Gradius Collection
Pronounce it "grah-dius" for bonus nerd points.
Published: February 2, 2006
The 2D shooter is a staple of gaming, around since the advent of arcades, and then later home consoles. But with the dearth of 2D titles hitting anything but handhelds these days, it's still one of those things that gives us all warm fuzzies to hear that Konami isn't willing to let the genre die out completely -- and wonder of wonders, they're putting out a compilation on the PSP.
Gradius Collection, it's called, and as the name would have you believe collects a handful of Gradius games -- five in total, including the first numerically-dubbed titles plus Gradius Gaiden, a title that never made it to U.S. shores. Bonus? Oh yes, we'd say so. There's been a distinct lack of Vic Viper luv these days.
All five games are presented in their original aspect ratios (fullscreen 4:3) with perfectly emulated reproductions of the games, right down to the slowdown. If you're feeling saucy, you can actually turn the slowdown off essentially letting the PSP rev its engines a little and render the whole mess at full speed -- which is actually quite disorienting if your muscle memory is still stuck in nostalgia mode. The game will also allow you to stretch the whole mess out the full 16:9 screen real estate on the PSP.
GC (or at least the Japanese version we played at Konami's Gamers' Day event last week) also offered a full gallery mode for all the games, allowing you to watch movies and listen to the music at your leisure, for those that still geek out on that stuff. It was a little hard to hear at the event with all the Cure and Hybrid tunes that the DJ played the kept pulling our attention away, and it was only until after we'd played through everything that we noticed there were headphones up for grabs.
Press events are always the worst place to try to get any real hands-on time with a game, but we won't have to wait much longer to experience the full game in our very own PSPs. The dreams we keep having featuring fire dragons that can be avoided with the cunning use of staying in one place will probably ease once we can get more time. When we do, you'll know about it.
Gradius Collection, it's called, and as the name would have you believe collects a handful of Gradius games -- five in total, including the first numerically-dubbed titles plus Gradius Gaiden, a title that never made it to U.S. shores. Bonus? Oh yes, we'd say so. There's been a distinct lack of Vic Viper luv these days.
All five games are presented in their original aspect ratios (fullscreen 4:3) with perfectly emulated reproductions of the games, right down to the slowdown. If you're feeling saucy, you can actually turn the slowdown off essentially letting the PSP rev its engines a little and render the whole mess at full speed -- which is actually quite disorienting if your muscle memory is still stuck in nostalgia mode. The game will also allow you to stretch the whole mess out the full 16:9 screen real estate on the PSP.
GC (or at least the Japanese version we played at Konami's Gamers' Day event last week) also offered a full gallery mode for all the games, allowing you to watch movies and listen to the music at your leisure, for those that still geek out on that stuff. It was a little hard to hear at the event with all the Cure and Hybrid tunes that the DJ played the kept pulling our attention away, and it was only until after we'd played through everything that we noticed there were headphones up for grabs.
Press events are always the worst place to try to get any real hands-on time with a game, but we won't have to wait much longer to experience the full game in our very own PSPs. The dreams we keep having featuring fire dragons that can be avoided with the cunning use of staying in one place will probably ease once we can get more time. When we do, you'll know about it.
