Oh yeah I finally beat Gradius, yet another game in my recent "suddenly really good at Nintendo" streak. This is one of the oldest space shooters for NES, and it really set the blueprint for games to come. It's also not that difficult, but I sure had a hard time with it. I really suck at shooters in general. That's why you won't read too many Turbografx reviews on here. I always blame the fact that I'm left handed which prevents me from pushing the fire button fast enough. Although I think it's actually me and not the controller. Anyway, I was finally able to cross this one off the list.
The battles between me and Gradius are legendary. I bought this game in college and would go on spurts where I would play it every day. This was always my night class game because I could get in a few rounds quickly before I had to go to bed. Sadly, I have a lot more memories of evenings being spent failing at old games than I do hanging out with friends in college. I probably shouldn't explore that fact too much other than to say it was their fault and not mine.
Anyway, this game used to always drive me crazy. I would either get killed by those Easter Island heads, giant rock (or granola) monsters, or get all the way to the end only to be killed by that blue wall. If you don't fly in front of that blue wall you will die, and it would be so long between trips to the last level that I would forget where it was. I also remember that I was able to skip level four just about every time because of a built in game mechanism. I always thought it was from how many point you got, but I foolishly looked it up and found out it was from how fast a certain boss was defeated. After I read that I was never able to skip the level again. Sometimes you're just better at things you don't know how to do.
What was interesting about my final run was that about half way through the game the graphics started to glitch. This is happening more and more with my NES which worries me a little bit. The screen got covered in vertical lines, and everything was much harder to see. I got so awesome at this game that I didn't even need to see it properly. Of course the bullets flying at me had streamers on them which made them a bit easier to see, but it was also very hard to tell which part was projectile and which part was graphical glitch. I'm just gonna pretend like I'm even cooler for beating the game while it was glitchy.
I think most people who have played this game will call it a classic, and I'm certainly not going to argue with that. I like how it plays like one long level instead of six short ones. I also enjoy the power-up system that does require at least a little bit of thought. I guess the biggest complaint that there is no final boss, but with such a crazy final level I'm not sure if that's a bad thing. Not every game has to have a final boss.
So I can finally lay Gradius to rest and move on. It was a difficult journey, but one that I'm glad I took on. It's times like this that remind me how many good games there are on NES. Even in the early days people didn't know what they were doing they were pumping out classics like this. Actually, it's hard to think of a system that had a better first two years. If this was the kind of blog that people actually commented on I'm sure you'd all have something to say about that.
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