but oh my gosh, this game, you need to have good experience with not just Gradius, but Bullet Hell games in general. People say that the SNES one is better but also worse cause of the lag, but in this game, YOU NEED THE LAG.

After the Cell stage, it's just pure torture. I won't even go into further detail on how bad after that stage is.

But I managed to beat it regardless. This game.. Oh man.....

Gradius III on SNES is a pretty great port that is also MUCH easier than the Arcade original. New weapons, altered stages, and (limited) continues are what this version brings, but a big talking point with the port is the slowdown. Being a launch title for the console, it suffers quite a bit from it. Although I don't mind it at all, as this game in particular is notoriously difficult. Die once and lose everything. Have fun recovering!

I should also mention the hack that allows the use of an SA-1 chip, which completely eliminates the slowdown. Personally I'd say that makes the game much more difficult, even more than the Arcade original at the higher difficulties. Unless you're an absolute lunatic, I recommend playing stock first.

Gradius III feels to II what it in turn was to the original. An iteration, it doesn't feel like a sequel so much as a remix of the previous things from it's predecessors I really hated. This is Gradius 2.5 but more frustrating. The reviews already here on Backloggd regarding Gradius III truly weren't understating how hard this game is. Like obnoxiously so. Now I have heard the SNES version is easier with less enemies & bullets etc. but I played the arcade release on the Playstation Portable Collection. Lets say anyone that could beat this version has far more skill, patience and time than I. Even with save states I threw in the towel towards the end before finishing because so much of the design is intentionally garbage.

Some examples like narrow corridors full of a projectile vomit worth amount of bullets filling the screens with nowhere to move, homing cubes that launch at you with intense speeds, spinning lasers with incredibly fine gaps to squeeze through, regenerating walls that crush you, having to hide in extremely narrow boxes as indestructible robots walk by etc. etc. The fact that if you die and lose all your power ups makes you as strong as a duckling in front of a pack of wolves just demonstrates how unbalanced it is. Truly the worst of this is in the latter half of the game as you would expect but even the start is pretty tough.

Even without the difficulty though I don't think I'd be that keen on Gradius III though certainly warmer to it. It once again repeats the Moai statue and volcano levels from both Gradius and Gradius II as well as recycling some of the bosses again. None of this is implemented in a unique way to make them more interesting and it just feels like the game has no new ideas except for trying to drain all the pocket change from teenagers in arcades.

Though I don't like the game that much I have to give a shout out though, the Gradius games have some truly epic cover art that few games can rival. That Gradius III cover is a work of beauty.

It's the late 80s. Shmups, along with a bunch of other genres, are in a renaissance period. Companies like Taito, Konami, Toaplan, Compile and Irem are all pumping out game after game to critical and commercial success.

But there was a problem. The gamers were getting too good, and arcade shooters? They were too easy.

Yeah, seriously. This was the opinion of a large number of arcade operators at the time, frustrated with STGs having long credit times, and as a result, poorer revenue. And whilst it could be argued that games like Gradius 2 and Flying Shark are fairly sedate shooters by the standards that would follow - it's charitable to say this attitude was anything other than pure greed, frankly. Because in the arcade space, the operators are who the games are sold to, and where the developers, at least back in the day, made their money.

As a result of this perceived problem, in 1989 alone, 3 major shooting game releases (probably more, these are just what i know is confirmed) were made wildly difficult in response to these demand. Darius 2 had it's default difficulty knocked up a setting making the game very cruel, Same! Same! Same! essentially starts on the second loop, and Gradius 3, perhaps the most infamous of all, was turned into pure hell.

Gradius 3 is comically hard. From the moment you get past the series' customary starting formations, you're met with horrible enemy spawns, tight corridors and nigh-impossible recoveries. Even a relatively experienced shmuper is liable to get 30 seconds into stage 1, die to something unexpected and then chain death due to painfully slow default speed and the credit's over.

I seriously could not get across to you how ridiculous it is. For such a major release from a big dev it feels an awful lot like an extravagant Kaizo hack of Gradius 2. Sections like Stage 9's Cube rush are infamous, and you'll be killed by some truly cursed hitboxes a good deal of the time you think you've actually managed to squeeze through.

And its a bit of a shame, because Gradius 3 is kinda great otherwise. Its got my favourite soundtrack out of the series outside of Rebirth, with the best usage of those glorious flute-synths that define the series. The feel is also on point, with the slightly silly space opera vibes of Gradius at their peak, especially with the game's huge variety in levels making it feel like a proper space odyssey.

And the levels are good! Packed full of variety, some of the series' best bosses, and a fair number of interesting, unique encounters. But it's hard as shit and the vast, vast majoriity of players wont see past level 2, because for some godforsaken reason the game doesnt even have continues.

