
	Platform PSP Genre Shooter Publisher Konami Developer Konami ETA June 2006
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Gradius Collection

It’s easy to say that the PSP has become the dumping ground for rehashes and ports. But when those ports happen to be some of the best shoot-em-ups on the planet, it’s hard to complain. The Gradius Collection has five complete games, spanning from it’s humble beginning to 1986 up until the 1999 arcade game Gradius IV (Gradius V, recently seen on the PS2, is not on the collection.)

Gradius is a side-scrolling shooter starring a little blue ship called the Vic Viper. It’s famous for an innovative power-up system, where collecting orbs allows you to pick and choose which weapons to equip. Certain games in the series let you customize your arsenal, allowing for a lot of flexibility. Compared to other shooters, Gradius is slow and methodical, requiring that you become familiar with your foes’ attack patterns and be able to exploit them.

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The original Gradius was made famous by the NES port, although this collection has the arcade, which is largely the same but with better graphics. Gradius 2 has been released many times on many different platforms, but none of them has ever seen the light of day in America, so it’s great to finally see it here. The version of Gradius 3 featured here is the ultra-hard arcade version (the same on the PS2 release) and not the slowdown filled SNES release. Gradius 4 is probably the best looking of the bunch (and was also released on the Playstation 2), but the

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real treat of the package is Gradius Gaiden. Made specifically for the Playstation and only released in Japan, Gradius Gaiden is 2D gaming at it’s finest, with gorgeous visuals and an excellent soundtrack. Being that it was made for the home market, it also has a better difficulty balance than the rest of the games, which were made to suck your quarters in the arcade.

All of the games have options to turn slowdown off or on, or change the screen resolution to fill up the PSP’s screen. There’s also a full sound test to listen to all of the game’s remarkable soundtracks, or watch various CG rendered movies. The only complaints are that the Life Force/Salamander spinoff titles are missing, and it would’ve been nice to include the home ports of some of the earlier games (the Famicom version of Gradius 2 is quite different from the arcade version.) While modern gamers may find the Gradius series too difficult, retro gamers will definitely want to pick this one up.

Kurt Kalata

(May 19, 2006)