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• Last Update: June 02, 2012, at 09:53 AM
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Gradius III’s original Japanese subtitle was “From Legend to Myth.” That’s fitting, because the Super NES port was responsible for consolidating its own myth: The belief that Nintendo’s 16-bit console was incapable of handling action games.

Over time, any number of developers debunked that particular fallacy with everything from solid shooters like Axelay (also programmed by Konami) to technical wonders like Rendering Ranger. But Gradius III arrived alongside the Super NES in America (and very early in the console’s lifespan elsewhere), and it fed into the widespread assumption that the system’s low-speed core processor would be a massive impediment to its ability to handle the high-intensity arcade ports that were so en vogue in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Gradius III quite possibly suffers from more slowdown than any other game before it. NES games often displayed brief moments in which the action would go all sluggish as the hardware strained to handle too many sprites at once, but in Gradius this sort of sudden time-dilation effect was less a hiccup and more a way of life.

One could make a case for either shoddy hardware design on Nintendo’s part or miserable programming by Konami, but you could also argue that the folks behind the home port of Gradius III were simply striving for accuracy. The arcade version of the game wasn’t exactly slowdown-free itself, and most of the sluggishness in the Super NES rendition of the game matched up to that of the source material. It was certainly more pronounced in the console version, but generally speaking simply went to show that Konami’s designers had bitten off more than they could chew all around.

What’s often lost amidst all the complaints about the home version’s technical issues is the significant changes it makes to the arcade source material. While the levels here are fairly faithful representations of the original rendition of the game (minus a few of the more notable set-pieces), the actual number of levels on the cartridge is only a fraction of the stages seen in the arcade version. Space limitations are to blame, no doubt, but Gradius III made some significant cuts to the overall design when making the move to Super NES. Few would lament the loss of the weirdly out-of-place pseudo-3D stage, but several other levels were dropped with no explanation, along with their bosses. In their place was a rehashed bit of material from Gradius II -- which was as good as new for Americans who never received that particular game back in the day, but doubtlessly a letdown for hardcore fans.

On the other hand, the Super NES conversion added something noticeably missing in the arcade game: Mercy. Gradius III is perhaps the pinnacle of this style of shooter, neither as technical as the R-Type family nor as loose as modern danmaku shooters. It’s a non-stop barrage of enemies and bullets, none impossible to dodge but nevertheless requiring razor-sharp reflexes to master. The arcade version was relentless and offered no continues once your lives counter hit zero. On Super NES, the difficulty could be adjusted, and players could resume play in the very likely event of death. That, combined with the benefit of the additional slowdown, means that this may not be the most faithful or complete version of Gradius III... but it’s definitely the most fun.