May 2019 Shmup Club - Gradius III (SNES/Arcade)

[Normatron]

Thought that after work I would get on the game to calm down before bed, but that did not work in my favor. I was debating on what difficulty I should play on and I know I have beat this game many times in the past but I remember that it was always on easy. so I am going to stay on normal for now and WOW! if you die in the game you can almost call it quits unless somehow you are able to get past everything with limited firepower.

I did get past the Dual Headed Fire Dragon but not much farther after that. Needless to say I left the game not calm at all but angry and could not sleep for 2 more hours.
This score is for the SNES version.

[MetalFRO]

Wow! Sorry you lost sleep, Normatron, but amazing showing so early in the month! There will be stiff competition this time around

[zoydo]

Played a few runs on PS2 yesterday. So here's my first score for Arcade mode:

[img width=500 height=375]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/46972423804_e76ae8b7a0.jpg[/img]

[MetalFRO]

@zoydo - how far did you get with that? Seems like that's at least Stage 2, if not 3.

@Normatron - I'm comin' for ya!
[img width=640 height=480]https://i.imgur.com/BuTgqrel.jpg[/img]

[zoydo]

@MetalFRO: sorry, i forgot to mention that. It was just Stage 2 and i played with the #4 weapon select.

[Normatron]

Another late night gradius 3 run. Played for quite awhile and found 3 of the bonus stages and tried to incorporate going through them in my playthrough of the game. Turns out the only thing good to come out of it is getting around 15 to 20 extra ships. My score didnt change to much from before. If you can grab all the point pickups through the stages you may be able to come out ahead but you got to be quick and careful while doing it.

[MetalFRO]

Score from yesterday evening's Gradius III play. I spent all evening finding a groove, and finally got to, and defeated the plant boss, but didn't survive much past that.
[img width=640 height=480]https://i.imgur.com/nBOFiAul.jpg[/img]

[MetalFRO]

I played some Gradius III on PSP over lunch, and managed to get nearly to the end of Stage 2:
[img width=640 height=480]https://i.imgur.com/bzx4tU8l.jpg[/img]

[MetalFRO]

Continuing to inch forward in the game. I managed to reach Stage 7, the dreaded speed trap! I'll need to watch some runs of that stage, to get a better idea of how to properly route it. But I did bump up my score slightly:
[img width=640 height=480]https://i.imgur.com/hN0AOuBl.jpg[/img]

[MetalFRO]

Just a heads up, and a bit of a topic for discussion, but there's someone working on a ROM optimization for the SNES version of Gradius III, to remove the slow-down. It's known as SA-1, and it's pretty impressive so far:

[zoydo]

Here's my score for PSP-version (Stage 2, weapon select D).

[img width=500 height=294]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/47018998904_2e9ee86479.jpg[/img]

It seems like the default settings of the PSP-version are slightly easier than on PS2, but i need to double check that.

Edit:
checked that out: PSP default difficulty is on 3, PS2 on 4.

[EZ Racer]

Had been busy enough that I hadn't really put time into this since the first few days of the month. Even then, I hadn't passed level 2 on Normal (I did get to the Plant Boss on Easy).

Plugged in today, and tried Normal again, with fairly low expectations. But then got on a monster run, and made it to the Speed trap.

I do like how the game doesn't have a lot of cheap moments, at least so far (other the option hunter)

[MetalFRO]

Nice score, EZ Racer! That's pretty awesome progress, I'd say!

I forgot to take a photo of it with my camera, so here's a screen capture from my stream last night, showing my best so far:
[img width=640 height=360]https://i.imgur.com/V9Vp6Rjl.png[/img]

And here's the stream, in case anyone's interested:


I managed to get through the speed trap stage and through most of the boss rush, only dying on the last boss of Stage 8, because he rushes you, and I had no shield/reduce left to protect me.

[Normatron]

Well, I think I took a step back as I for some reason can't beat my own high score. Well played MetalFRO. I'm moving on to the arcade version now but i will come back strong at the end of the month to try and reclaim the hight score (speaking in my best evil monologing voice)

[zoydo]

Did some progress on the PSP-version yesterday:

Stage 3 - Weapon Select A

[img width=499 height=291]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/32909257717_91880d98ca.jpg[/img]