Gradius III

1989 · Horizontal Shooter · Arcade

About Gradius III

Gradius III (1989) is Konami's third Gradius, a Japan-only arcade shooter with an Edit Mode for custom weapon sets, best known in the West as a reworked SNES launch game.

Gradius III in Depth

The player flies the Vic Viper against the Bacterion Empire across ten levels with the weapons, layouts and enemies familiar from the series. Stage 4 is a kind of bonus level seen from behind the ship, in which the player must avoid hitting walls while collecting floating power-ups, with no enemies at all. Two hidden levels are based on the early sections of Gradius and Salamander. Besides new preset weapon schemes, the new Edit Mode lets players build their own combination of missile, double, laser, shield and special power-ups, though some weapons are only available in the presets and others only in custom setups.

Like earlier Japanese versions in the series, it has no continues. The Japanese version includes a beginner mode covering the first three levels at an easier difficulty, after which the game invites the player to try the normal "technical" mode, which loops endlessly. The Asian release outside Japan lacks the beginner mode and the introduction but is easier overall.

Making Gradius III

Konami released the game in Japanese arcades in December 1989, and Game Machine listed it as the third most successful table arcade unit in its 15 January 1990 issue. The Super Famicom port came in December 1990 and the SNES version in North America in 1991, one of the system's launch games there. It kept the arcade slowdown and added an easier option and extra weapons, but dropped the pseudo-3D and crystal stages, moved and redesigned the cell stage as the finale and added a new high-speed stage with a boss called Beacon. GamePro called it "one of the most durable side-scrolling shooters", while Entertainment Weekly thought it too similar to earlier Gradius games to be worth $50. IGN later ranked it 45th among SNES games, and it was re-released on the Wii Virtual Console in 2007 and in Gradius Collection on the PSP.

Gradius III Trivia

It was released only in Japan, on 11 December 1989; the arcade version did not reach the West until the Gradius III & IV compilation on the PlayStation 2.
The SNES version is the only one that allows continues.
On the SNES, tapping A sixteen times within a second on the options screen unlocks a harder "Arcade" difficulty.
The PS2 version added an optional "wait level" to recreate the arcade slowdown that the faster hardware no longer produced.
Its music was composed and performed by Konami's Kukeiha Club with Miki Higashino.