Episode 010 – Gradius (1986) and Gradius 3 (1990)

This week in Your Parents Basement, we pew pew pew with our space shootin’ Vic Viper-line ship past flying enemy fighters, sand dragons and giant, pulsating alien hearts. We’re playing the classic side scrolling shooter series Gradius, focusing on its first and third installments, for the NES and SNES respectively.

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TIMESTAMPS

• 0:00 – The intro, which is a Japanese commercial for Gradius 3.
• 35:00 – The return of the Toddbitskit!
• 39:15 – Emails. The return of Scooterbutt! Ole Scooty.
• 54:15 – Snifferoo.

SHOW NOTES

– The 30^th anniversary of the Gradius series was this year, and Kurt Kalata had a great article on its development for Gamasutra. You can read it here. He gets into how it developed from an earlier game, Scramble, and served as the Konami answer to Namco’s Xevious.

– The lore and backstory for the Gradius series is really quite superfluously wonderful, considering it’s a game about shootin’ down space alien ships. The Wikipedia article on the series gets into it, and it’s also a good source for the tangled naming web Steve mentions on the show.

– There are many, many, many people who can play Gradius way better than us three schlubs on this show. YouTube has many of their speed run videos, which I recommend checking out because they’re ridiculous.

– Wanna buy Gradius for the NES? Loose carts run from $8 to $13. If you want the box and manual as well, it runs from $17 to $30. For Gradius 3, carts run from $8 to $15. Despite being younger, boxes and manuals are rarer for Gradius 3, and prices run from $37 to $53. Various forms of Gradius are available on current generation systems in their online shops, again in the $8 to $15 range.