History YMMV / Gradius

** ''Nemesis 2'' allows you to find new weapons within stages, which seems like a great idea in theory, but these new weapons get tacked onto your power meter, making it longer and thus requiring more power capules to get power-ups near the end, such as Option and Shield. It's often best to just take one or two weapons you want and ignore the rest.

* MagnificentBastard: Paula in the Salamander [=OVAs=]. She poses as a boat person from the 5th planet and tricks one of the protagonists into destroying a Moai Statue, which allows the Bacterians, who were repelled by the Moai Statue, to come in and mess up the place.

* ShockingMoments: Players who have started to get used to series traditions may take on Doom in ''Salamander 2'' or Venom in ''Nemeseis 2'' expecting a series-traditional ZeroEffortBoss...only to eat [[BulletHell bullet]] or [[ShockAndAwe lightning]], respectively, realizing that ''for once'' these bosses actually ''fight''.

** ''Gradius II'' on Platform/PCEngine is a very faithful recreation of the arcade version, AND adds a new stage. The Famicom verson, while not one-to-one like the PCE counterpart, stands out on its own with its unique stage design, and is the only ''Gradius'' game on the Famicom/NES to allow '''four options''' on the screen at once[[note]]To compare, ''Gradius'' and ''Life Force'' (NA/PAL) only allow two, and ''Salamander'' allows three.[[/note]] thanks to the cartridge's special chip. Even better, you can destroy Shadow Dancers and their variants, which are usually [[HoldTheLine indestructible]] in the arcade version. This tradition continued on many home console sequels.

* RemadeAndImproved: Similar to "ports" of previous games in the series, the SNES version of ''Gradius III'' isn't a port of the game so much as a remade version, as its stages, weapon loadouts, and bosses are different. Nonetheless it's regarded as better than the arcade version, which gets complaints for being sadistically unfair and difficult. The stages and bosses are redesigned in favor of fairness, like the rocks in the lava stage now being completely destructible and Big Core mk-III no longer has its BeamSpam [[TurnsRed final phase]] move; furthermore, some of the even more hated stage elements are removed entirely, like the infamous "Cube Rush" (and the entire cube stage for that matter) and the post-FinalBoss escape sequence. It also adds three continues, whereas the arcade version has none, and some of the powerups available are considerably more powerful (Twin Laser now pierces enemies, Reduce now actually grants the player protection against hits), with some handy new additions as well (such as Formation Option, which keeps your Options in a "wingman" formation, making it easier to manage their placements, and Full Barrier, which restores a partially-consumed shield instead of forcing the player to deplete it first to be able to recharge it).

* ItWasHisSled: The "?" powerup. In the original game, its function was likely intended to be a mystery that you had to get to the end of the powerup bar to solve. Nowadays, ''everyone'' knows what it does (shield/force field), but it's still referred to as "?" for posterity's sake.

** ''Gradius II'' on UsefulNotes/PCEngine is a very faithful recreation of the arcade version, AND adds a new stage. The Famicom verson, while not one-to-one like the PCE counterpart, stands out on its own with its unique stage design, and is the only ''Gradius'' game on the Famicom/NES to allow '''four options''' on the screen at once[[note]]To compare, ''Gradius'' and ''Life Force'' (NA/PAL) only allow two, and ''Salamander'' allows three.[[/note]] thanks to the cartridge's special chip. Even better, you can destroy Shadow Dancers and their variants, which are usually [[HoldTheLine indestructible]] in the arcade version. This tradition continued on many home console sequels.

** The ''Gradius Gaiden'' port on the UsefulNotes/{{PSP}} via ''Gradius Collection'' got the short end of the stick when it comes to screen options. All of the other games allow scaling the screen up to the PSP's screen height with and without stretching the picture, but ''Gaiden'' unfortunately has to make do with only the small dot-by-dot mode and stretch-screen mode. This could be due to some sort of hardware limitation, and it's not an outright PortingDisaster, but it makes for an eye-straining experience compared to the other four games in the collection.

* UnexpectedCharacter: Few fans expected ''Nemesis 2'' characters, of all characters (more specifically, protagonist James Burton and antagonist Venom ''before'' he became a massive brain in ''V''), to appear in ''Gradius [=ReBirth=]'', as ''Nemesis 2'' is simply a side entry for the UsefulNotes/{{MSX}} rather than a comparatively big-name console or arcade game. This is more pronounced [[AmericansHateTingle in North America, where the MSX failed to find anything more than a niche following]].