Fortunately though, there's a better way. Two, in fact! Gradius 3 is blessed with two alternate versions which are dramatically decreased in difficulty - most know of Gradius 3 SNES, which is a great version and far, far more accessible, but I personally prefer Gradius 3's Asian Arcade Version, Presumably released in Korea or Taiwan originally. It solves the game's truly biggest issue in letting you keep a good portion of your power ups on death, as well as reducing the general difficulty, whilst preserving the original excellent aesthetic and sound of the arcade game. It's still a tough time thanks to Gradius 3's propensity for pure bullshit, but thanks to the series' quite lax extend rules it becomes more achievable.

Gradius 3 is also a game that has benefitted a lot from home conversions (excluding the SNES one which adapts a lot of things). Thanks to it's long length (at least 50 minutes), treating it as an individual level game can also help a lot, and Hamster's recent arcade archives port provides a tonne of ways to just tone the game down a little.

And the thing is with those nice, comfy versions in tow, in turn the stupid, obscene original japanese version of the game becomes easier to appreciate also. It is ridiculous and evil sure, but it remains to this day an ultimate challenge, a mountain in the distance that dares to one day be climbed. And much to the chagrin of those dumbass arcade operators, people have. There's a good number of videos on youtube and niconico of guys playing Gradius III for 14 hours on a single credit, and only even stopping because the game center they're playing at is closing or they had the power cut. It's a truly beloved game among the boomer shmupers in japan.

On it's own, Gradius III JP is cruel and bad. Designed to seperate players and their money at an obscene rate. But time, and ports, have been kind to it. In a twist of fate, the game is no longer for the fat cat arcade operators, but for the old-school shmuper that wants one final mountain to climb, and wants to rack up Mikado's electricity bill.

Still, if you catch me playing it, i'll be on Gradius III Asia.

Game does nothing to differentiate itself from Gradius II. It keeps the cool things like managing an upgrade path, but also keeps the bad things like the blatant disregard for fairness. Combine this with the game being far slower along with having some of the most intense slowdown I've ever experienced and you've got a bad game on your hands. I thought about giving this a 1/6 but I enjoyed the first level I guess. None of them were as neat as the stuff presented in Gradius II, or even Salamander for that matter, though I couldn't beat the third boss so maybe they got neater after that (Probably just got worse tbh). 2/6

Arcade Gradius 3 might be the hardest game I have ever played that is still good and isn't a TAS only game.

Even the second stage is already more difficult than pretty much any stage in Gradius 1 & 2. My best runs already ended in Stage 3 and I can only imagine how tense it must be to get to the final stage and beat the game. It is also about twice as long as the previous two games and has alot of super unfair sections. (Cube Rush being the most infamous one)

The SNES Version is a much much easier game that is much more balanced and actually beatable with a little amount of skill. It has some different stages too.

A decently fun experience. I expected it to be way more obnoxiously difficult than it was. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by the pretty balanced difficulty curve.

Some mechanics didn't perfectly gel with me, I don't particularly like that you can boost your speed to the point of becoming uncontrollable for example. Some bosses were also samey and underwhelming (especially the final boss).

There are some bullshit sections, though, with enemies spawning behind/under you, dead-ends and self-regenerating walls. They are not that common, but quite frustrating

The SNES hardware isn't quite capable to keep up with what happens on screen, so there are multiple slowdowns and frame stuttering. Not the worst thing in the world, considering that they make the game a tad easier, but still quite annoying.

Still, it's a fun couple of hours, with outstanding music and visual spectacle.

In times where I find myself with little interest in the current doings of the modern era, and not much of a schedule to maintain a consistent play of anything with length (being a responsible adult with a lot of hobbies kind of sucks sometimes). There is always my home away from home, the ever-so simple shmup. I attribute my fascination very much to the childhood indoctrination of Super R-Type and it's training from hell, but aside from a smattering of random appearances by Sol-Deace and Einhander that interest was never particularly with the genre itself, and only due to those games randomly passing me by, as they would with many others. After all, Einhander was in A LOT of demo discs.

It seemed fate grew tired of me dragging my feet on exploring the genre proper, because I suppose one day at Blockbuster I was desperate to play something new with my monthly rental. Enter Gradius III and IV, an early release for the PS2 that would introduce me to one of the founding series of the genre. I guess it was fair for R-Type to be my babysitter, and the hardest entries in the Gradius series to be my personal drill instructor, however fucked up that may be. It goes without saying, it was really goddamned hard. How I managed to finish the game was beyond me for the longest time due to the lack of continues, until I remembered that the compilation came with a stage select that was slowly unlocked as you made it through sections of the game. Even with that blessing, it still kind of boggles my mind that I managed it within the five day rental period.

Oh, to be young again with that lack of things to do and with my current level of expertise. I like to think with that combo I could potentially be like the legends who can 1cc this in their sleep, but I'm not sure that will happen.

