Gradius Gaiden

Gradius Gaiden is a two-dimensional space shooter from the Gradius series, released by Konami in 1997 exclusively for PlayStation, and only on the Japanese home market. The player once again takes control of the legendary ship Vic Viper or one of the other vessels and fights through seven stages full of enemy formations, giant bosses, and narrow passages, where precision and pattern knowledge matter more than raw firepower. By that time, the Gradius series already had several arcade and console entries behind it, and Gaiden was meant to show how far the genre could be pushed on the more powerful hardware of a home console, without giving up the series' typically slow, creeping pace and uncompromising difficulty that fans were used to from arcade machines.

Unlike earlier entries, Gradius Gaiden offers four playable ships right away - Vic Viper, Lord British, Jade Knight, and Falchion - each with a different weapon set, a different type of Option helper, and a different playstyle, ranging from classic versatility to an aggressive rapid-fire build. The key new feature is Edit Mode, in which the player arranges the order of power-ups on the familiar bar themselves, allowing them to prepare their own combination of shields, lasers, and missiles before entering a stage, instead of following the fixed order from previous entries. The graphics make full use of the PlayStation's 2D sprite capabilities, with densely animated backgrounds, parallax scrolling, and large, visually inventive bosses, and the electronically styled soundtrack ranks among the best-rated in the entire series. Because the game never officially released outside Japan, it long remained just an imported rarity for foreign fans.

Why play it: Gradius Gaiden is an ideal choice for fans of classic 2D shooters who want to experience the Gradius series at the peak of its mechanics - with four distinct ships and the ability to customize your loadout to your own style - and don't mind that it's a purely Japanese title with no need to reach for an arcade cabinet. It will appeal especially to players who love memorization-heavy shoot-'em-ups and want to see how far the series' design philosophy could be pushed by the late nineties.