Gradius III actually contains the friendlier weapon system of the two, with its Edit Mode and selectable weapon loadouts. Thus, one of the more advanced strategies in the game is learning how to use your Options as both a shield and a weapon. An Option orbits you according to a pattern you choose and fires the same shots as your Viper, with the added bonus that touching an enemy does it no harm at all. Options, for the unversed, are little satellite globes that act like a second ship. This way, you can use several upgrades at once: boost your speed, equip missiles, go from shots to lasers, power up your defensive shields, and send out a few Options. Once the upgrade you want is lit, you hit a button and buy it, so to speak, which sends your count of power-ups back to the bottom. One power-up highlights the speed boost, two the missiles, three the double, and so on.

Your upgrades are listed in linear sequence, and each time you grab a power-up (left by certain types of enemies) it moves the highlighted upgrade forward once. Gameplay Gradius' weapon system relies on just one type of power-up, but you can enhance your Vic Viper craft with five or six different types of weapons - a speed boost, missiles, double shots, laser beams, Options, shields, and more. You want some Gradius? Come get some Gradius. I think it's pretty safe to say that the Emotion Engine isn't terribly taxed by the demands placed upon it by Konami's retro collection, but serious shoot-em-up fans will not, as they say, be counting. Now it's finally home, on a console that can very clearly do justice to the arcade original, and it's got an exact arcade port of its cousin Gradius III in tow (since the SNES version was just this side of perfect). Gradius IV did its thing in Japanese arcades, but due to evident technical difficulties, it never made it home to the PlayStation or any other console. The original Gradius and its sequel, Life Force, both made it to the NES, and Gradius III subsequently saw a cracker of a home port released in the early days of the Super Nintendo, but after that the flow of Gradius ceased. Gradius, for the younguns, is one of the oldest classic shooter series, having originated in the arcades back in the early-to-mid 80s and subsequently developed a console following on the MSX, Famicom, and Nintendo Entertainment System.

Konami's pride and joy in the early Reagan administration, the Viper shot up his share of bad guys in his prime, wasted everything from big-ass germs to giant floating Easter Island heads and came back for more. There were some famous spaceships way back when, but we'll always remember one of the first ones to have a name: the legendary Vic Viper.

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