Retro Weekends plays and reviews Gradius for the NES. All gameplay footage taken from real hardware.
What we thought
I really enjoyed this its a really, really good game. The power-up system and progression is nice and managing to dodge through a pile of bullets is a very satisfying experience. The porting work to the NES is great, I mean, all you need to say is this is Gradius. Good music, good gameplay, good power-ups, its unquestionably the most important shmup ever made!
5/5
I think this is somewhat inspired in a lot of ways, the clever power-up system went on to influence so many subsequent shooters. After this game, if you were making a shoot-em-up you absolutely needed an elaborate power-up system, no question. The music is quite cool, somewhat memorable and iconic in a lot of ways, as was a lot of the art design such as the Moai heads in the game. When this arrived on the NES in 1986 there really was nothing comparable in the home market, such is the quality of the conversion and I'm honestly surprised that this game alone wasn't a system seller for the NES here in Britain, where Gradius was a very popular arcade machine. A great port of possibly the most important shmup ever made!
