The game provides infinite continues - permanently blotting the last digit of your score with a non-zero digit if you choose to use them so everyone can see your shame - but in practical terms, you will more than likely reach a point where it’s simply not possible to get enough upgrades in time to deal with an impending boss encounter following a death or continue. Gradius ReBirth maintains this challenging - some might argue overly brutal - approach to power-up acquisition and loss.
This means dying at a really bad time - such as immediately before a boss encounter - can have terrible consequences for your playthrough as a whole, as reaching one of the game’s more challenging setpieces without sufficient firepower or speed upgrades will more than likely mean a Game Over following in short order. Losing a life in Gradius is particularly disastrous as, unlike many side-scrolling shoot ’em ups, you don’t respawn where you fell - you have to restart from the last invisible “checkpoint” you reached, only with a ship that has no upgrades whatsoever.
GRADIUS REBIRTH GAMEPLAY UPGRADE
At any point, the player could choose to “cash in” the power-ups they had collected and receive the highlighted upgrade in this way, they could effectively customise their loadout to a certain extent, or at least choose the order in which they received new abilities, ranging from increased speed to more powerful and/or wide-arcing weapons.Ī significant part of the Gradius experience, then, is carefully upgrading your ship and taking a great deal of care not to lose a life once you’re in a good position. Rather than a linear progression of upgrades as seen many of its contemporaries, Gradius adopted a system whereby there was a single collectible item that advanced a bar at the bottom of the screen, with each division of the bar representing a different power-up. The original Gradius’ chief innovation was how it handled power-ups. Much like its predecessor, which was one of the pioneers of games with scrolling levels, the Gradius series has proven to be enormously influential over the years for a number of reasons.
GRADIUS REBIRTH GAMEPLAY SERIES
On the off-chance you’re unfamiliar, however, it’s a series that began all the way back in 1985 as a spiritual successor to Konami’s popular Scramble arcade machine. Most gamers of a certain age are more than likely familiar with Konami’s venerable Gradius series by now - and if not, you probably at least know about the “Konami Code” it introduced. Still, if you want to know what you missed out on - or perhaps spend some of those Wii Points you’ve been hoarding before the Shop Channel closes down completely - then read on. It’s the latter we’re concerned with today, as it really is an absolutely fantastic shoot ’em up, and an absolute crying shame that it can no longer be legitimately acquired via normal means. Regrettably no longer available for purchase due to Nintendo’s closing of the original Wii Shop Channel’s payment processing, Konami’s ReBirth series consists of several wonderful “modern retro” takes on classic Konami properties, including Castlevania, Contra and Gradius.