Collection essentials #197: Gradius III (SNES)

We’re through the Goemon games on this console, but still sticking with Konami. It’s a little awkward that the first Gradius game I’m covering in this series is the third one. Actually I’m gonna get to Gradius 1 and 2 on a future console.

Gradius games are shoot ‘em ups, and they stand out because of their unique power-up system. Normally in a shoot ‘em up, you pick up a power-up, and you get whatever it is applied immediately, and that’s that. But in Gradius, you have a meter with the names of various power-ups divided into separate boxes. Upon picking up a power-up item, the first power-up in the meter is highlighted, which you can choose to activate, or you can wait, because upon picking up more power-up items, the power-ups further down in the meter will be highlighted, so you can potentially activate something more useful. It’s a pretty cool system. A common flaw with it, though, is that the level design tends to be balanced around you having at least some power-ups, and when you die and lose them all, it can be extremely difficult to recover and salvage the run you were having.

Gradius III was a launch title for the Super Nintendo. The arcade game had already been out for a while, but the brand new SNES hardware was still not quite able to faithfully recreate it as there are clear compromises made in this version of the game. Most notable was the slowdown. The Super Nintendo sometimes has trouble handling a lot of objects on the screen at once, so when the action gets really hectic in Gradius III, the speed of the game often slows to a crawl. This can really put off some players. It’s an issue the competing Sega Genesis usually didn’t have, so games like this with slowdown trouble were frequently cited as a strike against Nintendo’s platform when comparing it against its contemporaries.

However, I think most would agree that this Super Nintendo version of Gradius III is actually better than the arcade original. Why is that? Well, first of all, they added more choices to customize your power-up bar, which is really awesome. But second and more important, arcade Gradius III had one huge glaring problem that held it back from greatness: it is ruthlessly, viciously, ridiculously, punishingly SUPER HARD. Seriously, they went way, way overboard with the difficulty in that game, it’s a prime example of why old arcade games sometimes have a reputation for being quarter eaters. The Super Nintendo version made adjustments to the level design to make it not so insane, and even with all the slowdown, it’s still something I’d much rather play than a game that just insists upon my death seemingly every 30 seconds or less once you get past the first couple levels or so. 

An interesting thing to note in recent times is that hackers have learned how to make a patch for the game to eliminate the infamous slowdown! The Super Nintendo was actually capable of running these games at better speeds, but programmers back then didn’t know how to do it (or didn’t have the tools, I don’t know). A consequence of playing the game this way, though, is that without the slowdown the game does become significantly harder, since slowdown reduces your need to react quickly.

Gradius III is not the best Gradius game or the best shoot ‘em up on the Super Nintendo, but it’s still darn fun in my opinion, and yet another Konami essential in my book.