skalt711 | (Arcade) Gradius | 3-ALL 1 credit clear until 4-1 (15Hz autofire) @skalt711 | Uploaded 2 years ago | Updated 4 hours ago
Time: 41.5 hours
15Hz autofire has been used.

It's finally done! I managed to beat the arcade version of Gradius on three loops. Why is it not easy to perform? Revenge bullets are introduced starting from second loop, which means that upon destruction enemies will shoot a bullet aimed at you with 50% chance and, starting from third loop, 100% chance. The difficulty rank caps sooner at second loop and stays at maximum at the third loop. However, sometimes enemies at the horizontal edge of the screen won't spawn revenge bullets for some reason. Sprite field limitations?
Gradius is an iconic shoot 'em up that introduced a power-up bar upon the 1985 release. You upgrade your equipment by picking up power-up tokens and selecting a desired power-up in the bar. You can use Speed up, Missile, Double, Laser, Option/Multiple and ? (Shield). Speed up can upgrade your speed five times, Multiple grants air-to-ground missiles, Double grants a double shot at the cost of only one such shot being at the screen simultaneously, Laser grants a powerful piercing beam, Option grants drones that copy your main shot and ? grants a shield that covers you at front.
There are 7 unique stages with no special stages. It would be the console ports that add special stages.