Over the last two weeks I had been casually playing the fantastic Hamster port of this on my Switch. I was in for a rude awakening when I remembered that I had joycon drift, and playing the game on a smaller screen probably wasn't the best thing in mind. Regardless, I did manage to get to the third stage with my newly found inability to continue despite the presence of a stage select. Joycon drift to me was like an extra challenge, but then I realized that was stupid, and that I may as well had added a bunch of other useless external bullshit like smearing raspberry jam over my screen or paying someone to take a mallet to my feet in random intervals of 10 to 60 seconds.

Then so, I returned to the compilation on my PS2 of which had come into my possession very early in my physical collection out of sheer nostalgia. I did the only thing any sane individual would do, I increased the difficulty to the max of six, and kept the wait level to "0" which eliminated all slowdown from the game. If I'm playing this, I want every infernal beating it can offer me right off the bat. It's just how we do things in V-Town. For about an hour I did what I could, I would be beaten soundly in certain sections, and use the stage select to slowly inch my way through by returning to the beginning of the stage I game over'd in. In theory, I totally could beat it in an evening with that method. Have I truly improved since then? I like to think so, or at the very least that I'm not just persistent and stubborn.

Maybe one day I'll take the time to master Gradius III enough to beat it without a stage select, but for now I feel the incoming appearance of the dreaded OTHER THINGS I would like to play. I do have to wonder though, why do I have an odd feeling of respect for you and not something like Gaiares where I'll gladly spit in it's general direction and stuff it in a locker? Is it that nostalgic upbringing of your appearance into my life, or is it because of the name "Gradius"? Maybe, it's "In The Wind". Regardless, my non-existent hat is off to you my friend.

May we meet again.

Gradius III's SNES release at the tail end of 1990 is an interesting scenario where copious amounts of slowdown actually substantially improves the playability and makes the game into something much better.

In the grand scheme of the shmup genre, both versions of Gradius III are a force to be reckoned with in a sense. But this applies to the SNES version in terms of just really nice quality where it applies to the arcade release in terms of sheer bullshit, impenetrable difficulty. The arcade version is a product of greed and borderline hate, and you can't look me in the eyes and tell me otherwise. It existed to take away money at an alarming rate even for the time. It existed to gain infamy above positive reception. I probably wouldn't even assume such bad faith if they didn't remove something so established and necessary as fucking continues. Enough about that though, Cold_Comfort sums it up way better and I'm here to talk about the SNES version.

The home port reveals that none other than the Grinch was responsible for Gradius III, and this version was created after his heart grew three sizes. Now included are continues, difficulty settings, and overall balancing changes to make your life easier, although the last of these things I do have to wonder is just because there was less room for enemies on screen due to slower processing. A lot of bosses are unchanged, but due to slowdown become far more manageable. A lot of people will tell you the slowdown in this game is pretty excessive, and sure, it doesn't seem terribly flattering on video, but it really is such a life saver. Quite literally, in the game's context. There's a lot of really narrow spots in the stages and boss patterns that you would have to be awfully lucky to squeeze through at the game's normal speed. I know this is hard-coded into some games like Thunder Force IV in certain areas, so I wonder if the same took place here or it was just hardware issues, or both possibly. Either way, it's a strange case where the original was so bullshit that I'm really glad the slowdown is here.

In a tamer form such as this, Gradius III finally gets to shine as a great game. In a twist of a fate that was common in arcade ports at the time (even demonstrated in the very same launch window with Final Fight), the watering down that took place here actively improves the experience. There's not really any reason I would advise against playing this version, in stark contrast to the arcade version where the only real reasonable incentive I can think of is morbid curiosity.

Konami's shmups are always this kinda odd brand of extreme scope and gravitas parsed against violently cruel design. III's the worst of this and Cold Comfort already gave the Grade-A thesis on it, so I ain't gonna re-tread ground.

How's the SNES version? For my money, really good. Slowdown be damned, these games need this shit to ease the omnidirectional onslaught. Even thematically, the slowdown is kinda 'bullettime-y' and adds to the tension.

I was also surprised how solid the SNES soundtrack is - they brought over the series' echo-laden synths and celestial keys really well to a sample-based format, not to mention being a LAUNCH WINDOW game at that.

First half is pretty generous on difficulty, but the second half is where things get asinine even with the SNES-version modifications. Just constant barrages of unpatterned bullets, tight walls, shifting terrain, bosses with aggravating behaviors while narrow tubes guard their hitboxes, etc. And all of this is still with Konami's patented 'fuck up once and give up' Gradius Syndrome. It's all just too overkill for my tastes.

A very annoying sequel that focuses way too hard on cluttering the screen with enemies and bullets at all times. This is somewhat balanced by the game slowing to a crawl whenever the screen is full of things to avoid but it makes for a very grating experience spending the whole game trying to thread the needle in slow motion. Not to mention you never know for sure when it'll speed back up which really caught me off guard in the 3rd boss fight and ticked me off. I guess to the game's credit the bosses are more interesting from a gameplay and visual standpoint but the rest just gives me a headache.